Chapter 31

Her eyes widen, and I expect her to run again, the way she did earlier. Because everyone knows being a murderer is worse than being your garden-variety player or asshole. But she stands her ground, staring up at me. "You're talking about your uncle."

At least she doesn't believe I killed her father and kept it from her. At least she doesn't think that of me.

"I am," I repeat, feeling a burning inside of me, like everything is in danger of being flash-fried. I glance down, water dripping off my hair.

"You had a reason," she says, a statement more than a question.

A bitter laugh escapes me, but I'm laughing at myself, not her. "Everyone has a reason for the shit they do. That doesn't make it okay. He's dead because of me. End of story."

Finally, I look up at her, because I need to prove to myself that the light has gone out of her eyes when she looks at me. But her eyes have the same buttery, golden gleam. She looks alarmed, naturally, but she doesn't flinch from my gaze.

"Claire…"

"That may be the end of the story, Declan, but I'd like to hear the beginning. You want someone to judge you, but I refuse to do it without knowing everything."

"I don't want you to be good to me right now," I say, feeling like something inside of me is broken, stabbing holes into my gut from the inside.

"I can tell, but I'm not being good or bad to you," she says matter-of-factly, then sits on the floor, cross-legged. My heart clenches at the sight of her making herself smaller, more vulnerable, after I just told her I'm a fucking murderer. I don't deserve her trust—I deserve it less now than I did five minutes ago, and yet she keeps presenting it to me on a platter. It makes me want to be burned in fire and reborn. "I'm just listening. We owe each other that much at least, don't you think?"

"You should run," I tell her, my voice ragged.

"I'd rather not get wet," she says, punctuating it by lifting up the bottom of her shirt and squeezing a small cascade of water onto the ground. Her gaze meets mine again. "Besides, I'm not in any danger, am I? Nicole and Damien made me promise to warn you that they'd get stabby if you hurt me, but I don't think I need to. I think you'd protect me from harm, just like they would."

Of course I fucking would. But I don't say so. I try to swallow back the feelings inside of me, same as always, but they don't go down easy.

"Dick knew about this, didn't he? You said he helped you with some things. I'm guessing those things were hiding under the radar."

"He didn't know at first," I say, wiping my mouth. Then, because I don't want to tower over her, especially not after throwing around words like "murderer," I sit on the ground across from her, my knees bent, my arms balancing over them and my head bowed because I can't look at her right now with the shame thick in my mouth, my soul. "And not everything. But I didn't kill him, Claire. I know what it must look like… When I found him like that, at the bottom of the steps…" Suddenly it all rushes through me, and my eyes feel hot, but I'm not going to cry, sitting here with my confessor angel. I refuse. "It was like I was back there again," I say, swallowing. "I didn't do it, but part of me wondered if it was my fault anyway. If I was cursed, and I'd given my curse to him. I don't think anyone did it to him, though, Claire. It's like I told the police. No one was there, and there weren't any signs anyone had been. He'd always drunk a lot. Taken pills. He carried a lot with him."

"So do you," she comments, watching me. "Carry a lot, I mean."

I nod once, feeling more water drip from my hair.

"Okay. I'd like to know everything," she says softly, watching me. "If you're ready to tell me."

"I was going to tell you anyway. Tonight," I say. "It…it feels important for you to know that."

She nods, and I can see in her eyes that she's not only saying she believes me, she does.

I swallow. "Our parents died when I was twenty-one. Shay was twenty. Rosie was just eighteen. Shay and I were both in the family construction business, but my dad did the finances, so I didn't know what he'd been up to until he died. We were running at a deficit, and instead of giving up, he'd started borrowing money from his brother." I breath out a sigh. "Then he borrowed more money so he could try gambling his way out of the mess, and everyone knows how well those stories turn out…"

"And your uncle was involved in…organized crime."

I nod, my jaw tight. "My mother didn't like him, so we barely knew him. But after my parents died, he showed up and told me it didn't matter that I was family—he couldn't be seen giving anyone breaks. There was proof of what he said…my father had signed an agreement. So my little brother and I could either give up our kneecaps, the family business, and the house, or I could do him a few favors when he needed them." I look away, wipe more water off my forehead. "I didn't feel like I had a choice. I had to protect Shay and Rosie, and I didn't have any skills other than building and growing things. Shay and I hadn't gone to school. Rosie was in college, and I had to help her with tuition on top of everything else. So I told him yes, but I said I wasn't going to hurt anyone for him. Ever. He told me that he didn't rule his house with violence, only intimidation when it was necessary, and I decided to believe him. But there was always one more favor. Usually it was hiding money for him, but when he found out I'd gotten my mom's green thumb, he recruited me to grow for him, which I guess you already knew." I glance off, feeling shame heat my neck. "I didn't say no. The money was good, and the business needed help. We'd been broke, worse than broke, and it seemed like a chance to build something. I opened an off-shore account for my savings so he couldn't touch them."

She nods mutely, taking it all in. My confessor. I always figured I'd end up telling this story to someone in a police uniform. How lucky am I to get her instead?

"Then he asked me to do something I wasn't willing to do…" I pause, taking in a deep breath, because it fucking hurts. Even now, my feelings toward my uncle are complicated. I hated him. Wanted to ruin him. But part of me loved him all the same. "He wanted me to move harder drugs through the growhouse. But he told me I couldn't keep pretending to keep my hands clean. It was time to grow up. Be a man. That's when it really hit me, how deep I'd let myself get. Rosie had been out of college for years, and I had the business out of the red. Partly with dirty money, but I'd learned how to run a business by then. So I told him I was done. I'd paid my debt, and more, and I wanted out." I run a hand back through my sopping hair. "And the next thing I know, he's telling Seamus he wants to help him open an auto body shop. But I knew what he was really after. He wanted to move more money through Shay. Maybe stolen cars. He was tying us to him so tightly we could never leave. So I decided I had to talk to him. To appeal to him as my uncle.

"I didn't set up a meeting because I didn't want him to be prepared for me. I went over to his house. Broke in through the back door, the way he'd shown me, and found him upstairs. He came out of his study to greet me just as I came up the stairs. He wasn't surprised to see me. He'd known I'd come looking for him after what he told Seamus.

"He said it had taken me too long to grow a pair, and maybe he'd be better off working with my brother. He was needling me. Trying to get a reaction." Shame licks at me again, sickening. "And I was worried he was right. Seamus has always been a hothead. Then my uncle told me I was too much like my parents—soft like my mother and complacent like my father, content with a smaller piece of the pie. We were pussies, both of us, in a cage full of lions. He'd been the only thing keeping us afloat, but I'd disappointed him again and again. Maybe Shay would be less of an embarrassment. Or Rosie."

I swallow, feeling myself there again, feeling the flecks of spit as he yelled in my face and the twisting sensation in my gut that I'd fucked everything up, maybe for the last time, because he was never going to let us go. By then I'd realized he never let anyone go—if someone tried to leave him, they paid and kept on paying. Sometimes with their lives. He'd said he didn't exercise violence, but there'd been signs. At first, I'd been oblivious, trusting. But I'd learned never to take anyone at their word.

"I told him he needed to stay away from my brother and sister, and he said the only way he would was if I stepped up and did what needed to be done. If I entered his business fully."

"You told him no," she says softly, her eyes intent on me.

"I said I'd have to think about it, and he told me not to think too hard, because otherwise I might have an accident. People who were ungrateful often did." I swallow. "From the way he said it, I understood that my parents' accident wasn't an accident."

Her eyes widen.

"It happened in a split second. We'd been pacing around the top of the stairs while we talked. I shoved him, and he fell." My voice quavers on the last word, and I press my palm into the ground, needing to feel something solid against it.

"It was an accident," Claire says, her gaze intent.

I shake my head. "I wouldn't call it that. I saw the stairs behind him… In the back of my mind, I think I knew. Part of me wanted it to happen." I pause. "And I should have called the police. An ambulance. Someone. But I didn't. He was…" I take a deep breath. "He was dead. I checked. But maybe they could have…I don't know. I changed the security footage so it wouldn't show me breaking in. If someone had seen that…"

"They would have assumed you'd gone over there to hurt him."

I nod, feeling miserable. "Maybe I did. Maybe a part of me knew what would happen—that only one of us could survive, and I chose myself. The police declared it an accident, and if anyone believed otherwise, I didn't stick around long enough to hear it. I knew whoever stepped in to take over would be cleaning up. Getting rid of anyone considered loyal to my uncle. We probably would have been on that list. Either that, or they'd have tried to get us under their thumb, same as we'd been under his. I was done."

I don't mention the other part…that I could have taken over. That Seamus had wanted the both of us to do it together. We don't have to do it like him, he'd said. We can make it our own.

But I'd never wanted that kind of power. I'd only ever wanted quiet things. Simple things. The pleasure of watching something grow, of making a beautiful woman moan. Of building something.

"Why didn't you hide with your brother and sister?" she asks. "Why send them to New York and send yourself here?"

I give her a half smile. "I told them it was safer for us to split up, because I was the one they'd look for if anyone came looking. But that's not the only reason. I killed him, Claire. My own uncle. I deserved some punishment, didn't I? That's not the kind of thing you should be able to walk away from."