Total pages in book: 85
Estimated words: 83994 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 420(@200wpm)___ 336(@250wpm)___ 280(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 83994 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 420(@200wpm)___ 336(@250wpm)___ 280(@300wpm)
“Good. The next meeting, stick around.” I slump back down in my seat. I have an hour break, which means I get an hour to return calls and send messages while I eat. There’s no such thing as actual downtime.
But Casey hesitates before leaving. She looks back at me, and I can tell there’s something more on her mind. I wait her out, hoping she’ll just go, but she doesn’t.
“I’ve been thinking,” she says, which is a bad sign. “Something’s bothering me.”
“Yes, wife?”
She flinches and shakes her head. “Don’t call me that.” I only stare at her and wait for her to continue. “Fine, okay, you’re such a prick. But I’ve been thinking about my parents. Some of the story Sheila told me doesn’t totally add up. Like, why were they killed? And how is your family involved?”
“There’s not much else to tell you. I don’t know the full story.” Which is partially accurate. The problem is she’s flirting dangerously close to finding out truths I’d rather were kept hidden. Truths Sheila knows better than to ever reveal.
“But you were alive when it all happened, right?”
“I was in my twenties at the time.”
“Old enough to remember.”
“Your parents weren’t exactly running in my circle.”
“You seriously don’t have anything else to tell me?”
I shake my head slowly, holding her gaze. “Not a thing.”
I can tell that frustrates her. She lingers for a few seconds, glaring at me, before turning away. “I’ll have your lunch brought in when it shows up.”
“Thank you, Ms. Brennan.”
Casey leaves, and I sit alone in the conference room surrounded by papers, and I keep thinking about my name spray-painted over and over again, and what that’s supposed to mean.
Chapter 14
Casey
Sheila and Declan are definitely keeping something from me.
The problem is I have no idea what.
It’s just a vibe I’m getting. Like there are some gaps and holes in the story I was told. It’s a feeling more than anything else, but it’s bugging me.
I stew for another day. Declan drags me into a few of his family meetings, and I get a feel for his role in the business. It’s clear he’s deeply respected and even feared by most of the people who come to see him. He wields considerable power too, and at one point promises certain political outcomes will definitely happen, given enough money. Like he can bribe the entire New York legislature.
That evening, instead of heading home, I grab an Uber over to Aunt Sheila’s place. I let myself in through the front and call out, waiting to hear a reply, but there’s nothing.
She’s always playing bingo at the union hall a few blocks away around now. Which means I should have an hour before she comes back.
I stand around the living room for a minute. Even though I don’t live here anymore, this still feels like home. I was raised in these walls. I spent so much of my life right here. And now somehow I’m making a life with a strange man in an apartment that’s not even remotely my own.
I let out a long, shuddering sigh. A month back, Natalie and I watched an Indiana Jones movie right on that couch together. She’d never seen Raiders of the Lost Ark. Doesn’t hold up, she’d said afterward, which was like sacrilege.
I miss her so fiercely it hurts.
I’d let her talk shit on all my favorite movies if it meant having her back, even for just one more night.
I wipe my eyes and head up into the spare room. A bunch of junk is stored in the closet. I pull out boxes of old files, papers, books, and pictures, and I start rifling through it all.
I’m not even sure what I’m looking for.
All my life, my parents existed as vague memories. Sheila rarely talked about them and only when I asked. They both died in what I thought was a car accident, but now I’m learning they were murdered because they were criminals. And it was some crazy psycho assassin who pulled it off?
But that doesn’t tell me why they were targeted or who they were before they were ripped out of my life.
I have only vague images. My mother ripping open letters with a pair of scissors and laughing when she cuts her finger. My father in a white tank top and ratty jeans washing the car in front of the house while a boombox plays. My father laughing at the TV. My mother hugging me tightly and telling me to sleep. Disparate images, but nothing crazy. Nothing that might make me think I was raised by a couple of master organized crime members.
The spare bedroom is a bust. There’s nothing good. Just the same stuff I’ve seen over the years. Pictures of my parents and me at Disney when I was around eight. Pictures of my dad holding me on his shoulders down at the Jersey shore. A photograph of me in soccer clothes.