FOURTEEN
Mark
"You've got the be fucking kidding me," I growled, kicking my leg out, and sending a vase crashing against the wall, shooting glass and water everywhere.
Granted, I knew she was a flight risk.
She ran away once before.
But this was different.
This was after we had spent some time together. She had met my family. We had discussed her possible future.
Then the next thing I know, she's fucking run off again?
Why?
The why, though, seemed to be something I wouldn't have answers for since her phone just kept going to the goddamn robotic voicemail.
There hadn't been one single indication that she was thinking of running off. In fact, she didn't even take her shit with her. For chrissakes, Nugget was still in his coop out back. I mean, not that her lifestyle seemed conducive to dragging a chicken around with her, but it was just another thing that didn't make sense.
All I knew was she was meeting with her brothers.
And then she never came home.
At first, I just shrugged it off, did some cooking and some cleaning, flicked through the channels. I figured they just got caught up looking at places or just catching up. Didn't matter how short I intended a visit to be with one of my brothers, it always ended up being an hour.
But then she never came home.
And it was the next evening, and I was fucking freaking the fuck out.
Because it just didn't add up.
And I was starting to think I should have been out on the town looking for her, seeing if anyone had seen her or her brothers, trying to find out if she just simply spooked and ran again or something else entirely happened.
That was the thought that finally stopped my useless pacing and threw me out my front door and walking to town. I had contacts everywhere. And thanks to the fact that she had let me snap a couple of pics of her the night after I ate food off of her entire body before eating her pussy until she made the dog next door howl from her screaming, I had something to show to all the people I knew in town to get some info.
I had barely just walked out of The Henchmen compound when something stopped me dead in my tracks. At first, I thought it had been a trick of the light, or my own wishful thinking.
But when I stopped and turned fully, there was no mistaking it.
One of Scotti's brothers was still in Navesink Bank.
And there wasn't anything tense about him to suggest he was frantically trolling the streets looking for signs of his missing sister.
No, in fact, he was chatting up some girl outside of my fucking father's bar. Calm as could be.
I saw fucking red.
Which was what had me charging across the street without even looking, grabbing him by the throat to the sound of the woman shrieking, and shoving him down the back alley where I held him against the wall.
"Where the fuck is she?" I demanded, pulling him forward slightly, then slamming him back against the unyielding brick again.
"Fuck, man," Rush hissed, shaking his head as much as my hand around his throat would allow.
"You know what I do for a living. You know I will fuck your shit up if you don't open that goddamn mouth and give me some answers. I've been fucking worried sick all goddamn day. Where is she?"
"New York," he offered a bit too easily. And I knew it had nothing to do with the threat of bodily harm because a) he was a guy who could handle himself and b) he was too loyal to give in so easily. Likely, he had picked up on the desperation seeping out of me, the bone-deep need to know. "She's in New York with King."
"Why the fuck would she be in New York with King and not answering her phone when she should be home with me and her chicken?"
Okay.
That sounded ridiculous.
Which explained the deep chuckle and the amused smirk that Rush offered me even though I was cutting off half of his air.
Realizing that was no longer necessary, I lessened my grip then released him, falling back on the wall behind me, exhaling hard.
"Talk to me."
"We were walking down the street, and Nixon noticed the same cop car go by us slow twice. We tried to shrug that off. But then they came back a third time. We didn't know what the fuck was going down, so everyone panicked and took off."
Well.
That did sort of explain it.
It wasn't exactly wrong for them to be a bit paranoid when the NBPD was acting like they actually gave a shit about their job. They didn't. It was weird to see them patrolling at all.
That being said, why not call me? Why not share the plan? Why just up and disappear and shut off her phone?
"She thinks she is going to drag you down into her mess with her," Rush announced, somehow reading my wayward thoughts.
"What?" I snapped, head shooting up.
Rush shrugged a shoulder. "Look, I think it's a little whacked. I mean, for fuck's sake, you're a goddamn loanshark. And that isn't exactly a secret around these parts. It's not like you're looking down on her or worrying that she will bring the law down on you. But that is where her head is at. She thinks she is protecting you by staying away."
"And you don't?" I genuinely wanted his opinion. Her brothers were the biggest part of her life. They knew her like the backs of their own hands. Their opinions were likely not only accurate, but necessary.
"Look, I honestly don't know if this is smart. This staying in the US, let alone staying in a town we ripped off thing. I don't know. I just know we all wanted it. What I do know, though, is I have never seen my sister look how she looked the day before yesterday. If you are what put that look there, then I think she's a fucking idiot for letting the source of it slip away for 'your own good,' or whatever she is thinking. At least she should have talked to you about it."
"So why am I still standing here and not holding an address in my hand and on my way to New York to have that talk with her?"
He chuckled at that, shaking his head. "I'm so in the fucking doghouse for this. But the Midtown Hilton. Room 142. Pretty sure King will let you in. He said she sobbed half the ride to the city. Which, know you haven't known her long, but it's totally not like her. He's worried."
I swallowed back all the other questions I had about her, wanting to know as much of her well-being as I could. But there would be time for that when I went to the city. Instead, I needed to know what they found out.
"So if you're worried about the NBPD, why the fuck are you just out here walking the street?"
"Because there has been no indication that it was us they were looking for. My best bet was there was some old person alert two towns over. Some dude with dementia broke out of his old folks home and went missing. It could have been that simple."
"So why are they still in the city?"
Rush looked down at his feet and sighed. "Look, she wanted a clean break. King is just stalling shit to see if he can talk her into coming back and talking to you, explaining. So far, she's fucking stubborn as shit."
"Well, he won't have to worry about trying to convince her to come back. That's my fucking job. Thanks, Rush."
"Hey," he called as I moved to walk away.
"Yeah?"
"Use your A-game, would you? I kind of like it here. I sure as shit like it better here than Russia."
"I'll do my best," I said with a grin as I headed back toward my house, threw some extra food to Nugget, and made my way to the city.
By the time I got there, it was almost one in the morning, there was an insistent aching in my temples, and I was trying hard as hell to convince myself to swallow the pit of uncertainty that had wedged itself into the back of my throat.
It wasn't that I was doubting what I was doing. I needed to see her. I needed to talk to her. I needed to tell her that the taking off shit was ridiculous.
I just had no fucking idea what to say.
Over an hour in the car didn't really help either.
But I kept forcing myself forward, through the lobby, back toward the elevators, then down the hall to number 142 where I knocked hard three times.
There was a shuffle and footsteps, too loud to be Scotti, before the chain slid and the door pushed open.
And there was Kingston, looking more disheveled than usual, and tired, worried, tense. Even more so than he had when they were fresh off a job. Which was weird as fuck. But Rush did say he was worried about his sister.
"About fucking time," he half-growled at me, reaching inside to grab his wallet, tucking it into his back pocket. "I'll get another room," he explained, moving into the hall, but not letting the door close. "Fix her," he demanded, giving me a hard look. "I can't watch her like this anymore."
With that, he moved off as I caught the door, took a breath, and pushed it in.
I don't know what I had been expecting.
Maybe, from the description of her crying on her way to the city, I imagined her curled up in bed.
And she was in bed, sure. But she wasn't curled up. She wasn't crying.
No Scotti was... plotting?
That was the first word that came to mind to find her sitting cross-legged on the beige comforter of one of the full-sized beds with a huge assortment of paperwork and books piled haphazardly around her. There was one earbud in her ear, a pen behind the other one, and her finger was rapidly flipping through the pages of a book right in front of her. Her long dark hair was pulled up into a top messy knot, a few pieces drifting out indicating she had maybe had it that way through a sleep cycle.
Still, even a bit manic, sleep-deprived, and wearing simple baggy jeans and one of King's tees, she was the most fucking beautiful sight I had ever seen.
"Ty poluchil yeshche kofe?"
Ah.
Okay then.
She was planning their eventual move to Russia.
"You know it's cold in Russia this time of year," I said, feeling a smile tug at my lips when her head shot up, eyes going huge, lips parting slightly. It took all my self-control to not go over there and claim those as mine again. In case she forgot. "Actually, it's cold in Russia pretty much all fucking year."
Her mouth opened and closed twice before she shook her head to clear it. When she spoke, it was clear she was going for unaffected and disinterested. She failed at both. "What are you doing here?"
"So, funny thing," I started, leaning back against the dresser when everything in me was begging me to go over to that bed and pull her into my arms. She didn't need that right now. She needed me to be rational to the point where she was seeming like the irrational one. It was the only way I was going to get past her shield. "I was about five fucking minutes away from putting up missing persons posters all around goddamn Navesink Bank when I caught sight of a familiar face outside Chaz's."
"Damnit," she hissed. "He's supposed to be laying low."
"Yeah, baby, that was never going to happen," I said with a chuckle. "And, as I'm sure he has called you and King to tell you, he hasn't found a single reason for you to be hiding out in the first place. They aren't looking for you, Scotti."
"But they could have been, Mark." She reached up and pulled out the earbud, tossing it onto her pile of paperwork. "That's the real problem. We will never feel free here. There will always be that worry about someone finding a lead, someone connecting the dots, someone hunting us down."
"I think you are giving the police a little too much credit here. This is over. The insurance paid out. The cops aren't wasting their precious time tracking down robbers who have never hurt anyone and only stole a couple grand each time. They have rapists and kingpins and murderers to track down. They aren't wasting their manpower on your family, Scotti. That's just not going to happen. The fact that you can't move on from it has nothing to do with facing up the consequences of your actions."
"I don't want to end up behind..."
"And you won't," I cut her off. "You're not going to jail. Neither are your brothers. Not for this. So as long as you keep your noses clean from now on, you won't have a problem. This is just you, your mindset, the way you obviously view yourself and your brothers."
"This isn't an objective thing, Mark. We are all thieves. That is what we..."
"Did," I cut her off. "That was what you did. For a decade. It isn't who you are. It doesn't have to be what you identify with in the future either. You have every chance to start over if you can just change that fucked-up way you see yourself. And don't bother trying to tell me I don't know what I am talking about. Because I live this life, Scotti. No one knows better than I do what it is like to worry about the law, to wonder if an enforcer is all anyone sees when they look at me."
"You're a lot more than that," she said, shaking her head. "You're a son and brother and uncle and a businessman and..."
"And you can be a sister, a wife, an aunt, a businesswoman. You can have all these things if you would get your head out of your ass and see that there is nothing wrong with you wanting and working toward them." I pushed away from the dresser and moved toward the bed, towering over her so that she had to angle her head up to look at me. When she did, I could see a deep sort of vulnerability in her eyes, like she wanted to believe me, wanted to put her faith to rest in my words, but couldn't get over ten years of seeing herself as nothing other than an avenging criminal. "You didn't even give it a fucking chance, baby. First test had you running scared. I know we haven't known each other that long, Scotti, but I think I've known you long enough to know you're not a chickenshit." Her eyes flashed at that, making it clear she didn't want to be considered that. "So stop acting like it."
"I'm not chickenshit," she objected immediately. "And while this has been largely about protecting myself and my brothers, I also didn't want to..." she trailed off, shaking her head.
"Didn't want to drag me down," I supplied when she refused to go on, feeling a weird as fuck swelling sensation in my chest that I didn't know what to blame on, so I went ahead and called it frustration even though I damn well knew that wasn't it. "Alright," I said, exhaling as I reached down to grab her arms, dragging her to stand with me beside the bed then reaching to snag her chin in my fingers, forcing her to keep eye-contact. "Let's get some shit straight right now."
"There's no reason," she objected, voice hollow.
"Well, fucking humor me anyway," I suggested with a smirk. "I think you know that the locking shit down thing has never been my style."
"And by 'locking shit down thing' I am assuming you mean relationships?" she asked, lips twitching.
It didn't take much to get past her shields if you were able to see them for what they were protecting. All the soft and sweet and vulnerable that she kept hidden behind them.
"Yeah, that shit," I agreed with a smile, making one spread across her face too. "But I'm also someone who knows a good thing when he sees it and knows his own mind. You, Scotti, whether you believe it right now or not, you're a good fucking thing. You're the best fucking thing I've ever had and I made my mind up about wanting you in my life. Now, you might be a stubborn pain in the ass," I said, ducking my head a little and smirking, "But I am just as stubborn and just as big a pain in the ass. So this running away shit, this isn't going to fly. You want to be grown-ups and sit and hash this shit out, I'm game. But I'm not accepting you just up and leaving."
"It's not your choice, Mark," she said, trying to sound firm, but only ending up sounding deeply unhappy instead. "I have every right to leave you for any reason I see fit. And you can't stop me."
"No," I agreed, nodding. "I can't stop you. But I can follow you. All the way to goddamn Russia. I'll buy an obnoxious fur coat and matching hat and follow your sexy ass through the streets until you're so fucking embarrassed to be seen with me that you inevitably follow me back to the states and come raise our chicken together like a happy family."
"Nugget..." she said, need clear in her voice.
"Is enjoying his chicken mansion. I have word to Lea to drop in with some feed if I am not back by tomorrow afternoon. But I have a feeling I'll be back," I said, arms moving out to slide around her hips and fold at her lower back, pulling her closer. "And that I won't be alone."
"You seem pretty sure of yourself," she said, softening already.
"And you," I agreed, nodding.
That seemed to do it. Maybe she didn't think I was as serious as I felt. Maybe I hadn't been clear with that shit. I figured that my actions spoke volumes- the flowers, the invitation for her to stay as long as she wanted, the building of the chicken coop. But maybe she was someone who needed to hear the words.
That was my fuck up.
I would remedy it.
She needed words; I was full of them.
"I don't know, you know?" she asked, tone coy, dark eyes dancing. "I mean, I've been getting really good at my Russian."
"I'm cool with bilingual kids," I said with a shrug. "Spanish might be more useful, but Russian would be more badass. Ever hear someone cuss you out in Russian? Scary shit."
"Well, I would hope our kids wouldn't be cussing people out," she said before her eyes went huge and her mouth clamped shut, likely realizing what she had just said.
Maybe, normally, this kind of talk this soon would freak me out. I was pretty sure it was supposed to freak me out. But I meant what I said to her; I was a man who knew his mind. I knew she was it. And if she was it, I also knew I wanted a shitload of kids with her. Coming from a big family herself, having the huge support system that was four other siblings, she likely wanted the same exact thing as well.
So it wasn't too soon for me.
"Dunno, baby. You heard Fee about Becca. If we think our kids won't be cussing, we're fucking dreaming."
"Well, I guess that's..."
Her sentence got cut off by the sound of my phone screaming in my back pocket. Normally, I would ignore it.
But it was almost fucking two o'clock in the morning.
No one called me that late save for the times Fee went into labor.
"You should get that," she said even as my hands unfolded from around her and went for my pocket, seeing my mother's number there, and feeling my guts twist.
Calls from your mom at 2 AM could never be good.
So I answered.
And my entire fucking world collapsed.
"What's wrong?" I asked, cutting to the chase.
"Eli."
I knew.
I fucking knew.
Never in my life had I felt so completely fucking unsteady.
I dropped down on the edge of the bed, my stomach in painful knots, having to swallow through a lump the size of fucking Russia in my throat. "Tell me," I demanded, the words barely getting out with my painfully clenched jaw.
I was vaguely aware of Scotti looking down at me for a minute before frantically going in search for shoes, like she knew it was serious, like she knew she needed to be there for me.
And, as fucking self-sufficient as I might have been, in this case, she wasn't wrong.
"We got the call just fifteen minutes ago," she said, and I could hear my father laying on the horn in the background. "He's at the NBPD. We didn't get anything more than that. But, you know," she said, tone heavy. And I did know.
This wasn't like when she would get the calls about Shane or me when we were younger and stupid. This wasn't some bullshit drunk and disorderly or disrupting the peace.
This was Eli we were talking about.
He never got in idiotic, bullshit trouble that meant he needed to be bailed out.
But he did completely fucking rage out and beat the ever-loving shit out of people sometimes.
So if he was in, he was in for aggravated assault.
"They just picked him up now?" I asked, trying to get the whole picture even as I stood, giving Scotti a nod as she pointed to her purse with furrowed brows, asking silently if we needed to move.
"No. Apparently they've had him since this morning," my mother snapped, obviously pissed. And Helen Mallick pissed, well, she was about to stir a lot of shit up at the NBPD.
"The fuck you mean they've had him since this morning?" I asked as we went into the hall. "Why wouldn't he have called before now?"
"That's just it," she went on as the elevator started dinging downward. "He didn't call at all."
"What do you mean he didn't call?" Why was she giving me everything in bits and pieces? I felt like I was being ripped apart with each new revelation.
All I could seem to think was: not Eli. Not fucking Eli. Not the only goddamn one of us who never should have been in the fucking business in the first place. He wasn't meant for it. He was forced into it.
Even as I thought it, all I could imagine was the guilt my parents must have been feeling right then, knowing what I knew about him not being cutout for the enforcer life, and painfully aware that they had been the ones to push him into it.
"He refused his phone call. Didn't even call a lawyer."
"Then how did you even know he was there?"
"Collings called," she said, sounding tenser by the minute. "He said he knew he was supposed to respect his right to make a call, or not to, but that he knew us and he knew we would want at least to know."
Thank fucking God for Collings.
I swear the town would go to hell without him.
"How far out are you?"
"An hour and fifteen if I do the speed limit," I said as we stepped out of the elevator.
"So thirty-five tops," she guessed.
"Exactly."
"We're here now," she said, and I could hear doors slamming. "So are your brothers." There was a short pause, then, "I can't fucking believe this."
I couldn't fucking believe it either.