Something didn’t add up. Why the hell did he look so disheveled? And why did he care so much that she’d disappeared? He’d never liked her. Amelia tried to yank her arm away. Rich tightened his grip and roughly steered her toward the vehicle.
“I know what I said,” he muttered.
Amelia turned back to the mini mart. Inside, Mirabelle stood at the counter with Thomas. His eyes locked on Amelia as Richard shoved her into the back seat and climbed in after. As the car lurched backwards, Thomas bolted outside.
Amelia’s heart sank as she gained her bearings. Two men sat in the front seat with weapons across their laps. The one on the passenger side turned around. She’d seen his face before. In a black hood and with one black eye, he’d lurked on the outskirts of Richard’s party like death itself.
When he flashed a soulless smile at her, Amelia shrieked and yanked the door handle. Locked inside, she pounded on the window, and before she could scream again, Richard covered her mouth and nose with a cloth.
Something acrid seared down her throat and into her lungs.Eyes watering, she struggled against him, arms and legs flailing until they became too heavy to move.
“I’m sorry, Amelia,” Richard whispered. “I’m very sorry.”
THIRTY-FIVE
EMORY
In the basement lounge, echoes of Emory’s past cut deep. The fearsome four, as they were once called—Emory, Jack, Corey, and Pete—swapped stories at the far end of the table.
Jack hooted with laughter until tears streaked his cheeks. Corey deadpanned tales from their early years, and Pete filled in the blanks for Zulu. Barely twenty-two, the kid kept his black hair shaved close to the sides, all but the top that was hard parted and slicked back. Tattoos crept down his arms to the knuckles. He mostly stayed quiet, seemingly enamored with the lore circling the table.
In the years before Emory and Jack’s rise to the top, Pete and Corey were their equals. The hierarchy hadn’t busted them apart yet or hidden Corey’s dry wit and Pete’s goofy humor behind a wall of deference. Emory missed the days when Corey spoke freely and Pete could still be himself.
Nostalgia didn’t just sting, though. Sharp as a knife, it cut Emory to shreds when he tried to hold on. By early evening, he excused himself to the great room when the reminiscence felt too much like grieving the past. Vacuous despite oversized furniture and minimalist in its absence of decorative flourishes, the space was simple and secluded. After a while, Jack drifted in and flopped down in the chaise lounge.
“I’mgoing stir crazy. I don’t know how Liam does it.”
“I think he likes being a recluse these days,” Emory replied, insight gleaned through observation.
Liam had had his time in the sun and basked in that light as long as he could, but it drained him. In his early-sixties, the man wanted his oasis in the desert and mundane delights—reality TV, a hot-house garden, afternoon naps with yesterday’s newspaper draped over his chest.
“I’d forgotten so many of those stories,” Jack said. “It really was a better time.”
Emory picked a bit of lint off his black jeans and crossed his arms. “There were hard times too.”
Hindsight was shaded like grenadine and tasted just as sweet. But there were nights when Corey screamed for help in his sleep. Emory would rush into his bedroom and shake him awake. “It’s just a dream,” Corey would say and climb from sweat-dampened sheets, partly embarrassed but mostly sorry.
“Where are you going after all this?” Jack asked. “Back home to Vegas?”
After all this.A mournful smile played on Emory’s lips.
Time in the Moriartys was a continuum. All origins before were wiped clean and everything after was endless, expansive, and consuming. There was no “after this,” but Emory knew what Jack meant; after Ivan was dealt with, after the dust settled and they fell into a familiar rhythm again.
Necessity, not glamor, drew Emory to Vegas, and it’d be a frigid day in blistering hell before he ever called it home. Home would always be Northern California. His place there sat high on a bluff that overlooked the craggy coast and was nestled amongst a grove of cypress and pine. He toiled over the house he’d built, raising it from his own vision of what a true home should be. Irony of ironies, he never stayed long.
“What I really want is to go home, back north.”
Emory cleared a catch in his throat and let the rest go unsaid; that it’d be a one-way trip. He’d take Amelia, and they’d start overthere, construct a life worth living and mark his time in the Moriartys as a strange interlude.
Jack cast dodgy eyes to an empty hall and lowered his voice, a precaution against blasphemy perhaps.
“It’s okay to be tired of this life sometimes, Em. I can’t imagine Liam loved it every second.”
Emory shook his head. “I wouldn’t underestimate him. This is his namesake, his legacy.”
“It’s your legacy too. You’ll do right by it. You always have.”
For Emory, it wasn’t about love or legacy but duty. He chained himself to the organization and gave Liam his word that he’d usher the Moriartys into a new era. Love was reserved for family, but they were his family. In that way, the line blurred and competing instincts were braided too tight to unwind.
