Page 31 of Arranged Scars
“Just like that? We do five murders and we get away with it?”
“I’m a Whelan, darling.”
“I told you not to call me that.”
“The police won’t be a problem.”
“What about your brother? Won’t he be unhappy when his allies are suddenly gone?”
Finn shrugs slightly. “He’ll get over it. Help me kill your father and your brothers. We can do this, Caroline.”
I feel disgusting. Something must be wrong with me. Another flash of memory: Dermot’s fist around my throat as Redmond’s belt rips into the skin on my back.The fuck you crying for? It’s only a game. You’re so fucking soft.
I curl into myself. I pull my knees up and hold my coffee cup tightly. I can’t seriously be considering this. “I want two things, aside from the divorce and the apartment.”
“Anything.” He sounds eager. His eyes are bright with excitement.
“First, we leave my mother out of it.”
“Are you sure?”
“It’s a hard line. We don’t touch her.”
“Fine.” He waves a hand. “She’s not relevant to me.”
“Second, I want you to tell me why you’re doing this. Why you’rereallydoing it.”
His face changes slightly. The malice in his expression is horrifying. It must always be there, lurking behind the confident and nonchalant smiles, but seeing him utterly unmasked, evenfor just a brief second, really freaks me out. I nearly spill coffee down my front.
“I’m the youngest of my four brothers. When I came along, my parents were done with kids. They didn’t have time for me growing up. When I was ten, Dad sent me to a summer camp in Hudson Valley, and guess who has a beautiful, sprawling house in the countryside right near there?”
A shiver runs down my spine. I picture a long gravel road, lots of wild fields, a lovely forest with a brook through the back, and an incredible house filled with anger and spite. “I didn’t know that.”
“Every summer for five years, I stayed with your family. My father wanted your father to take care of me, teach me about our organization, and help me grow into a productive member of the Famiglia. You can probably guess what happened instead.”
I can’t meet his eyes. “My brothers were there, weren’t they?”
“I’m about Dermot’s age. It was all just boys being boys.”
“Oh, god.”
“I’d bet anything your siblings learned their craft on me and perfected it on you.”
I have to cover my face with one hand. I’m breathing fast and I can barely think. The air feels like lead in my lungs. The coffee is bitter and ugly. I put down the cup and hug my knees tightly, struggling to keep from crying, because if I start crying, I might start puking too.
He leans closer. His smile is back and now it seems sympathetic. “That’s why I want to kill them. For what they did to me. And that’s why I know you’ll help me. Because they did it to you, too,but you didn’t leave after the summer was over. No, you’ve been there your whole damn life.”
I bite my lower lip. I want to scream and cry. Sickness swells in me. A black, ugly bile in my soul. The scars go so much deeper than my skin. They crisscross my mind and ravage every piece of me.
The waitress comes over. She’s got blonde hair and looks at me curiously. But if she knows there’s a storm raging inside, she doesn’t mention it. All she does is refill our coffees and drop off the check.
When she’s gone, I struggle to compose myself. Finn’s patient. He’s almost kind. But I doubt he’s really got much humanity left.
Not if my brothers treated him even half as bad as they treated me.
“I’ll help,” I whisper, and this is wrong, so deeply wrong. I should be afraid of staining myself with murder, but if there’s a God in heaven, he’s been ignoring my desperate prayers for years. I doubt he’ll notice me now.
“Good.” He nods like we’re finishing up a business transaction. And maybe to a man like him, that’s exactly what we’re doing. “We’ll start planning tomorrow. I think you need a day to recover.”
