“The road ahead is treacherous,” he said and shifted the car into drive. “Think hard and clear if this is what you want.”
The funeral procession lurched forward, and the ride home proceeded in silence because Liam Moriarty didn’t know her, not really, and it smacked of a not-so-distant past where her father had raged.
“What the hell do you want, Amelia? Do you even know?”
Irony of ironies, she did know. With every beat of her heart, Amelia knew and spoke strong and clear, but her ambitions didn’t dazzle, and what was worse than a good man gone astray? A lost soul like her swinging from whim to whim. Amelia could barely stomach that inquiry from her own father, let alone Liam Moriarty, so she kept quiet but fumed in the hypocrisy until they reached the mansion.
Liam parked in the circle drive and turned to Amelia as if already aware she had more to say.
“You ask me what I want,” she said, “but have you ever asked Emory that question?”
Liam drew a deep breath and fixed his eyes to middle distance beyond the windshield.
“You haven’t, have you? Or maybe you don’t need to because you already know Emory deserves so much more than this.”
Liam laughed. It made her anxious. She knew so little of how to read the man.
“On that, we agree,” he said and killed the engine but lightly grasped her forearm before she opened the door.
“You cannot talk like this with others,” he warned with a nod out the window to where the Moriarty men and their families filtered inside. “I know your heart is in the right place, but they don’t. Treachery is blood in the water. Mind your cuts.”
Amelia scopedout a spot in the great room where funeral-goers mingled with food and drink. Most kept eyes on her, the questions amassing in their implacable stares.
Alone in a corner with the prayer card, she waited for Emory. He and Jack arrived a half hour later in mismatched moods. Where Jack beamed, a solemn shadow fell over Emory as a few captains urgently occupied him in conversation.
Amelia would find him later when he was in less demand. She slipped away to the parlor where votive flames danced in ruby red glass on a family altar. She lit a match but hesitated over an unburned wick.
Her grandma had always said death came in threes. If true, whose soul would add to Gio’s trine? Or perhaps he was preceded in death.
Helen Havick. Brian Burrows. Richard Dauer.
Death had already exceeded its multiplicity.
A presence entered the room behind her. Amelia shook outthe match and turned around. Sinister in a black suit, Jack’s eyes locked on her with severity she’d only heard of in him but never witnessed for herself.
“I didn’t peg you as the religious type,” he said and crept toward her like a predator approaching startled prey.
Amelia gripped the metal candle rack behind her. The fleur-de-lis trim dug into one palm, and the prayer card crumpled in the other.
“I’m not.”
Jack didn’t seem to hear her. It wouldn’t have mattered if he had. He smiled, delighted to crush her beliefs either way. Amelia turned to leave out the pocket door to the foyer, but Jack darted forward. His palm collided with the wall, and his outstretched arm blocked her escape.
“You care about him?” he rasped with liquor on his breath and malice in his eyes.
Amelia’s mind raced for her next move. She didn’t know what hurts Jack drowned in the bottle, so she gave him some grace and pushed past the fear thick in her throat.
“Yes. Very much. Do you?” she asked, quiet but accusatory.
Jack smiled a nearly perfect smile. To think, she’d once thought him kind, an ally in the underworld. She’d gravely misjudged him.
“I’ve known Em most my life. You’ve only been here a minute. He’ll fuck you ‘til he takes you home then forget you ever existed. You’re nothing to him.Nothing.”
Amelia lifted her chin to meet his unfocused gaze. She wasn’t forged in fire with a steel spine and sharp tongue. She didn’t command a room with golden laughter and effortless charm. She went unnoticed in quiet corners and spoke too softly for others to hear, but she wasn’t nothing, never nothing, and stood her ground with a trembling voice and her heart thundering in her chest.
“I’m not nothing to him, and you know that,” she said.
Like a curtain coming down, Jack’s self-possession fell to the floor. It left him red-faced and fuming.
