THE CALLAHANS (A Mafia Romance): The Complete 5 Books Series (62 page)

Kyle

“Do you think it’s odd that Kevin is very clearly into Brianna?”

Killian laughed. I just looked down at my fries, trying not to be the one to answer that question. Ian tossed a crumpled up napkin at me, but even that didn’t make me address his question.

“I’m not the only one to notice it, right? I mean, he’s always touching her and they’re always slipping off alone whenever we have a party or whatever.”

“It’s about as weird as me marrying Stacy,” Killian said.

“That’s weird, bro,” I said, nudging him with my elbow.

Killian laughed again. “The two of you sure worry about appropriate behavior quite a bit for two guys who’ve probably been with most of the women in Boston.”

“Like you didn’t get around when you were single,” Ian said.

“Sure I did. But that was years ago, when I was young and the idea of commitment seemed to be a shadow in the far off distance. But it’s not that far off, is it, Kyle?”

“Don’t drag me into this conversation.”

“Tell me you and Amelia aren’t seriously making a go of it.” Ian sounded almost desperate. “Tell me that it’s some sort of elaborate joke, or something.”

It bothered me a little, how close to the truth he was. I knew someone set me up. I knew that my entire wedding night was some sort of act that someone perpetrated on me for reasons I didn’t understand. But I wasn’t going to tell him that. I couldn’t even fully admit it to myself.

“I think we’re going to make a go of it.”

Killian shook his head slowly. “Never thought I’d see the day. But when I saw you with her last night…”

“She’s a sweet girl,” Ian conceded. “But every night for the rest of your life? Are you really sure you can do that?”

“Just wait until you meet the right girl.”

Ian shook his head. “Never going to happen.”

We left the restaurant a few minutes later, each of us going different directions. Killian was headed to the office. Ian had calls to make. And I was running errands for Jack.

I climbed into the SUV and called Colin.

“She still in the loft?”

“Yes, sir.”

“She goes anywhere, you let me know.”

“Of course, sir.”

I started the SUV and headed down the street, my thoughts a wild jumble that I almost couldn’t separate into comprehensible bits. Last night was…it was incredible. But it also exposed a glaring lie that I’d suspected but never really allowed myself to believe…until now.

Amelia was a virgin until last night. Yet, she was sleeping naked in my bed the morning after our wedding. Why would she be in my bed, naked, unless someone told her to do it in order to convince me our marriage was real?

Was our marriage real? Were we legally wed, or was it all just a farce to make me, what? Why would someone do this? Why would someone want me to marry a beautiful woman and bring her back to Boston with me? Was she some sort of plant? Was she here to do something? To steal something? Had whoever was behind this assumed I would leave her in Vegas, thus hurting Pops’ reputation more? What was the main motivation here?

It just didn’t make sense. I ran down every avenue, trying to figure out each potential motivation. But I couldn’t. None of them made sense.

The worst thing that would happen here was that we’d publicly divorce and it would be a small ding on Pops’ struggling reputation.

The best? I’d fall in love with her and keep her at my side for the rest of my life.

What was the benefit to some outside party?

It seriously didn’t make sense.

Who would set me up? It was obvious that Mickey was involved. That was the last memory of that night I had, him standing in my suite. Whatever they gave me—and I fully believed someone had slipped me something—it wiped every memory of that night like water on a chalkboard. It wasn’t coming back.

So Mickey was involved. Who else? I didn’t want to believe that Amelia knew, but I couldn’t deny that it would be nearly impossible to pull off such a scheme without the bride being aware of it. She had to have known some. But how much did she know? And was she still working to some end, or had her motivations changed?

I wanted to believe her motives had changed. I wanted to believe that she had feelings for me. Last night was the most intense night of intimacy I’d ever spent with anyone. How could that have not been real?

It just…none of it made sense.

And I wasn’t sure I wanted it to.

***

I walked into Jack’s office a little before six that evening, my errands complete. Pops was there. They were sharing a couple of containers of Chinese food, talking about something that ended the moment they caught sight of me.

“We got a meeting with Carmine Rossi.”

That caught me by surprise. Carmine was Jack’s equal with the Italian mob.

“When did that happen?”

Pops shrugged. “We had to make a few promises and he had to make a few. But we got the final agreement this afternoon.”

“That’s great!”

Jack glanced at my father, then at me. “It’s just the beginning, Kyle. It’s going to take some time to work this thing out. Territory disputes, they’re not easy. Each side wants as much as possible. They won’t want to go back to the status quo.”

“And they’ll want some sort of guarantee,” Pops added.

“Like what? Money? Part of the gun trade?”

Jack shook his head. “We don’t know yet.”

“But this is a step in the right direction?”

“It is.” Jack pushed his food aside and stood, coming to clap me on the shoulder. “Did you deal with our little problem today?”

“I did.” I held up a wad of money, payment from a couple of loan sharks who hadn’t been paying their tribute to Jack because of the territory dispute. But I made it clear to them that the Irish were still in charge.

“Great.” Jack took the money. “We have our first meet with Carmine tomorrow evening. Make sure you’re well rested.”

“You’re taking Kyle?” Pops asked.

“I think we’ll need all the protection we can get. Don’t you?”

“Of course.” Pops looked me over for a long minute. “But Killian’s got his kid and Kyle just got married.”

“And Sean ran off with my girl. We can’t run our business by whose unattached and who’d rather be at home with their spouse.”

“I’m fine with going, Pops.”

Jack clapped me on the shoulder again. “See? Just because he’s got that pretty peach waiting for him at home, Kyle’s still ready and willing. I knew he would be.”

“I’m sure Killian is, too.”

Pops studied me for a long minute. “Alright. I’ll call the boys and we’ll be ready.”

But I could see that Pops wasn’t thrilled with the situation.

Amelia

I was curled up on the couch when he came into the loft. I’d been sitting there longer than I’d like to admit, my thoughts going back and forth from my family drama to the secrets I’d been keeping from Kyle. I so wanted to tell him the truth. And now I wasn’t sure there was any reason not to…except for the fact that if I lost him, I’d lose everything.

He threw himself down on the couch and tossed an arm over his eyes.

“Long day?”

He didn’t answer. His thoughts were clearly somewhere else, anywhere else.

“Cassidy called. She wanted to know if I’d go shopping with her tomorrow morning.”

“What did you say?”

“I told her I wanted to talk to you first.”

“You’re a grown woman. You can make your own choices.”

His tone was a sharp as a knife, cutting through me almost as completely as the things my father had made me see today had done. I climbed off the couch and began to pace, angry with myself for allowing these little comments to get to me the way they did.

He moved his arm and watched me move.

“I’m sorry, Amelia. I just—”

“No, you’re right. I was…I thought maybe if you were home tomorrow…it is Saturday, after all.”

“I’ll be home in the morning,” he said with a sigh.

“I thought you might want to share the day with me.”

He leaned forward, resting his hands on his thighs. “I would like to. Yes. But if you’d rather go shopping—”

“I’d rather be here with you.”

He reached for my arm as I paced in front of him and tugged me onto his lap. He ran his hand over the side of my face, brushing back my hair and running a fingertip over the trace of tears left from earlier in the day. There was compassion on his face now, an understanding that hadn’t been there before.

“Tell me what happened today.”

“Nothing.” But he knew that wasn’t true. But I wasn’t sure I knew how to talk about this. “I just…I called my dad, and I guess I realized a few things about him that I hadn’t seen or hadn’t wanted to know before.”

“Like what?”

“He’s not the man I thought he was.”

“None of us are.”

“But he’s my dad.”

I started to cry, unable to keep it in. It wasn’t that big of a deal, really, but it felt like my world had split open and I’d fallen into the crevice. Like everything I’d done for the last few years had been to perpetuate a lie. I hated it; I hated that my dad allowed me to believe in his innocence. And I hated that he allowed me to be angry with all the wrong people.

“I’m sorry, babe.”

Kyle ran his hand down the length of my spine, trying to comfort me as best as he could. I curled up closer to him, embarrassed that I was falling apart in his arms, but feeling as though that was the safest place in the world to fall apart.

“Tell me about your dad,” he said against my cheek. “You know so much about me, but I still feel as though there is so much I don’t know about you.”

“Have you ever heard the name Robert Clark Wallace?”

He pushed me back a little, his eyes studying mine. “The Bernie Madoff of Oregon?”

I blushed, but nodded. “He’s my dad.”

“Oh, hell, Amelia!”

He lifted me onto the couch and began to pace in my place. I watched him for a minute, a little confused.

“Why? What’s wrong?”

“Do you realize that my father was one of his investors? Did you know that if that got out, or news that I married that man’s daughter in some temporary, quickie Vegas wedding, my father’s reputation may not survive the mess he’s already in? To be connected with Robert Clark Wallace after everything that’s been going on…”

“Is that what this still is? A temporary arrangement?”

“People will think I did it in some misguided attempt to get revenge, or to hide something. It’ll ruin my father.”

“But your dad knows who I am, and he didn’t seem too worried.”

Kyle turned and looked at me. “What do you mean?”

“He knows my mother. We talked about it last night.”

Kyle’s eyes narrowed. “You spoke to my dad about all this?”

“No. I…I talked about something else with him. Something to do with my mother.”

I didn’t like the way he was staring at me. It was as if he was accusing me of something, but I wasn’t sure what crime I’d committed.

“I have no intention of hurting your family, if that’s what you’re wondering. I didn’t know your father invested in my dad’s business. I never saw his name on any of the documents.”

“Because he’s always careful. He probably used one of his many corporations to do it.”

“Then why—?”

“Because people have a way of figuring this stuff out, and someone’s been setting my family up over and over again, trying to hurt my father.”

“Kyle, I—”

“Brianna was kidnapped nearly two years ago. Did you know that? And Cassidy nearly found herself in the ground when she was taken by the same people. Then Stacy’s fiancé was murdered. She thought Killian did it, so six months later she seduced him and then hired a hit man to take him out. When she tried to cancel it, someone paid the hit man twice as much to go forward with it. Then Pops was arrested on charges that would never have stuck, screwing with his reputation, leaving him vulnerable to the illegal activities of a few bad federal agents. And now…”

He stopped, still pacing, but clearly not willing to admit to what he thought was happening now.

“This stuff with the Italians?”

“That’s part of it, I’m sure. But I’m beginning to wonder if it’s a distraction to something else. To something bigger.”

“Like?”

“If I knew, I’d…”

Again he stopped, as though he didn’t want to admit to what he’d been about to say.

He stood silently in the middle of the room for a long time. I wanted to go to him, but I could see the tension in his shoulders and I was afraid that he would pull away from me if I tried to comfort him. And then he began to speak.

“I had no one. I was the child of a woman who regretted a little flirtation with a good-looking man, a woman who got a little drunk and found herself in a situation she couldn’t control. She resented me because every time she looked at me she was reminded of that man who made her lose control…and she did
not
lose control. If she’d had a mother, a father, someone in her life, maybe things would have been different. But she had her work and me. And she couldn’t stand to look at me.

“She expected perfection. She expected me to be a small adult even when I was a toddler, doing things that toddlers did. She resented that I needed her, resented my attempts at sharing just the smallest gestures of affection. She had demons, and she buried them in anger and resentment and a bottle.

“I’ve never had anyone who gave a shit about me until Abigail. She was there when no one else was. Even when I screwed up and landed myself in juvie, she was there.” He laughed softly. “She not only stuck by me and brought me home, but that’s where she found Kevin, too. My roommate, the crazy twelve-year-old who’d killed his mother.”

“What?”

He spun around and looked at me, studying my face with this expression that was a combination of laughter and horror, of the merriment of the insane.

“You have no idea what you’re getting into here, Amelia. I have done things that are far worse than anything you could possibly imagine. There is no comparison for the things I’ve done. I had to survive, and I did it the only way I could. So did Kevin. So did Ian. We all did.”

He came toward me, perching on the edge of the coffee table, and took my hands.

“My point is, I owe the Callahans everything. Not many people have earned my respect and my undying loyalty, but they have. I will not let anyone hurt them. Not even you.”

“Is that what you think? That I want to hurt you and your family?”

“Why else?”

I crawled into his lap, ran my hands over his skull. “I’m here because I want to be.”

“Yeah? For how long?”

There was such pain in his voice when he asked that. But he didn’t wait for me to answer. He lifted me up and lay me on the couch, trapping me under his body, my hands caught above me in a steel grip. And he kissed me, such need in his kiss that I couldn’t catch my breath. But I never tried to pull away. If this was what he needed, I wanted to be the one to give it to him. I wanted to be the only one who could give it to him.

His touch was rough, rougher than it’d ever been before. Things were torn, skin bruised. But I kept up with him…and I brushed the tears from his cheek…and I held him close as he moved against me. And when it was over, I cradled his head to my breast.

And when he left, it was my heart that shattered with the slamming of the door.