Forty-eight hours.
My life is over. There’s no way in hell I can get $250,000 in forty-eight hours. No bank will give me any kind of loan—if they did, I would just end up right back where I started—and my mom certainly doesn’t have that kind of cash lying around. When Harry was still here, I tried my best to plead with him as he went around my apartment tearing through my belongings to make sure I had no money hidden away. He even forced me to strip partway out of my clothes to make sure I wasn’t wearing a wire, then he left as quickly as he arrived.
After the initial shock passes, I seek out the bottle of expensive wine hidden under my sink. It was a gift from my mother at graduation but she made me promise not to drink it until my wedding night. In her grand plan, I was to be married within six months of graduation, but all these years later, I’m still single so the bottle remained untouched.
With a time limit on my life, I figure why wait?
Popping the cork, I trudge into the lounge and catch sight of my face in the hanging mirror on the opposite wall. Harry struck me so many times that he split the skin over my eyebrow, and my cheek is aching and purple. I turn the light off, sending me into darkness, and then sink down onto the floor between the couch and the table.
The first sip of wine is sweet and thick—it’s definitely the good stuff. The second sip brings tears of hopelessness, and as I stare through the darkness of my apartment, defeat weighs heavily in my chest.
How has my life become this? As if everything with the Irish wasn’t bad enough, my own mistakes with credit cards and loan sharks have brought me right to death’s door. As a child, I envisioned my adult life to be something magical with a successful job, a home, and a couple of cats running around while I danced with the person I loved.
My mother’s coldness and my father’s death sent me careening off course, though it’s easy to blame them in the darkness of my own hell. I sought comfort in the materialistic and now I’m paying the price.
Tears roll slowly down my cheeks as I sob quietly to myself, drinking mouthfuls of the wine each time I pause for breath. My mind sluggishly tries to come up with a plan, but there’s nothing concrete. In the dark, I Google how to sell my kidney and how much money I can make from blood or plasma donation. Selling myself is the only thing I have left. Unfortunately, none of those are viable options for $250,000 in two days. Hopelessness washes over me like a suffocating wave.
What the fuck do I do?
Half a bottle of wine later, my mind drifts back to Cormac. If I’d stayed with him, Harry wouldn’t have found me. He’d have come here, likely kicked down my door, and found absolutely nothing. I play the scenario out in my mind and then try to imagine how someone like Cormac would deal with Harry. The way he exploded at Dillon was incredible. Would he do that twice?
Or was Dillon only a target because we were at the motel?
It’s wishful thinking, and my Google searches turn to more desperate measures, like how much an escort can make in two days. Nothing close to what I need, even if I advertised myself as having no limits.
I really am going to die—
An almighty crash explodes through my apartment, followed by a loud rumbling. Then, the door to my lounge flies open so hard that it hits the wall and immediately bounces back on the intruder. I scream, lurching back against my couch and kicking out at my table as if I can use it to stop whoever that is from coming closer.
The intruder lifts his thick arm, catching the door before it can hit him on the back swing, and then he strides further into my apartment.
Even in darkness with nothing but the streetlights pouring in through the blinds to illuminate the room, I recognize him. My heart pounds fiercely in my chest and I clutch the nearly empty bottle to my body, staring up at this panting, furious tank of a man.
“C–Cormac?” I gasp when I finally find my voice. “What… what are you doing here?”
“I should have known there was something off about you,” Cormac snaps darkly. His voice is thick from anger, bringing out a sharp Irish twang to his words. “You just happened to be the one who found Brenden, right? And then the cops wanting to talk to you at the station instead of letting you go at the motel. Was it all part of the plan? Were you hoping I would scoop you up just so you could get close and find out what we knew?”
Cormac may as well have been talking a foreign language from how he wasn’t making any sense. The wine made me bold and I roughly hauled myself to my feet.
“What?” I yell back. “What the hell are you talking about?”
“You!” Cormac points at me with a meaty fist. “You didn’t think I would find out. Did you think I was stupid, huh? The big, muscular guy doesn’t have a brain to figure it out?”
My mouth opens and closes, and I briefly register that there are other people in my apartment moving about in the dark behind Cormac. His eyes glint at me like the edge of a blade while my heart races and my thoughts struggle to catch up. Oddly, all I can focus on is the damage done to my wall.
“You—what?” I shake my head, trying to clear the alcohol fog from my mind. “Hold on, what the fuck?”
“Were you a plant, hmm?” Cormac stalks closer. “A spy? You Russians think you’re so fucking sneaky, but let me tell you something. I won’t blink if I find out you had any hand in killing Brenden, you hear me?”
“Russians?” I can’t believe what I’m hearing. This is all so surreal that I start to doubt whether I’m really awake. Fear gives way to anger and I brandish the near-empty bottle of wine like a weapon. “I’m not fucking Russian! I’m American!”
“Birthplace doesn’t dictate loyalty,” Cormac growls.
“Loyalty?” A sudden burst of hot anger ignites in my chest, burning away the drunk haze and allowing me to see clearly for the first time all night. “No! You know what? Fuck you. Fuck you for bursting into my apartment like you fucking own the place and destroying my shit. Fuck you for throwing all sorts of accusations at me without talking to me first. Are you insane? Any other day, maybe I’d give you a pass for grief, but look what you did to my wall!”
I throw a hand toward the now very clear crack in the wall, which is illuminated by someone turning my kitchen light on.
“I’m not Russian and I had nothing to do with your brother. I don’t know what you’re on, but maybe switch dealers if it’s making you so fucking delusional. I mean, take a look around, Cormac! I’m just me, okay? I’m just a regular woman who worked a regular, shitty job while dodging a regular, shitty guy and then all of a sudden, you came into my life and fucked things up. Most people don’t get kidnapped after they witness a crime, but you thrust a fucking gun in my face and had me commit a fucking crime because you all live in this insane world where crime is as common as a fucking Starbucks. And not once, not once did you ever stop to think that maybe that’s a shitty thing to do. And then you cast me aside once you’re done with me, dump me back into the world like this, and I have to try and remember how to be a regular person, only I’m not a regular person anymore! I’m a witness and a criminal and a kidnap victim, and now you’re in my fucking apartment destroying my shit, why? What possible fucking reason is there this time?”
I’m panting heavily by the time I pause my barrage of words that gave Cormac no window to respond. Not that he deserves it. I’m sick of this shit. I’m sick of people invading my home and my space, acting like I owe them the world when I’m just trying to live.
My worst crime is credit card debt. That’s it. That’s all I did, and that doesn’t deserve Dillon trying to force his way into my pants, or Harry threatening my life, and certainly not Cormac and his men now going through my already fucked apartment.
“You can’t lie to me,” Cormac yells back, and his voice is much scarier than mine when he yells. “You were seen, okay? You had a Russian in your home and so soon after I let you go. Bit fucking suspicious, don’t you think?”
“A Russian?” I can’t believe my ears. “How the fuck would I know who is and isn’t Russian? You want me to question every delivery guy that comes to my door to make sure they don’t have any kind of gang affiliation, huh? And at that—” It hits me suddenly that if he knows someone was here, he must have eyes on me. “Are you stalking me? How the hell do you know who has or hasn’t been in my home?”
“Harry Fox,” Cormac recites, and my gut plummets like I’ve just been dragged off a cliff. “Name ring any bells?”
“If you’d opened with that,” I snap, “instead of destroying my apartment. What was that noise, anyway? Did you kick my front door in, you psychopath?”
Cormac advances, but I hold my ground, clinging to this new rage inside me. Everything from the past week is piling up and it’s too much. From the motel to Cormac to losing my job and Harry, what else am I supposed to do?
“Didn’t want to give you a chance to run.”
“Run?” I laugh humorlessly. “Where the hell would I run? If you’re stalking me, then you should know I don’t have anywhere or anything! I’m not a spy, you hear me? And Harry, I wouldn’t fucking know what he is or isn’t, okay? He’s just a guy I have to deal with, and a very fucking unpleasant one at that.”
“You expect me to believe that five days after my brother is murdered, you’re shacking up with someone on the Russian payroll and that’s just a coincidence?”
A wave of rage at Cormac’s accusatory tone floods through me, drowning me from the inside, and I suddenly, can’t breathe. The urge to lash out is too strong, so I turn and launch the wine bottle at the opposite wall.
“Fuck off with that bullshit!” I scream at him, enraged. “I don’t know what the fuck you are talking about, okay? I’m just trying to pick up the pieces of my life after you and your brother fucked it, alright? So you know what? Go through my apartment for all I care. Tear this shit apart. Call my mother if you have to. I don’t have anything to hide because I don’t fucking have anything! I’m just me, but I don’t have to stand here and explain myself to you in my own fucking home!”
It feels so fucking good to yell. It’s more therapeutic than crying, and despite being breathless afterward, there’s an odd freeing sensation across my shoulders. I force a deep breath and hold it as Cormac stares at me through the dullness.
“I’m just me,” I repeat tiredly. “Do whatever you want. You won’t find whatever you think is here.”
I move around the table and push past Cormac, heading into the kitchen where I know there’s no more alcohol, but there is water and I’m suddenly very parched.
Cormac follows me, his angry footsteps like a drum beat on the chipped tile flooring. “Evelyn,” he snaps. “The evidence is piling up against you and I—”
He stops talking so abruptly that I half expect him to fall over when I turn with a glass of tap water in my hands. The anger on his face is so clear now in the light of the kitchen, but in a blink it fades and there’s something else in his eyes. The same look he had when he stared at me after beating Dillon to a pulp.
“Your face.”
He walks forward, and I brace for him to pull another accusation out of his ass, but instead, he lifts his hand and grasps my chin between a gentle but firm thumb and forefinger and tilts my head up into the light.
“He hurt you?”
