Chapter Seven
The days droned on, one fading into another.
It was hell on earth for Chase and tonight was no different. It was three in the morning, and Chase lay awake in his bed, contemplating the ceiling.
Knowing Mary was right down the hallway from him and he couldn’t touch her kept him up at night. Whatever shred of decency he still possessed kept him from Mary. Chase refused to abuse his power and authority over her, which meant keeping his hands to himself and respecting her boundaries.
And when he wasn’t obsessing over Mary, Faith plagued his thoughts. Chase rolled and tried to get comfortable so he’d drift off to sleep, and eventually he did.
“Wake up, big brother.”
Chase found Faith seated at the end of his bed. His mother said when they were babies, she had to put them in the same crib, or they’d both bawl their heads off. They’d shared a room as little kids, too, whispering at night in their bunk beds.
“Faith? What are you doing here? Are you—”
“It’s a dream, dumbass.” She wrinkled her nose. “It shouldn’t come as a surprise, you’ve been thinkin’ about me a lot lately.”
Unlike him, she hadn’t aged. Faith was still the pretty nineteen-year-old girl with a crooked smile and mischief in her twinkling eyes.
Chase had imagined speaking with her every night for month’s after she’d gone missing, like a mirage he couldn’t quite touch. He supposed it was his way of dealing with her absence, pretending she was still with him.
“Yeah, they found…” Chase trailed off, he couldn’t make himself say the words.
“My body? I know.”
“Yes, I’m sorry.”
“Me too, but it happened a long time ago.” She sprawled on the end of the bed. For some reason, in his mind’s eye, she wore the Minnie Mouse pajamas she loved as a kid, although they’d somehow expanded to fit her adult frame. Maybe it was his nostalgia for a simpler time.
“It doesn’t feel like it to me.” The wound was still raw and ragged.
“I know because you’ve been keeping me alive in your head, but it’s time to let me go and move on.”
Chase shook his head. “I can’t, not until I find out what really happened to you.”
“Are you sure you want to know?”
Something about the way she said it got under his skin. What was Faith keeping from him?
“Yes, tell me and I’ll take care of it. Was it Cobb?”
She didn’t answer.
“It won’t bring me back.”
“Maybe not, but it’ll help me sleep at night.” He sighed. “I let you down.”
“Never. You’re my big brother.”
He’d been born twenty-two minutes before her, so he figured it entitled him to be the boss in their relationship, although it never quite worked out that way.
“Don’t be so sure.”
“You could never let me down.”
“I mean it, Faith. You’d be so disappointed in me. I did one tour of duty and then came home. I ended up working for the old man.”
Chase described it as though following in his father’s footsteps had somehow been an accident or a twist of fate. The reality was, he’d been a hollowed out shell after Faith’s death. Nothing and no one mattered to him anymore, even his goals and morals. Chase had wanted to avenge her death, and he couldn’t pursue vengeance and a career halfway around the world at the same time. But they’d never gotten to the bottom of it. Instead, he’d shackled himself to the Sin City Mafia and became the very thing he hated with nothing to show for his devil’s bargain.
“You work for him?”
“Yeah, I joined the outfit.” He waited for her condemnation, but it never came. Instead, her eyes widened with understanding, empathy.
Perversely, her acceptance made him feel even worse.
“What about your military career? I thought you wanted to be an officer.”
“Yeah, me too. Remember how we said we’d never be like him? Well, I let you down. I’m exactly like Noah. I became the thing we both hated.”
“I could never hate you.”
Chase swallowed the lump in his throat. “Remember the day we found out?”
“Like I could forget it.”
After he’d discovered the truth, he’d shared it with Faith, because they had no secrets from one another and she’d been just as shocked and horrified.
“Don’t you wanna judge me, too?” Chase wanted her scorn, her condemnation. He felt like he’d been drifting for years and he needed somebody to slap him out of this stupor.
Faith laid a hand on his cheek. “Trust me, you’re nothing like him.”
His eyes stung. “You’re wrong.”
“I’m never wrong.” Faith stood and then drifted around the bedroom, picking up things, just like she’d done when she was alive. She sniffed his cologne and set it back down with a moue of disgust.
She placed her hands on her hips. “Maybe you ain’t lookin’ closely enough.”
“At what…?”
“Why do you think I’m here?”
Chase thought about it. “I don’t know. Guilt? Grief? Maybe I’m torturing myself?”
She rolled her eyes. “I forgot what a lunkhead you can be. Think about it. I’m trying to tell you something, but you can’t hear it over your own fears and insecurities.”
Chase chuckled at the familiar insult. Faith used to call him “lunkhead” when she was annoyed with him.
“What are you trying to tell me?”
“We both know who hurt me, but you won’t admit it, even to yourself.”
“Who did it, Faith? Tell me, please.”
Instead of answering, she opened the door and drifted down the hallway. Chase ran after her, but she was nowhere to be found.
It was like she’d vanished. Again.
“Faith, where are you? Please come back! Faith!”
With a shout, Chase woke, shooting straight up in bed.
Only this time, Mary perched at the foot.
Chase collapsed against the pillows.
Disappointingly, she wasn’t wearing one of the nightgowns he picked out for her. Instead, she wore a shirt beneath a hoodie, along with those roomy sweatpants. Although, his outfit wasn’t exactly sexy either. Chase wore an old pair of boxers and a t-shirt.
“You were shouting in your sleep, Chase. Are you okay?”
Nope, I’m a fucking mess.
“Yeah, I’m fine.” Chase didn’t want to trouble her. Lord knows, Mary had enough to deal with, and she didn’t need to add his burdens to the mix. “Don’t worry about me, go back to bed.”
“I can’t.”
“Why not?”
“You’re not the only one who had a bad dream.”
When he took a closer look at Mary, he noticed dark circles underneath her eyes. She looked every bit as world-weary as he felt.
“Oh yeah? Tell me about it. ” Chase ran a hand through his hair, which was slightly damp with sweat.
“I had a nightmare about my granddad dying.” She sighed. “What was going on in yours?”
“I saw my sister.”
She frowned.
“A while back, they found her body. She’d been missing for the better part of a decade.”
“I’m so sorry. What happened?”
“Thank you.” He didn’t deserve her sympathy, but he’d take it anyway. “She was murdered.”
Her face fell. “Oh my God, that’s terrible.”
“Yeah, and her killer’s still out there.” He refused to elaborate. She didn’t need to know what Cobb had done.
“Tell me about her.” Mary tilted her head to the side.
Chase grinned. “She was fantastic—funny, smart, tough. Faith was my best friend, and I miss her every damn day.” Even though she’d been gone ten years, the pain never ebbed. It didn’t consume him the way it once did, but it was a part of him now, like breathing or his own heartbeat. “You would’ve liked her.” His smile faltered. “I let her down.”
“How?”
“She never wanted me to go into the family business. Faith would be so disappointed in me, had she lived.”
“Do you think you would’ve joined up, if she had?”
“There’s no doubt in my mind. I would’ve told my dad to fuck off. It’s what I should’ve done.”
“Why did you join? You don’t seem like a mobster and I mean it as a compliment, not a criticism.”
“Truth be told, I ain’t much of one. The rest of them are all too happy to make money off the misery of others.”
“But not you?”
“No, most of the time I can’t stand it. I hate when someone defaults on a bet and I have to send the person a message.” Chase didn’t know why he was telling Mary about all of this. Was he looking for understanding? Absolution?
For the most part, he didn’t like to talk about his life. Maybe because Mary had a similar upbringing. She’d grown up in the mob, too, even though she hadn’t been aware of it until recently, so they had a lot in common.
“A message?” she asked.
“Yeah, we can’t let people get away with stiffing us. If we did, the whole thing would fall apart, and maybe it should.” He snorted. “So, we kneecap a guy, or raccoon ‘em.”
She frowned. “Which is?”
“Give ‘em two black eyes.”
She gasped. “Oh.”
Mary didn’t comment further, but she didn’t have to. He could see the confession had disturbed her. Maybe Chase was trying to push her away before he did something foolish, like release her.
She cleared her throat and changed the subject. “Was she older than you? Or younger?”
“Are you sure you want to do this?”
“Do what?”
Chase rubbed the back of his neck. “Share confidences, act like friends.”
“Well, I’m not going anywhere soon, so I might as well get comfortable. I literally have nothing else to do.”
Another stab of guilt sliced into him. Chase shoved it away and tried not to dwell on his remorse.
“Well? Talk.”
“We were twins.”
“Sounds like fun. I’m an only child.”
Chase supposed it was. He always had someone to rely on, to talk to, to love, until she was gone.
“It could be, but it was also a pain in the ass, too. We shared everything—a room, friends, toys. Thank God she wasn’t a boy, or she would’ve taken my clothes, too.”
Mary smiled. “I never had to share anything. Most days, it was me and my books. So you had a good childhood then?”
It sounded as though Mary had been lonely growing up and he felt for her. She’d probably been locked in a proverbial ivory tower with only her granddad for company.
Or maybe I’ve got a princess fetish and I’m trying to make her into Rapunzel, so I can rescue her.
“We had our share of hard times, too.”
“Like what?”
“Faith had some problems, and they got worse after our parents split up.”
“Why’d your parents get divorced?”
He remembered every second of the family meeting they’d had. After school, his folks had called him and Faith into the living room and sat them down for a discussion. His mom had trouble looking them in the eye, and she wrung her hands the entire time. Noah drained an entire glass of scotch during the conversation.
“They told us they didn’t love each other anymore, which is the adult way of avoiding the issue. Afterward, we lived with our dad.”
Chase and Faith didn’t question it as children. From what Chase knew about his father, it could’ve been any number of issues—his womanizing, his cruelty, or his job.
No wonder his mother had bolted. Chase just wished she’d taken Faith and himself along with her. If she had, Faith might still be alive.
Everything the man touched turned to shit.
“Why didn’t your mother ask for custody?”
Chase understood her confusion. It was usually a given: the mother got custody of the children in a divorce proceeding, unless she’d done something very wrong.
“I imagine my dad had something to do with it.”
He didn’t like to think of Noah threatening his mother, but he’d probably intimidated her into accepting visitation only, and eventually, she’d stopped seeing them altogether. Chase hadn’t seen her in person since they’d had the sham funeral for Faith, several years ago. Although, they’d Skyped every once in a while and a few times she’d called him on the phone, but the conversations were always awkward.
“I’m sorry.”
“It worked out in the end.” Though, he couldn’t help but wonder what his life would be like without his father in the mix. Chase had a feeling he would’ve become a better man.
“You said Faith had problems afterward?”
Chase sighed. “Why don’t we talk about you instead?”
“How about a raincheck?” Her brows lifted. “I’ve been in my own head for weeks, sorting through things and I need a break.”
“Deal.”
“Good, then answer the question.”
“When she was thirteen, I caught her throwing up in the bathroom after dinner. It happened a couple of times, and I noticed a pattern.”
“She had bulimia?”
Chase nodded. “Yeah, Faith always had a bit of a weight problem although it wasn’t serious. She was perpetually trying to lose twenty pounds, and nothing seemed to work.”
“I know how she feels. In my early teens, I was pudgy. I did everything I could to lose weight, and it never helped much.”
Chase couldn’t resist looking her up and down. “Even with a few extra pounds, you’d still look damn good.” He hadn’t meant to be so emphatic, but the words slipped out.
Mary’s gaze dipped to the floor, and she flushed a delightful shade of crimson.
“What about you? Were you the golden boy?”
“Far from it. We both dealt with our issues differently. I raised hell, and she turned her anger inward. In high school, she started hanging out with a bad crowd, the ones who came to school drunk or high in the morning.”
“Yeah, I know the type.”
“And then her grades plummeted. She went from an A and B student to getting Cs and then Ds. Faith was smart, but she stopped applying herself, and started screwing around with guys. I mean real jerks, and I tried to warn them off, but she saw the dipshits behind my back.”
“Sounds like she was going through a rough patch.”
“It lasted the rest of her life and Faith never got the chance to turn it around.” He shook his head. “When she died, things went downhill for me, too. I felt like I’d been ripped in two.”
Why am I thinking about this now?
Faith’s words from the dream came to him, all of a sudden. Did Chase really know who killed her? Or had his own mind been playing tricks on him? Chase didn’t know what to believe anymore.
“I never had a sibling, but I imagine losing one must be horrible. Your parents must’ve been devastated, too.” She pulled her legs up to her chest, and looped her arms around them.
Chase shook his head to clear it.
“The old man was shattered. For weeks, he had trouble even getting out of bed.” Maybe that’s why Chase had joined his operation, because he’d had something in common with his dad for once. They’d both been grieving. “We had a shitty relationship up until her disappearance, and for months afterward, we were close, and then he went back to his old self…”
“And you grew apart again.”
He nodded. “I’m sorry, you don’t need to hear my sob story.”
She grabbed his hand. “Thank you for tellin’ me.”
They both fell silent for a time, but it wasn’t awkward. More like, they’d gotten comfortable with one another and words weren’t necessary. Chase couldn’t let go either. Instead, he held her small hand, and they sat together in the dark.
He heard a soft sigh and Mary wiped her cheeks with her fingertips.
“Are you crying?” Chase grabbed a tissue from the nightstand and handed it to her. “Talk to me, tell me what’s wrong.”
“Just thinking about my granddad. I can’t get it out of my head.”
“Okay, it’s my turn to listen. What’s going on?” Maybe he could help her through the worst of it.
“He’s done terrible things, and yet it hasn’t changed my feelings for him, but what does that say about me?”
“Not a damn thing. You’re a loyal grandchild.”
“Yeah, I’m a great grandkid.” She gave a small, disgusted sound. “Over the past few weeks, I’ve been thinking about how to get away from him.”
“It’s only natural, now that you know.”
“I didn’t figure it out because I’m an idiot.” She rolled her eyes. “I’m supposed to be so smart, but I didn’t have a flippin’ clue. This has been goin’ on for years, right under my nose.”
“Don’t be so hard on yourself. There’s a reason people say love is blind. We want to give our loved ones the benefit of the doubt, so we don’t recognize all the terrible things they do, not until we’re confronted with the truth.”
“Well, I hate it and I wish I didn’t know. Now, I have to reevaluate everyone and everything.”
“Believe me, I understand. The truth never sets anyone free. Most of the time it’s a burden.” Chase sighed. “And yet, part of me still loves the bastard and I probably always will, even after everything he’s done.”
“You’re not like him though.”
“Yes, I am.” Chase didn’t want her to have any illusions about who he really was.
“I’ve seen evidence of your kindness.”
“Mary, I abducted you.” And the guilt crushed him, although not enough to set her free.
“I remember, I was there.”
“You should hate me too.”
Mary bit her lip. “And what if I don’t?”
“I break the law, I beat people up, and I’m a bad guy, like your grandfather.” Chase wasn’t sure who he was trying to convince, her or himself.
“No, you’re not.” She shook her head. “I can feel it. You’re mixed up with terrible people, but you’re not like them.”
“You don’t know me, Mary.” He turned away from her. Chase couldn’t bear to take advantage of her good will.
“Have you killed anyone?”
Chase took a deep breath. “In the Marines, yes, and once in civilian life.” He’d never forget their faces, for as long as he lived, which is how it should be. If he could kill without remorse and regret one day, Chase would put a pistol in his own mouth and end it all.
“Who’d you kill?”
He owed her the truth. Mary had lived a life built on lies, and he refused to be another liar who led her astray, even if it put him in an even worse light.
“Whenever I joined, I had to prove my loyalty by takin’ somebody out. He wasn’t exactly a pillar of the community, but it doesn’t excuse my actions.” He’d seen his father justify countless horrific acts over the years.
Mary didn’t react to the news. Her expression was solemn, and his heart ached for her. A few weeks ago, she would’ve been horrified by his admission, which meant her innocence was slowly slipping away.
“My granddaddy used to talk about loyalty. To him, it was high praise for a person. And now I think, it just means he has them under his thumb. Once, Tucker gave me a hug after I told him what I’d overheard about him at school.”
Chase had caught her referring to her grandfather by his first name every now and then, and he wondered if she was mentally trying to distance herself from the man.
“And what did you hear?”
“Rumors. The parents were talking about him, saying Tucker was a bad man and he told me what a loyal girl I was, and he knew I would never ever leave him.” Mary sighed. “This is going to sound naïve, but what if I could talk him into giving himself up? Convince him to do the right thing?”
Chase had the same argument with himself over the years, too. He thought he could steer his father’s business interests into something more legitimate, change him for the better, but it had been a fool’s errand. Sometimes he felt like he’d barely scratched the surface and Chase didn’t know the actual depths of the man’s depravity.
“Do you honestly think he has a conscience? Or he gives a damn about right and wrong?”
“I don’t know, but I hope so.”
“My father doesn’t. Men like him and Tucker are built differently than the rest of us.”
“I hope you’re wrong. And maybe he’s changed over the years? What if he regrets some of his actions?”
Chase didn’t want to hurt her anymore, but he didn’t think the old man gave a damn about anyone other than himself, and maybe Mary, up to a point.
“Trust me, Mary, he doesn’t, and there’s nothing you can do about it.”
“I’ve never been afraid of him, and I’m not about to start now.”
“You’d never had a reason to be. You know who he is, which means you pose a potential threat. Promise me you’ll leave this alone and you won’t do anything foolish.”
He knew without a doubt Noah would kill him if Chase tried to contact the authorities or stepped even one toe out of line and Tucker was no different.
“I can’t.”
“Then he might hurt you.”
“No, you’re wrong. My grandfather would never lay a hand on me.” She stood, shaking her head, and backing away from him.
Chase instantly regretted his hastily chosen words. He should’ve worked up to this conversation.
Apparently, their moment of closeness was over, but Chase had to make sure Mary understood the potential threat.
“Mary, you don’t really know Tucker Cobb, or what he’s capable of.”
She pointed at Chase. “No, you don’t know him, not like I do. My grandfather loves me.”
“Mary, wait, let’s talk about this. Please give me a chance to explain myself.”
But Mary ran out of the room and slammed her door closed, ending the conversation and shutting him out.