I’d only been in the house a few times, and not at all since she’d moved home. Even now, the thought of knocking on her door terrified me. I was over fifty fucking years old and I sat in my car, palms sweaty, heart racing like a teenager at the prospect of being rejected by the only woman who’d ever meant anything to me.
The ringing of my phone pulled me out of my head. I hit the button and said, “Hello.”
“Where are you?” Mac asked.
“Why?”
He sighed heavily. “Grow a pair of fuckin’ balls.”
“Fuck you, Mac. What do you want?” I rolled my eyes and shook my head. He knew where I was. The same place I’d been every night since we’d come home from Louisiana.
“Liam checked out the names you gave him. Two were clean; three weren’t.”
“Any of them survive?” I asked, sitting up as Caity stepped through her front door.
“No,” Mac sighed. “Oscar is good at what he does, but the kid needs to learn when to pull back.”
“He’ll get there. For now, set up the wives of the other two. Make sure they have everything they need. Give the other three a severance.” I started my car and pulled out behind Caity.
“She’s gonna know you’re following her.”
“She’ll know she’s being followed, but she won’t know it’s me,” I argued. I wasn’t in my car; I was in something flashy, something I would never normally drive, not wanting to bring attention to myself.
“Just fuckin’ talk to her.”
“I can’t, asshole.” I turned left, staying two cars behind her. If I knew where she was going, I could take a different route, but for now this was what I had to work with.
“You’re such a pussy,” he chastised. “You’ve never been afraid of her before.”
“Yeah, well, before she could reject me because of her husband and the church. Her only excuse now is that she doesn’t want me, and I’m not ready to accept that.”
I wouldn’t fucking accept that ever. I knew she wanted me. Sal took her to the station in New York to report Kelley as a missing person. We had to bide our time for three years, making an effort to find the dead son of a bitch, before we could have him declared dead, and then Caity would be free to marry me.
And she would fucking marry me.
I wasn’t really worried about her rejecting me; I wouldn’t give her the choice. I knew she loved me. Just as much as I loved her. It was convincing her to be with me that was the problem.
“Have you talked to Maddie?”
“Yeah. She’s staying at Colleen’s apartment. She wanted to live on her own. Talking stupid shit about getting a job.”
“That’s good.”
“She doesn’t need a fuckin’ job,” I growled, pulling to the side of the road as Caity parked in front of a restaurant. It wasn’t like her to eat out alone, which meant she was meeting someone. But who?
“She needs a life, Ci. She’s been living in a shell for years. Henry is what... almost eight years old? Maddie is twenty-eight, and she hasn’t done anything.”
“I should have fuckin’ known,” I said quietly. “I should have known she was mine.”
“Caity lied, man.”
I growled at my best friend. I didn’t want to hear him talk about Caity like that. I knew it was true, but she had her reasons. It was hard to stay angry with her.
I said goodbye to Mac and watched as a blacked-out sedan pulled up in front of the restaurant and a man climbed out ofthe backseat. A man I fucking recognized. What the fuck was he doing here?
If Sal knew he was in town, he’d blow a gasket. He might be Caity’s family, but this secret meeting was suspect. I grabbed the door handle, ready to storm into the restaurant and get answers to the questions running through my head, when my phone rang and my daughter’s name lit up the screen.
My daughter!
