THE CALLAHANS (A Mafia Romance): The Complete 5 Books Series (57 page)

Amelia

Kyle’s friend drove into Beacon Hill, a part of the city that even I could recognize. It was a quiet, lovely part of the city that was clearly populated by people of a certain income level. He pulled into an underground garage off one of the side streets, parking next to a sports car that had the Jaguar emblem on its hood.

“What is this?”

“Mr. Callahan’s loft is just this way.”

The man, a tall, blond man, slipped out of the car and opened my door, gesturing for me to get out. I slowly slipped out of the car, staring around me at the large, open space. There was an elevator hidden off to one side that he led me to, using a key to take us up two flights. When the doors opened, it was to reveal one of the most incredibly spacious, masculine spaces I’d ever seen. There was wood everywhere. And dark colors. And so much space.

When I imagined where Kyle lived, this wasn’t even on the radar.

“This is Kyle’s?”

“Yes, ma’am.”

I was almost afraid to walk through the rooms, afraid of touching something because it all looked so perfectly arranged. Even the magazines were stacked in what looked like a calculating arrangement. Like he had a decorator come in here every few days to set it up for potential buyers or something.

“The kitchen’s through there,” Kyle’s friend told me, “and the bedrooms are upstairs.”

I was still fascinated with the idea that this was Kyle’s. The man I’d met in Vegas, the man who danced with me at our wedding reception, the man who laughed when I admitted that I liked Green Day was not the kind of man who would live in this kind of impersonal luxury.

“How long has he lived here?”

“The loft was a gift to him for his college graduation. So…about three years?”

I glanced at the man following me through Kyle’s living room.

“You know him well?”

“I’ve known him for years.”

“What kind of man would you say he is?”

The guy shrugged. “I guess that’s something everyone has to figure out for themselves.”

Yeah, I guess it is.

I sat on the edge of the couch, touching a fingertip to the magazines, but not really moving them.

“You can go. I’m okay here.”

“Mr. Callahan asked that I stay with you.”

I looked up. “Is he afraid I’ll get lost in this place?”

A small smile slipped before he could hide it.

“We should at least know each other’s names. I’m Amelia.”

“Colin.”

I nodded. “Nice Irish name.”

“This is Boston.”

I chuckled. “It is that.”

I stood again, crossing to the massive windows overlooking the city. It really was an impressive place. Nothing like the mountains and trees of Oregon, but beautiful just the same. I tried to imagine Kyle growing up here, of him standing at these very windows, staring down at the city, but I couldn’t. It just didn’t seem to fit with the man I knew.

Maybe I didn’t know the real Kyle.

“What’s he doing that he thinks I need a babysitter?”

“I think that’s something you should ask him.”

“He said he had business.” I turned. “What kind of business requires a babysitter for his wife?”

Colin opened his mouth to answer, but he seemed to hesitate as I finished my question, as the word wife slipped from between my lips. He studied me a little closer then, his eyes falling to the simple gold band on my left ring finger.

“It’s best if you ask him,” he finally said.

So he hadn’t told this man who I was. What kind of loyalty did Kyle inspire that allowed this man to watch over me without question, without a moment’s doubt?

No one had ever felt that sort of loyalty for me. Not even my own father.

I shivered a little as I looked down on the city again. I knew Kyle worked for Jack McGuire, and I knew that Jack ran the Irish mob. And I knew that the Irish mob was currently at odds with the Italian mob who ran the streets on the opposite side of town. It wasn’t common knowledge, all of this, but I knew more about Kyle than he thought I did. I thought it was smart to know what I was getting myself into, but now I was wondering if it wouldn’t be easier to stand here and wait in ignorance.

“He’ll be back in a few hours. Until then, you should get some rest.”

I turned and regarded Colin. “Do you think he’d mind if I went up to the bedroom?”

“No, ma’am. You are his wife, after all.”

The thought of a shower—with my own soap and my own toothbrush—was appealing. And it would use up an hour or so. I headed for the stairs and Colin followed behind with my bags. Halfway up, my shoulder bag began to buzz. My phone was ringing. I stopped and dug through for the phone, but the instant I dragged it out, Colin took it out of my hand.

“Mr. Callahan doesn’t want you speaking to anyone outside of the house.”

“But it’s my father’s assisted living center! There might be something wrong!”

Colin studied my face for a second before glancing at the screen of my phone. He nodded.

“Make it quick.”

I took the phone and answered it just before it would have gone to voice mail. Almost immediately, a mechanical voice spoke to me.

“You have done well, Miss Wallace. You convinced Mr. Callahan to marry you quite expertly.”

I blushed, turning away from Colin so that he wouldn’t see the discomfort on my face.

“I’m doing the best I can.”

“Continue doing as well as you are and your problems will be taken care of.”

“My father?”

“Your father will be given what you asked.”

I closed my eyes and nodded. “Okay.”

“Just make sure you don’t deviate from our plan, Miss Wallace, or there will be consequences.”

“I understand.”

The call ended. I stood there for a long second, the phone still pressed to my ear as though the call was still active. I needed to catch my breath. I finally turned and handed the phone to Colin, forcing the biggest smile I could manage.

“Thank you.”

I just wished it
had
been my father’s assisted living center.

***

I got the first call three months ago. Some mechanical voice asking me if I wanted help paying back my father’s debts. I’d laughed and hung up. The second call came a week later, just after I’d received yet another subpoena in the mail. This time he had details, information that no one outside the family and my father’s law firm should have known.

I still hung up.

Then the third call came almost a full month after the first. I thought whoever it was had forgotten about me, that he—I assumed it was a he, but couldn’t really tell by the voice altering app—had moved on to some other person who was more susceptible to that sort of harassment. That’s what I thought it was, basic harassment. I thought someone had read about my father’s financial troubles in the Oregon papers and thought it would be funny to tease me about them.

I was wrong. This guy…he knew way too much about me to be just a run of the mill harasser.

He told me he knew how the crash of the housing market had destroyed my father’s company. He said he knew how, when my father and mother tried to begin again in the year after the crash, my mother had a brief affair with one of their investors that nearly destroyed my father. He told me he knew the divorce crushed my father’s spirit and that his health began to suffer as he fought to rebuild alone. And then he told me that he knew how my father trusted the wrong people and was now taking the responsibility for what was essentially a pyramid scam that, in the aftermath of Bernie Madoff, people didn’t take lightly. He was ruined, really, and everything I did, everything our lawyers did, couldn’t fix what was a really big, really fucked up mess.

My father was ruined. I was ruined. Everything was gone. My father was suffering from so many health issues that he was never going to live on his own again and likely wouldn’t survive more than a few weeks in prison, if it came to that. It was a nightmare that I had taken on my shoulders simply because that was what family did. My mom…I had no idea where she was, what she was doing. She was gone the moment my father learned of her affair.

So much for thirty years of marriage and all that entailed.

This person on the other end of the phone knew all this. He even knew that I’d left college half a semester short of graduation to help my father, knew that I’d spent my trust fund to pay for the lawyers who eventually brokered a deal and saved my father from prison. He knew that I’d moved to Vegas because my family name was mud in Oregon and it was the only place where I could find a decent job. And he knew that I sent every penny I earned—beyond basic living expenses—to my father to pay for the assisted living center where he lived and all the medical care he required.

And then he made his offer:

Marry Kyle Callahan and keep him distracted for a period to be defined by my mystery caller, and he’d wire enough money into an untraceable bank account so that I could fix my father’s mistakes and make him comfortable.

It was an offer I couldn’t pass up.

Once I agreed, contact switched to text messages. He sent me information about Kyle, told me what would get his attention and what would turn him off. He told me everything I would ever need to know to get Kyle to ask me up to his room, and then to get him to walk into that chapel. The rest…Mickey was involved somehow, but I wasn’t sure how. And I didn’t want to know.

I stood under the spray of Kyle’s shower, my eyes closed so that I wouldn’t see the luxury around me, so that I wouldn’t be reminded of the life I’d lost with my mother’s one bad choice and my father’s inability to survive her abandonment. I lost everything because my father loved my mother more than she loved him.

I wanted to be angry with my mom. I was, for a while. But now…I realized that there was no point to the anger. I needed to be proactive; I needed to look toward the future, not focus on the past. I needed to remember what I was fighting for.

I wasn’t going to be just another washed up debutante, sitting around waiting for people to remember the glory days with me. I was going to make a life for myself, build a career, and be the woman my parents had once dreamed I would be. I just had to get through this.

And then my thoughts drifted to Kyle’s touch, to the feel of his lips on mine, and I began to lose focus. What if…?

But what ifs were dangerous for girls like me.

Kyle

I stood a polite distance behind Jack, but close enough that I could move him out of the way should something suddenly go wrong. He was flanked by two of his lieutenants, young men I’d known most of my life, but with whom I’d never interacted. They were the sons of Jack’s former associates, men who had worked hard for him—some who still worked hard for him—but were either in jail or dead.

“We’re willing to offer you ten thousand,” Jack said in his low, gruff voice.

“The Italians are offering twice that.”

“But the Italians aren’t supplying you with guns at a discounted rate.”

“They could.”

“They won’t. You know that.”

The leader of the Harbor Point Bloods studied Jack for a long moment, his expression purposely unreadable.

“I’m putting my men in a difficult position by asking them to go against the Italians.”

“You’d also be putting them in a difficult position if you turned on me, Frankie.”

The man nodded. The tension left his arms as he uncrossed them from across his chest.

“Okay. We have a deal.”

I relaxed a little then, too. These meetings could be impossible to gage, but I’d learned a long time ago that once the handshake came, the danger had passed. They spoke a few minutes longer, then Jack turned.

“Stay behind. Make sure there’s no trouble when they leave,” he said to me.

“Yes, boss.”

I watched Jack and his men get into their SUV and take off, navigating the familiar streets of Dorchester like they did it every day. Frankie was gone already, his lieutenants gone as well. It was just my counterparts, other men in charge of security, standing around the dusty, abandoned storefront with me.

“Your boss is cheap.”

“Excuse me?”

One of the Bloods looked over at me, smirking behind a pair of sunglasses that were hardly necessary inside.

“Your boss is cheap. He could have easily offered Frankie four or five times what he offered.”

“Yeah, well, he’s a smart business man. He only pays for what he gets.”

“You calling us cheap?”

I shrugged. “If the shoe fits.”

The man charged me like a bull looking for easy prey. It was a dance of machismo that I’d found myself drawn into a million times before. He wanted to prove that his group was bigger and more dangerous than mine was. The thing was, no one was bigger or more dangerous than the Irish mob.

He got in a few good shots, a blow to my jaw and a couple of quick punches to my ribs. But then I flipped him over and made sure he’d need a plastic surgeon when it was all said and done.

I spit on him when I stood to my feet, a little bit of blood splattering on his shirt. He probably wouldn’t notice, however, because he had plenty of his own blood there already.

“You’re a fool,” I told him. “Should have kept your dirty mouth shut.”

I looked at his buddies, waiting for them to try to defend their friend. But they simply picked him up and carried him out to their car.

“Sorry about that,” one of the men said, coming over to me with his hand extended. “He’s a little bit of a hot head.”

“Maybe he just learned a good lesson.”

“I hope so.”

We shook hands, and I waited until they were gone.

Could’ve been worse. Could’ve been six on one.

Killian pulled up out front a few minutes later.

“You look a little worse for the wear,” he commented, holding out a handkerchief as I climbed into the car. A quick glance in the mirror and I realized that the blow to my jaw had split my lip.

“Just a little scuffle.”

“Looks more like a big scuffle, brother. You’re getting a little slow in your old age.”

“If I don’t let them get a few blows in first, they cower the next time we come face to face. At least this way, they have a little spirit left.”

Killian laughed. “Leave it to you to worry about their spirit.”

He pulled away from the curb and sped through the streets, headed toward Beacon Hill and my house.

“When do we get to meet her?”

“News travels pretty fast around this family, doesn’t it?”

“Well, when our rebellious, I’m-never-getting-married brother comes home with a new bride, you have to forgive our curiosity.” Killian glanced at me. “Stacy’s worried. She thinks someone is playing a game with you.”

“It’s not like that.”

“Then you really like this girl?”

“You’ll like her, too, once you get to know her.”

“What’s her name?”

“Amelia.”

“Classy. Much better than Candi or Cookie.”

“She’s not like that. She’s not like the other cocktail waitresses.”

“Good.”

I looked at myself in the mirror again, dabbing at the blood that refused to stop seeping from my lip. And then I noticed the dust stuck to my jacket. I sat up a little, slipping the jacket off and brushing at the dirt adhering to my cuffs. I didn’t want to freak Amelia out when I walked into the loft.

“You’ve got someone with her?”

“Colin.”

Killian nodded. “Good man.” He gripped the wheel a little harder. “Pops wants you, me, and Ian at the house tonight. The Italians are making a move on the McKinnon warehouse. He wants to talk about what we’re going to do about it.”

“Jack doesn’t want to lose that warehouse. It’s one of the few left that the cops haven’t been watching.”

“Yeah, well, I’m not as worried about the cops as I am the Italians. The cops we can deal with. The Italians…we’ve lost half a dozen men in the last week alone.”

“That many?”

“Make sure you’re watching your back, brother. And keep a close eye on Jack, too.”

I nodded, but I had to admit there was this little trickle of regret that I wouldn’t be able to spend as much time in Amelia’s company as I’d hoped. It sounded like things were going to be crazy for the unforeseeable future.

We’d just have to make the most of what time we did have.