“We know,” all three of us said.
His eyes went wide. “Damn, you guys are good. That has been a secret for—”
“Over thirty years. Yes, we know,” James snapped. “Your mother was sold to Cal?”
Kevin nodded. “She told Ian and I everything once her withdrawals started to settle down.”
“Drugs?” I prompted.
He nodded solemnly. “Pumped full every day for years to numb the pain. My mother was from Italy, and my father got to pick his wife. He had been running for Romano, climbing the ladder. My father was power hungry. In exchange for my mother, he owed Romano sons to play baseball. If my mother had girls…they would be sold into the rings.”
“Jesus,” I muttered, shaking my head.
“Christ above,” James growled.
Gwen put her hand on her chest and looked at me, her eyes filled with tears.
I know, baby girl, I know.
“When did Collin come into your life?” James asked after a few moments of heavy silence. Jer came back into the room, leaning against the opposite wall.
Kevin began to tell us about the day his father brought him a dirty, black-haired little boy. He was covered in glass and blood. Cal told his sons they weren’t allowed to talk to him, and he stayed in the basement. Ian was too busy playing baseball to care.
“Curiosity got the best of me,” he said, looking at all of us. “I began to sneak down into the basement everyday just tocheck on him. My father brought him home in the middle of one of the worst winters in Chicago. At the time, my father and Romano were working on setting up a base here in St. Louis. I remembered my father talking about some gang or crew that was pushing back against our forces.”
We all shot a look to Jer.
It was Sullie and Dom. They were the ones fightingback,standing up for this city.
“My father said the boy was good at listening without being seen. Collin was used as a rat. He would walk the streets of the city, hitting up low level bars, pretending to be a homeless kid asking for food. If he got in, he would eat quietly and listen to the conversations around him. At the end of the day, he would report to my father and go to bed in the basement. That basement wasn’t heated. I felt bad for him…”
“You cared for him,” Gwen whispered.
Kevin nodded. “Eventually, we became friends, and by that summer, I was hanging out with him in secret. Years passed and…dammit, G, Collin was my best friend. Father put him in school, and he got on the baseball team with me. He was good. At one point, I loved baseball. God, I loved it.” He looked up at her, tears falling down his face. “Whenever we played, there would be a moment, just a rare moment in time, when I wasn’t the son of a mafia boss and that he wasn’t a rat for my father. We would be just two kids having fun. The older we got, the more pressure my father put on me, and he would send Collin away on missions with Romano’s men. By the time I turned sixteen, my father relocated us to St. Louis, and Ian became the star player at the university.”
Gwen looked away from him then, her eyes focusing on the wall as she let out a shaky breath.I should have been there.
“I never expected to meet you, Haley, and Kay. I never expected to build actual friendships with you. For Collin, hetreated it like a job. He was so fucking serious and cold all the time…except for when he had to be around you.”
“Stop,” she hissed.
He didn’t. “When he was around Kay, I know you saw it too. He was different with her. He—”
“Enough!” Jer barked, stepping up to Kevin, silencing him. The man gulped.Yup, a pussy.He looked at me next, his brown eyes holding mine. “We're needed at Oasis.”
James was silent, watching the man in the chair. He stepped forward, crouching down to get eye level with the man. “I watched you. I watched all of you. For months. You were nice to Haley. You used to walk her to classes.”
Kevin swallowed as the agent gripped his jaw, slowly rising to his full height.
“You hurt her. You betrayed her. That makes you a dead man. I don’t forgive people who hurt the woman I love. Remember that,” he growled before pushing his face away roughly.
We filed out of the room, with me the last to leave. I turned to him, looking up at the light. “I’ll leave that on for you.”
He stared, his throat bobbing. “Thank you, Dean.”
An hour later, the four of us were standing in the middle of Oasis.
This was the meeting place for street racers in St. Louis.
