You wanted respect. You had to give up some blood. And I’d donated plenty.
26
Cash
About a month later, I got the call from Rocco. The plan was simple and clean and no problem, but he insisted that I needed to get out of town before the job went down.
I decided to take my wife to Ireland, along with Maureen and the two kids. Keely insisted, since Ryan was old enough to travel.
I hired a private plane, and we took a red-eye out of New York five minutes before my men stormed Dolce with weapons drawn. The instructions were clear—take out these people and these people only. The rest was not my concern.
Rocco phoned me while we were somewhere over the Atlantic to say, “I heard the weather was clear for a good flight.” Then he hung up.
That meant whatever debt I owed Macchiavello had been paid in full—we were square.
Before we returned to New York, I was determined to get square with the woman who shot daggers at me as I drove through the streets of Derry in Northern Ireland. I’d made arrangements for Maureen and the kids to spend time with a cousin she had in Dublin. It was a three-hour drive from there, and the ride had mostly been silent.
My wife spent her time taking pictures, only asking me to slow at the Free Derry sign, and then looking it over on her camera after she’d taken a few. Even after we pulled up to the house I spent some years in as a kid, we barely spoke a word to each other.
She stopped in the hallway after I’d placed her bags down. “This place belongs to your family?”
“To me,” I said, watching her face. Her neck was tinged red. It seemed like she had a lot to say to me, but she refused. Her temper was creeping up her neck, no place to go, since she refused to say what was really on her mind. “It belonged to my grandparents before.”
“Where will I sleep?”
I nodded toward the main bedroom. “With me.”
“No,” she said, going to pick up her bag, but I put out a hand to stop her. She let it fall with a clang to the floor. “I’m only holding up my end of the deal. I eat dinner with you. That’s it, Kelly.”
“You don’t eat,” I said.
“I do.”
She looked as scrawny as hell. I looked as tired as the devil himself after he’d tried to convert a hardheaded woman. Our internal wars were finally coming through the physical.
What the fuck were we doing?
What the fuck wasIdoing?
How did I even get here? Caring whether or not this woman ate with me. Caring whether or not this woman fucked me.
I cared because all of a sudden, she felt vital to me. Like a saving grace with heavenly eyes and a wicked tongue that had a dangerous power over me. Her presence softened my guard, like a lullaby, but her backbone, her good bones, made me trust.
I trusted her.
Completely.
Even though she fucking hated the thought of me at present.
I trusted this woman.
What the fuck have I done to myself?
Bad bones, no heart, she still wanted me as is. She hated that she’d accepted me. She hated that she loved me without expectations. She loved me regardless of the things she felt I did wrong.
Her love had her hate pinned down, on its knees, making it scream out in anger before it forgave and then begged for mercy.
She loves me.
