“Please! No, no, please!”
The woman gasps haggardly, choking on her own air as she fights against the man holding her down in the seat. Her eyes are so wide in terror, reminding me of a dog fighting on its last legs. She throws out her arms, desperately trying to reach the door handle, but she is missing by an inch. Still she begs, still she screams and gasps like a yapping puppy unable to understand the will of its master.
“Shut her up,” I order quietly.
Hank, the burly man holding the woman down, obeys in an instant. One well-aimed hit to the back of the head, and she slumps forward like a rag doll, unconscious and silent.
I breathe slowly and focus on the gold lighter between my fingers. Flipping it back and forth is the only thing that grants me momentary peace. The car sways back and forth as we weave through traffic. Hank, my bodyguard, eases the woman back against the chair and sets about wrapping a seatbelt around her body.
“So this is her.”
“Aye.” Hank nods once.
Her olive skin flares briefly under each passing streetlight. Dark lashes rest against tear-stained cheeks where her makeup streaks near her chin just under her full red lips, likely from crying. Black hair frames her sleeping face, and Hank smooths out a few strands after untangling them from the seatbelt.
I rotate the lighter and slide my thumb over the seam between body and lid. I didn’t know what to expect when I heard that there was a witness, someone the cops were overly interested in. She looks nothing like I expected, and yet I’m not sure what I did expect.
“Search her pockets. I want to know who she is.”
As Hank obeys, vibrations against my thigh pull my attention. I pull out my phone, and my heart immediately sinks to the dark depths of my gut when I see who is calling. It’s a call I have to take but one I absolutely do not want to.
The lighter rotates faster in my fingers as I answer. “Ma.”
“Is it true?” My mother’s agonized tone floods my ear. “Tell me it isn’t true, Cormac. Please, for the love of God, tell me it isn’t true.”
My throat is dry, my tongue is fat and useless in my mouth, and I search the passing world through the tinted windows for any kind of distraction. I’d take a pocket of no cell service, a cop car stopping us, or even a car crash. Anything to stop me from saying what I have to say.
My ribs become barbed wire, painfully closing around my pounding heart as my lips part and I speak the dreaded words.
“It’s true, Ma. Brenden is dead.”
The agonizing wail of pain that comes from my mother is enough to bring burning tears to my eyes, and I swallow thickly to keep the terrible grief at bay.
“No!” she wails. “Not Brenden. Not my baby! No!”
I blink furiously, and my world blurs with unshed tears, forcing myself to listen to every single one of my mother’s heart-wrenching sobs.
Brenden Gifford, my older brother and Irish Captain of the Gifford Mob, is dead, murdered in cold blood in some disgusting motel that he never should have been anywhere near.
His death not only brings agony to my family, but it jolts me from the position of Underboss to Captain.
I am in charge now.
“I’m sorry, Ma,” I choke out roughly. “I’m so sorry.”
Our world is far from safe and not even close to perfect, but out of all the cunts and traitors who flood the Mafia ranks each day, my brother was one of the good ones. He had a strong head on his shoulders and sought peace over war whenever the situation arose. Through his careful negotiations and level-headed perspective, he became the first Irishman to negotiate a business treaty with the Italians, who were famous for trusting no one but their own blood.
In five years, both Irish and Italian Families flourished under the weapons trade deal, which boosted our standing with every Irish family who trusted us to keep them safe.
All of that happened because of my brother.
And now he’s dead in the morgue.
“Ma.” I try to reach her as her sobs finally die down.
“Cormac.” Despite the thickness of grief clogging her voice, her sharp words cut through me with aching familiarity. “You find them, you understand me? You find the fucker that did this to our Brenden and you make him pay. You hearing me, Son? You make him pay!”
“I will, Ma,” I swear tightly. “I will. Saoirse is coming to see you—”
“No.” She cuts me off while sniffling. “You need her with you. You need the family with you. I’ll be fine.”
“Ma—”
“I’ll be fine, Cormac. You find the bastard that killed my baby.” She hangs up, and a smothering silence falls. The air grows so thick that I have to unbutton my waistcoat and the top two buttons of my shirt, then lower the window just so I can take an easy breath.
No one speaks.
Brenden is dead. I am Captain now. And his murderer walks these streets thinking they are safe. But I will not stop, I will not breathe until I have that fucker beneath my boot, and they will know nothing but agony for the rest of their days.
And this woman is key to finding them. At least, the cops think so.
After a few deep breaths of night air, I glance at Hank who watches me with unspoken sympathy. He’s been my bodyguard for over ten years and in this family, he’s as much a brother as Brenden was. Which means he shares in my pain, to an extent.
“How is she?” Hank asks quietly.
“Heartbroken,” I reply tightly. “She wants the killer found immediately.”
“As do we all.” Hank’s head tilts to the left, and he tosses me the purse he had taken from the woman. “Her name is Evelyn Morris. Twenty-four years old. Lives about six blocks away under the off-ramp. Her phone is a bit fucked, though. She dropped it when Dale grabbed her.”
As he talks, I rummage through her purse. She has twenty bucks, a couple of loose coins, and an old library card that’s so faded I can’t even make out the name of the library. The last item is a card with a detective’s name scrawled across it in gold ink. Anger pulses through me like a flickering flame, and I flip the card around, showing it to Hank.
“I want to know who the fuck this is and if we pay them. I need to know what they know, or whatever the fuck they think they know.”
Was it random? Was Brenden caught unawares by some fucker who didn’t know who they were dealing with? Or was it gang-related?
The answer will determine whether dawn breaks on war.
I watch the unconscious woman slowly come too. She jolts her shoulders first and then registers that her hands are bound and inaccessible. Then comes the panic. Her head snaps up, sending her black hair back in a wave, and she begins to hyperventilate. Like a caged cat, she pulls at her bindings, rocking back and forth while wildly scanning the dark room.
I wait until tears flood her brown eyes, and then I turn on the small lamp on the desk beside me.
“Evelyn.”
She screams immediately, throwing her head back, and her eyes grow so wide it’s a wonder they don’t pop right out of their sockets.
“Please! I haven’t done anything, I haven’t, I swear. I don’t know anything. Please let me go. Please, please, I’m sorry!”
When her eyes drop to the handgun resting against my thigh, she screams louder and then trails off into a sob. Whoever she is, the police think she’s important, which means I have to find out if that’s true. If she has worth, she will live. If she doesn’t, then I will kill her and move on to the next stone. And the next, and the next, until my brother’s killer is in front me begging for their life as desperately as she is.
“Your name is Evelyn Morris,” I say. “Twenty-four. Lives alone in a dogshit apartment not fit for a squirrel. Your mother, Amy, has lived alone since the death of your father eight years ago. You’ve spent the past two years cleaning up grime for the Sunset Motel. You’re single, no pets, and you eat at the same Vietnamese restaurant every Friday.”
I recite what we’ve learned in the time she’s been unconscious, and with each word, Evelyn grows quieter. A different kind of fear overtakes her, and I see it in her eyes. The moment she switches from blind fear to cold terror is like a switch flicking in her mind, and her wails fall silent.
“How do you know all that?” Evelyn gasps, wetting her lips with her tongue as tears pour down her cheeks. “What are you, cops? Is this a s–scare tactic or something?”
“I’m not a cop.” I stand slowly, and Evelyn’s eyes snap to the gun in my hand. “I’m letting you know that I know everything about you so that you will think very carefully about how you answer my next question.”
Swiftly approaching her, I wind one hand into her dark hair and jerk her head back. With the other, the gun rests lightly against her collar bone, and Evelyn whimpers in terror while more tears spill past her dark lashes.
“I d–don’t know anything,” she whimpers, trembling like a fragile leaf in my hands. “Please, I know nothing. I’m a nobody, I’m no one! I’m not important!”
“Nine hours ago, you found a body in that shitty motel you work at. I need to know what you saw.”
“What? Th—The body?” Her trembling makes her words jerky, and her mouth struggles to obey her desire to talk.
I tighten my grip, drawing more of her hair into my first and forcing her head back further until a whimper of pain claws its way out her throat.
“I won’t ask again. Tell me about the body.”
“The body? The body… I don’t know, okay! It was a body. He was just dead in the bathtub and—and there was blood everywhere and his throat was slit open, and that’s it, okay? That’s it, I swear, there’s nothing else. It wasn’t me. I just found him!”
His throat was slit.
I release her and turn away, barely hearing her terrified sobs as her description snakes through my mind like poison. He was murdered and dumped in the tub like he was trash. The coils of wire around my heart tighten, and for a split second, nothing exists inside me but pain. I want to scream and roar. I want to pound my fists into something until all of my anger has faded and there’s nothing left but a hollow emptiness.
I can’t.
But fuck, I want to.
“His throat was slit?”
“Yes!” Evelyn wails. “Wide open, and it was horrible, and that’s all I saw, okay? I ran out and called the cops right after!”
“What was he doing there?”
“Huh?”
I grab her neck, forcing her to look me in the eye, and she sobs openly. The anger blinds me so I don’t care how tightly I grip her or how I’ve pulled her up so that both she and the chair teeter on one leg.
“I said, what the fuck was he doing there?”
“I don’t know,” she sobs. “I n–never saw him, I never spoke to him. M–My boss leases rooms all the time with no names, no nothing. I don’t know him and I don’t know why he was there, okay? I don’t know anything, please! Please don’t kill me, please, I don’t want to die!”
When I release her, she collapses back into the chair, and it rocks back once but doesn’t tip over. She really appears to know nothing, nothing helpful, at least. Since she discovered the body, it explains why the cops were so interested in her. She’s just a witness, not a suspect.
She’s no use to me.
I pull back the safety on the gun, and Evelyn wails, but just as I lift it, the door opens and warm light pours in from the hallway.
“Cormac.” My sister, Saoirse, stands there with her phone in hand, leaning against the door handle.
“Please,” Evelyn begs weakly as I step away. “I have money. You can have all my money. You can have my car, my apartment, everything, please! Just take it. I don’t want to die, please.”
Ignoring her, I approach my sister who regards Evelyn with a curl of distaste. Once I’m close enough, her dark brows pinch over her green eyes. “Detective Gogs isn’t one of ours.”
“What?”
“She’s new, from out of state. Transferred three months ago.”
“Whose is she, Italian?”
“No one’s.” Saoirse sighs. “She’s not on any payroll. She’s a hundred percent legit.”
A beat of anger pulses through my chest and I grit my teeth. Anyone else would be happy to have a non-corrupt cop on the case of their brother’s death, but not me. I don’t need the cops to do their jobs. I need them to help me and then stay the fuck out of my way. Their law isn’t going to bring justice.
My law will.
“Can we get her?” I snap. “Pay her or use her, I don’t care.”
“We’ve got nothing, at least not yet,” Saoirse replies sharply. “She’s cleaner than a fucking virgin, and she’s not open for business.”
“Fuck!” Tension snaps up my arm and I lash out, slamming my fist into the door. Wood cracks under the force, and Evelyn whimpers behind me.
Saoirse doesn’t flinch.
“What about someone on her team?”
She shakes her head. “She’s pulling in green officers, even someone from out of state. She’s going all out. Other than getting our hands on her, I don’t see a way into this case.”
Sarah Gogs pulling for outside help tells me one thing. She knows exactly whose body is in the morgue and what it will mean for this city. She knows war is coming and is arrogant enough to think she can get ahead of it.
Without someone on the force giving me the info I need, this suddenly became a hundred times more difficult.
Evelyn’s sobs grate through me like chalk on a board, and then suddenly, they’re the most beautiful thing I have ever heard.
The detective isn’t on our payroll and won’t talk to us, but there is one person she will talk to.
One person she won’t ever suspect.
Evelyn.
“Well,” I say, turning toward the cowering woman, “you suddenly have worth.”
