CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE

TROY

I PARKED IN front of the foggy graveyard.

My father was buried in one of the oldest cemeteries in Boston. Untamed grass, mud, moss and spider webs adorned the tombstones like Halloween decorations. The place was a rusty gate short of looking like a bad horror flick set, and I had to admit, I kind of liked the extra-touch of morbidity it had. Despite the cemetery looking like hell, I knew Dad wouldn’t have wanted it any other way. The graveyard was at the back of the South Boston church we used to go to every Sunday. Practically his second home.

Here were buried not only my relatives, but also many memories. Some I remembered fondly, some I wished I could forget, like McGregor.

I came here every Friday afternoon, before the weekend rolled around and with it, new, fresh sins to commit. Came here to talk to the man I so desperately missed. He was my priest, his gravestone my confession booth.

He never judged.

Never gave me shit for being who I was.

And coming here also reminded me that I had an unfinished business to take care of. To find out who was responsible for my father’s death.

I whistled as I wove through the graveyard, my own personal touch of irony. Visiting his grave wasn’t a sad affair nowadays. It was like going out for a beer with an old friend.

Ignoring the drizzle—it really had been the weirdest summer I could remember in Boston, and to my delight, the fall was starting out just as grim—I squatted down in front of my father’s grave, my elbows over my knees. Like all fathers and sons, we had our tough talks, even after his eternal slumber.

The past few weeks, I’d been pre-occupied again with trying to figure out who’d murdered him. Who sent Crupti. Whoever it was, they used a middle-man (a sorry ass local kid who died in an accident a few months after dad’s death) and bitcoin. The person behind dad’s death was smart. Calculated…and as good as dead.

I had people digging more, trying to figure out who sent Crupti to kill him. I intended to leave no stone in greater Boston unturned. But it was hard. All of my father’s enemies were either dead or in the clear. Something didn’t add up.

I was beginning to wonder if the person who sent Crupti was an enemy of mine, not of my father’s.

At least I’d settled the score with Paddy Rowan, the old shit. Though this wasn’t only for him, it was also for her.

I’d spoken about Sparrow with my father often recently.

“Was Robyn such a huge fucking pain in the ass, too? Sparrow must’ve gotten her sass from somewhere, and it’s not from Abe.”

Dad didn’t answer. Of course he didn’t. He never did. But I had a feeling that if he were here next to me, he would have snorted out a laugh and said something crude about the Raynes girls. I had a feeling that even if he’d loved Robyn, he’d never outwardly shown his feelings.

Couldn’t blame him. I wasn’t exactly in touch with my emotions either. Most of the time, I wasn’t even sure if they existed.

And now I was fucking Red exclusively. I plucked a few blades of grass and threw them on his grave. It’d been a while since I’d limited myself to one woman. Catalina was my last attempt at monogamy, and that had ended up being a magnificent failure.

“Baby? Baby, is that you?”

Speak of the devil. Cat was struggling toward me in her high heels, her blow-dried hair flattened against her head, raindrops spattered on her forehead. Her teeth chattered in the cold drizzle.

It shouldn’t have surprised me that she was there. She’d always had stalkerish tendencies. Even before I first broke it off. When she still wore the sweet, shy-girl mask that made me want her in the first place. She’d accompany Maria when she came to clean for us at my parents’ house, always eyeing me through her long, curly eyelashes, smiling like I hung the moon in the sky and lit up the sun myself.

But she was also possessive as hell.

Always sniffing around to make sure I was only hers.

I stood straight, only then realizing how soaking wet I was from the rain, and stood in front of her, my face hard and unwelcoming. She stopped a good few feet away from me. The rain picked up making it difficult to make out her expression.

“She is a child,” she announced. “Your marriage was supposed to be an arrangement, you said so yourself. You said she was a burden you had to deal with for your dad.” Her body shook, and it wasn’t from the cold. “I need you back, Troy.”

She was crying, talking about Sparrow, and as much as it surprised me, I wasn’t so hot about seeing her shattered.

“Let it go.” I huddled in my soaked pea coat. “We had our farewell fuck, said our goodbyes in my apartment months ago. We’re done.”

“Troy, baby, no.” She fell on her knees in front of me, mud splashing everywhere around us. She clasped my legs like they were an anchor as tears streamed down her face, mixing with the raindrops. “Please. She is nothing, no one. She doesn’t want you. Doesn’t need you. Doesn’t deserve you. We’ve got history. Chemistry. We’ve got something fucked up and twisted, but it’s ours. It’s us. It’s always been us.”

“You really should’ve thought about that before you let Brock get you pregnant.” My tone was harsh, but the edge was gone. I wasn’t high on fucking Brock’s wife anymore. Everything about the situation felt tasteless. Worthless. Guess I’d moved on.

“You told me to marry him.” She sniffed, her nose dripping, her fingernails still clawing into my pants. “You said it’d be the best thing for everybody because of that goddamned pregnancy. Oh, Troy.”

“Cat,” I growled, “the goddamned pregnancy is now a kid. Maybe you should consider taking care of him.” But I knew what Cat never said out loud. She resented Sam, because Sam was the final straw between us. I couldn’t take her back after that betrayal.

“This could have been us. Married. Happy,” she pleaded. “I belong in your bed, in your house, in your mind. I’ll do anything. Tell me what to do to bring you back to me.”

“You’re a wreck.” I turned around and started walking to my car. I hated that she barged into my time with my dad.

She stalked after me, crying hysterically, stumbling to the ground and then lurching back to her feet. Stiletto heels weren’t exactly the best footwear for a muddy graveyard. But Cat had always liked putting on a show. Twenty-something-year-old Troy admired that. Thirty-something Troy knew this shit got old.

“Don’t do this,” she warned. “I’ll ruin this for you.”

I sighed. “Catalina, baby, you can’t even ruin your own fucking life successfully, let alone someone else’s. You’ve never been the overachiever type.”

“Go to hell.” She shoved me and then flailed at me with her fists.

I dodged her girly jabs and captured her wrists, walking her backward into the high stone fence that surrounded that graveyard and pinning her back to it. It felt so vacant to hold her between my arms. For a moment, I wondered if I ever really did love her.

“Enough,” I said. “This stops here. Now listen to me carefully, and get it into your head, because I won’t say it twice. You had your chance. I gave you everything. Worked my fucking ass off so you could afford your fancy shit. Took risks. Built a business, opened a French restaurant just ’cause it was your favorite food—all for you. But you betrayed me. You got coked up on my money, snorted through the majority of it, and I had to send you off to rehab, where you fucked up more. We had our fun, and now it’s time to let go. Got it?”

Catalina threw more aimless punches at me and screamed, “Stop saying these things!”

I knew she had a hard time hearing this, but the funny thing was, I no longer had a hard time saying it, admitting this to her and me. I’d sent Cat to a Malibu rehab shortly before we broke it off. The most expensive fucking rehab in the States. Sauna rooms and twenty-four-hour spas. Only the best for my girl. She came back pregnant with her counselor’s baby. With Brock’s baby.

I still remembered the day I found out my initially unpregnant girlfriend had come back after two months in rehab with a new addition in her belly. She tried to convince me the baby was mine. Hell, I fought hard to believe it myself. But then I went with her to her check-up and the OB-GYN had spilled the dates. Cat was six weeks pregnant, and not with my child.

“No, no, no, no.” She shook her head violently, raking her long fingernails down her face, streaking her cheeks with bloody scratches.

“Don’t mistake my sympathy then for feelings.” I said, surprised that the rage was gone. “When you were pregnant, I didn’t throw your ass out of my apartment because I didn’t want this shit on my conscience, not because I still loved you.”

“Troy!” she pleaded, throwing her bloody fists in my face and crying like a tortured animal. “Stop this now!”

But it was true.

I’d felt guilty. Guilty because I couldn’t give her what she’d wanted. What we both wanted. Our engagement didn’t mean shit, and we both knew that. I was going to marry Sparrow Raynes, the poor little girl down my street. The money, the clothes, the restaurants, the fancy-ass vacations. Lies, lies and more lies. A pile of distractions to make us forget we were never going to get married. In a sense, a part of me—the puppy-love part—thought Cat screwing someone else was my punishment. I couldn’t be hers exclusively. Why should it be any different for her?

I remembered after we broke up, going back to the apartment Cat and I used to share. I’d wanted to take some of my shit, mainly clothes. I wasn’t surprised to see the guy who knocked her up had taken a trip to Boston just so he could have another dip.

She was beautiful, broken and willing to do anything the man at her side wanted. It was a lethal combination for most men, something that was too hard to turn down. I fucking knew that first-hand.

Brock ended up staying in Boston, and I let him work for me. Gave him a job a few months before my father’s murder, thinking I’d help her—and him—build a family. I’d thought it was my way to compensate. We were done, but I still had a chance to redeem myself in the eyes of the only girl I’d ever fallen in love with. Even if I couldn’t have her.

“We should have stopped this fucking years ago,” I told Cat, who was struggling for breath, her face blotched with tears and older since I’d last seen her.

“I love you. He was always just a plaything. I love you, Troy.” Trying another strategy, she arched her back away from the stone fence, her hips meeting my groin.

I pulled back immediately. Jesus, she thought I was going to take her right then and there. How could I have loved someone so weak?

I sucked in a breath. “You don’t love anything other than danger and cock. There’s an abyss between us, and it swallowed every positive feeling I’ve ever felt toward you. Because even after I tried to help you and your husband, you had the nerve to go and spill every secret I ever told you to him.” I let go of her wrists in disgust. “And that was the ultimate betrayal.”

Catalina told Brock everything.

About the promises my dad made me make.

About Sparrow.

About fucking everything.

She put me in a vulnerable position, and jeopardized everything I’d ever worked for.

I wished Cat had never told Brock about it. I wished he’d never told me that he knew. On a drunken night when the two of us got back from the cabin after detoxing one of my client’s daughters, Brock had revealed that Cat had spilled every single secret I let her in on. Brock had promised to keep mum.

Because it wasn’t a friendly promise—it was a threat.

“So here’s the deal.” I rested my arm above Cat’s head as I locked eyes with her. “I’m going to walk away from here. Next time I see you, it’ll be on Brock’s arm, playing the dutiful wife. You will never speak to me, mention this, or try and reach out to me again, got it?”

I admit I’d taken my revenge too far. Fucking Catalina under her husband’s roof just to feel better about myself? About everything I had lost? Making her one of the endless women on my speed dial? Reducing her to nothing but a warm pussy to bury myself in occasionally? Below the belt, but I’d needed to rebuild my ego. I’d needed to make sure I was leaving her just as broken as she’d left me when she cheated, married someone else and spilled my secrets in his ears.

“She knows,” Cat said, smiling a crazy, hateful smile. “I told Sparrow about us. Your wife knows.”

“Go near her again, and I will kill you with my bare hands.” I took a step back, watching her slide down the wall and collapse on the grass as she wailed.

I’d played this scene over and over in my head for years. Me leaving Catalina for good. Stepping away from this mess while I had the upper hand.

I’d imagined feeling triumphant and elated as I dumped her, breaking her heart, but as I left the graveyard, all I felt was incredible emptiness and an unbearable fury about her talking to Red.

I hoped Cat wasn’t coked up again. Poor Sam didn’t need two fuck-ups for parents.

And as thunder cracked the sky open above me, another downpour on its way, I slipped into the Maserati and turned on the stereo all the way up. “Last Night I Dreamt That Somebody Loved Me” by The Smiths blasted through the speakers. I knew that this time the rain would wash away most of my memories with Cat.

We were done. Through.

I couldn’t wait for my next chapter.