Chapter Twelve
Killian
Mass had ended fifteen minutes ago. I slipped into the pew next to my father in the empty church. Growing up, Seamus had squired me and Connor to Our Lady of Angels every Sunday, intent on guiding us through our spiritual journeys. I’d stopped attending mass years ago, but today Seamus had summoned me. If I hadn’t met him here, he would have turned up at my house or at the bar. I liked to keep my life separate from his. Sometimes I wondered why I still gave a shit about this man. Why did I still cling to the belief that he possessed a sliver of decency? That once, just once, he’d ask me how I was doing and care enough to listen to my answer without railroading me.
“You missed Mass,” Seamus said, stating the obvious. He cast a critical eye over my faded jeans and black T-shirt. I kept my gaze focused on the green marble pillars supporting the archways—the cross above the painting of the Virgin Mary behind the altar. Finally, Seamus stood, knowing he wouldn’t get an excuse or an apology. Facing the altar, he genuflected and made the sign of the cross before walking out of the church with me, the heels of his polished black shoes clicking on the tiles, the sound echoing in the empty church. As everyone knew, Seamus Vincent was a devout Catholic.
We exited the church and I slipped on my aviators to ward off the sunlight. I was operating on no sleep, except for the nap I’d taken on Eden’s sofa. When I’d woken up, I knew she’d been watching me, and I’d gotten the feeling she’d been doing it for a while. As if I hadn’t felt exposed enough already, Linkin Park’s “Bleed It Out” had been playing. My walkout song in the UFC. My cue to walk the hell out of her apartment.
“Why am I here?” I asked Seamus as we turned the corner and stopped by his black SUV. He always had an ulterior motive. A quick phone call would have conveyed the message, but he always insisted on seeing me face to face. An effort to exert control he no longer had.
“Still haven’t heard from Connor?” he asked, loosening his tie. His muscles bulged under his dark suit jacket, threatening to split the seams. The man was built like an ox and had his Sunday suits tailored to fit his frame.
I shook my head. He squinted into the distance, searching for some choice words, no doubt. “He’s probably too strung out to know where the hell he is. That boy is a sorry excuse for a son.”
And you’re a sorry excuse for a father. “You did this to him,” I said, my voice low. I rarely called him out for his behavior. It was pointless. I’d never get an apology, and he’d never own up to anything he’d done.
His eyes narrowed into slits. “What did you say?”
“You heard me.”
“I don’t think I did. I thought I just heard you blaming me for your brother’s lack of willpower and discipline. Must have heard you wrong.” He poked his finger into my solar plexus. When my body had been his punching bag, he’d planted his fist in it plenty of times. “As soon as you hear from him, call me.”
Seamus would be the last person I called. His mission would be to knock some sense into Connor. But I nodded as if I intended to comply with his wishes. He ran a hand over his dark, slicked-back hair. In the heat, the scent of his Bay Rum aftershave intensified. Funny how I used to think it smelled good. Now, I equated it with the scent of Pine-Sol.
“Truth is,” he mused, getting into the real reason I was here. With Connor out of the way, it was time to focus on my shortcomings. “I never expected you to amount to anything. You weren’t much of a student. Barely scraped by with passing grades. Always getting into trouble. But you had a good thing going with your MMA career…”
I exhaled sharply. He’d been badgering me about this for an entire year. It shouldn’t have surprised me that he’d taken a keen interest in my career. After all, he’d raised me to be a fighter. He used to watch all my fights and call me afterward to critique my performance. I’d like to think he’d been proud of me, but the words had never come out of his mouth, and I’d given up trying to earn his praise a long, long time ago. “It’s over,” I said for the hundredth time. “I’m not going back.”
“You’re a damned fool for walking away. What if every cop quit the force after they got involved in an altercation? I didn’t raise you to be a coward. Or a quitter.”
There were a lot of things I could have said. Instead, I turned and walked away. He grabbed me by the collar, the fabric of my T-shirt fisted in his hand and yanked me back. My back slammed into his chest, his voice in my ear low and steely. “You don’t walk away when I’m talking to you, boy.”
I shrugged him off and rolled out my shoulders. “You’re starting to sound like a broken record. Get some new material. We’re done here.”
“We’re done when I say we’re done.”
I turned around and got right in his face, using the same voice he’d used on me. “If you want to get knocked on your ass in front of a fucking church in broad daylight, then keep talking, old man.”
Heat flushed his face, turning it an alarming shade of red. The veins on his temples bulged. His pupils enlarged. Classic warning signs that Seamus was about to blow. I laughed in his face. His jaw clenched, and his chest heaved. If he were a cartoon character, steam would be coming out of his ears. There wasn’t a damn thing he could do to me, and he knew it. How frustrating for him that he had no hold on me now. When I was sixteen, I started fighting back. By the time I was eighteen, I stood a decent chance of winning. There was nothing he could threaten me with or hold over my head anymore. Except one thing.
“If anyone’s responsible for your brother’s drug addiction, it’s you,” he said. “You moved him out of my house when he was still in high school. He never did drugs under my roof. That’s all on you. You had one job…looking after him. But you fucked it up.”
My hands curled into fists. His eyes challenged me. Go on, do it, they said.
I wouldn’t stoop to his level. I strode away and climbed into my Jeep. Pulling away from the curb, I cranked up the volume on my music, trying to drown out my thoughts. There was a time I had loved that man. Held him up as a superhero, out saving lives and rounding up the ‘bad guys.’ Before my mom took off, I had hazy memories of watching him shave while I sat on the toilet with the seat down, listening to his stories of life on the beat. I’d been proud to call him my father back then. And my mother…I remembered thinking she was the most beautiful woman in the world. For a while, we’d been a family. Before the arguments started. Before Seamus started hitting the bottle. Before I caught my mother with another man.
“This will be our little secret,” she said, a pleading tone in her voice that prompted me to keep my mouth shut, the first of many little secrets I’d kept.
After she left us, everything fell apart. I learned how to gauge my father’s moods, read his body language when he came through the front door. I knew when he’d had a bad day and would hit the bottle, and I knew when his mood would turn ugly. I’d been on constant alert, relaxing only when I saw he wasn’t reaching for the whiskey. He didn’t drink every night. Sometimes he went for months without touching a drop of liquor—the sign of a true alcoholic who couldn’t quit drinking when he’d had enough—and I’d allow myself to get lulled into a false sense of security.
The first time he’d ever laid a hand on me, I was eight. Connor and I had been playing with action figures on the living room floor. Seamus, on the sofa, drinking Jack Daniels and watching the news. Without taking his eyes off the TV, he’d told us to get upstairs and brush our teeth. We’d kept playing. Then he’d said it again, in a voice I didn’t recognize. Low and steely, more frightening than if he’d shouted. Connor had jumped up and ran right upstairs. He’d always been smarter than me. Even at four and half, he’d recognized the danger signs before I did.
Seamus had yanked me to my feet and backhanded me. The sheer force had sent me flying across the room. The coffee table broke my fall, my head hitting it with a thunk. It had happened so quickly, I was too stunned to react. Nauseous and dizzy, I’d stumbled upstairs and puked out my guts. The next day, it had been like nothing had ever happened. Months went by before it happened again, and by then, I’d put it out of my mind. The next time had been worse. I’d heard the bones crunching when his fist had connected with my ribs. After that, it had happened more regularly. I used to tell Connor to hide in the closet until it was over. When Seamus was done venting his rage, I’d been broken and bleeding on the kitchen floor. Coast clear, Connor would creep downstairs to help me clean up. He’d gotten good at tending to my wounds, taping my ribs, and patching up my bruises. And we’d both gotten good at hiding our dirty little secrets.
I parked down the street from the pre-war apartment building with a green awning across from Prospect Park. I wasn’t sure what had brought me here today. Clearly, I was a masochist. I stared out the windshield, waiting and watching like a creepy stalker. Couples strolled past, and families with little kids on bikes and scooters headed to the park for a Sunday picnic or a game of Frisbee. Park Slope was so civilized, with its tree-lined streets and clean sidewalks in front of renovated brownstones, the perfect place for city-dwellers to raise a family.
I flipped down my visor to ward off the sunlight. Sweat trickled between my shoulder blades, the heat suffocating. If she didn’t come out soon, I’d ask the doorman to call her from the desk. Yeah, as if she’d agree to see me. She might already be out. This was a crapshoot but still, I waited, my fingers drumming the steering wheel.
Twenty minutes later, my patience was rewarded. I sat up in my seat as she exited the building, pushing a stroller. Dark hair, high cheekbones, and curvy in all the right places, wearing shorts and a tank top. Relief washed over me. She looked like her old self. I still envisioned her at the funeral, six months pregnant and grief-stricken, her face ghostly pale.
I didn’t even know the baby’s name. He must be nine months old by now.
Fuck it. I needed to see her. I needed to see Johnny’s baby. I got out of my Jeep and followed her to the set of traffic lights. The lights turned red and she crossed at the crosswalk, with me following ten paces behind. When she reached the other side, I called her name. She froze in her tracks and turned slowly. I couldn’t see her eyes behind her sunglasses, but her mouth was pressed in a flat line.
“What are you doing here?” she asked.
I snuck a glance at Johnny’s little boy. He looked so much like Johnny, my breath hitched. Same black curly hair, mocha skin, and long, black lashes. Big, dark eyes studied my face, a rice cake clutched in his little hand. He was so beautiful. So pure and innocent. The vice on my heart squeezed and twisted. I’m sorry, Johnny. Fuck, he’d been so excited about becoming a father.
I swallowed hard, trying to find my voice. “What’s his name?”
“Leo.”
Leo Ramirez. “He looks like a Leo. Great name.” I crouched in front of him. “Hey, Leo.” He waved the gummy rice cake in the air in greeting. I reached for his hand and he grabbed my index finger, his grip tight, his brown eyes flitting over my face. “You’re strong. Just like your—” Daddy.
“Killian,” Anna said sharply, drawing my attention to her. I stood, and she tightened her grip on the stroller handles, her knuckles turning white.
“It was an accident. If I could go back and change—”
“You can’t. Life doesn’t work that way.”
“I know that.” I struggled to keep my voice even and lock down all the emotions swirling inside me. Anger. Pain. Overwhelming sadness at the fucking injustice of it all.
“You wanted to win so badly, you would have done anything it took.”
I stared at her. She thought winning was more important to me than Johnny’s fucking life? “Johnny was my friend. What happened that night—”
“What happened that night was that you hit him so hard it jostled his brain.” She glanced at my hands. Instinctively, I flexed them. “He was my husband. The father of my child…and because of you, he’s dead.”
Because of you, he’s dead. “I’m sorry.” What else could I say? “I’m so fucking sorry.” Couldn’t she see the guilt and sorrow and regret on my face, hear it in my voice?
“I begged him not to fight you. I had a bad feeling about it. You knew how to destroy him.”
I glanced at Leo, trying to block out her words. He was squirming in his seat, struggling to break free of the safety belts. I was tempted to grant his wish, swoop him up and hold him in my arms. Just one minute of his sweetness and light to chase away the darkness in my soul. “I wasn’t out to destroy him. I never wanted to fight him. I tried to talk him out of it.”
She let out a harsh laugh like she didn’t believe me, but it was the truth and Johnny knew it. Maybe he’d never told her. What did it matter, anyway? “I can’t give you what you want. Maybe Johnny would have forgiven you. But I can’t. I just…I’m sorry…I can’t do it.” She diverted her gaze, her voice so quiet I almost didn’t hear the words. “Stay away from me. It hurts too much to see your face.”
I closed my eyes. When I opened them, she was walking away, in a hurry to put as much distance between us as possible. I let her go. What more could I say? Her loss was so great she needed to hang on to her anger. When it came to Johnny, Anna had protected him fiercely but stood up to him when he was acting like an ass. He’d told me she made him a better man. They had the kind of love everyone envied, and few people found. But now all she had were her memories, an empty bed, and a son who would never know his father. Forgiveness was too much to ask. Being a part of this little boy’s life, a piece of Johnny that still lived on, was out of the question now too.
If someone killed the person I loved, would I ever find a way to forgive them?