Page 9 of Conor
“Right.” She clears her throat and stares at the floor. “I should probably do that.”
I warm up the car while she puts herself together in the bathroom, and she joins me a few minutes later. She looks different this morning with the makeup scrubbed free from her face and her hair pulled back. The sexualized dancer from last night is gone, and all that’s left now is sweet. She looks like the kind of girl a guy would want to take home to his mammy.
I force the car into gear and pull onto the street. “Hope you like Dunkies. It’s about the only place we ever do breakfast.”
I feel her eyes on me before she answers. “Dunkies is fine.”
The silence between us doesn’t improve, so I opt for the drive-thru to make it as quick and painless as possible. “What do ye fancy?”
She looks at the menu and shrugs. “Just a donut and coffee would be fine.”
She’s trying to make it easy, and I wonder if it’s because she knows I think she’s a nuisance. As if I haven’t already made that clear. But I remember how she scoffed down her pancakes last night, so with that in mind, I order a mixed dozen and two coffees. I hand them off to her and pull back onto the road.
“Where are we going?” I ask.
“Oh, um, you can just drop me at Sláinte. I left my car there.”
“Right, I’ll do that then.”
We’re both quiet, and I can’t get there soon enough. I have half a notion to let Crow know this task doesn’t suit me, but that would make me a fucking muppet to say so. I barely know this girl. Crow has asked so little of me, and this is the only thing he’s ever asked me to do in confidence. I’m not about to let down the man who took me in and gave me a purpose over a bloody woman.
“Where did you go last night?” Ivy pipes up.
I look at her, and her cheeks flush with pink when she realizes how stupid her question is. You don’t ask a mafia bloke where he goes. Ever. She would know that from her time with Muerto, I’m sure, but she doesn’t retract the question.
“Out.” I grip the steering wheel tighter. “I had business.”
“We waited for you to come back,” she tells me. “I thought we were going to play cards. Wasn’t that the whole point?”
“I didn’t invite you,” I point out.
She turns toward the window, and I feel like an arsehole. But it’s better this way. She should know what she’s getting herself into.
A few minutes later she appears to have bounced back from it when she opens the box of donuts. “Which one do you want?”
“None. Those are for you.”
I feel her eyes on me, studying me like she could figure me out, but she doesn’t say anything else. The drive back to the club is the longest one I’ve ever made, and when I pull into the empty lot, I can finally breathe again.
“I’m just down the street,” Ivy says. “You don’t have to wait.”
“I’m not,” I grumble. “I’ve got business inside.”
“Oh, right. Well thank you for breakfast, and the lift. I guess I’ll see you around.”
We both get out of the car, and I’m tempted to watch her walk away, but instead I turn toward the club and head for the back entrance. Only, I don’t go inside. I wait until Ivy is out of sight and then start to follow her, crossing the street and using the cover of the parked cars on the other side and a wide distance to stay hidden.
She checks over her shoulder often as she walks, but never catches sight of me. I wonder if she senses that I’m the monster on her heels, or if it’s someone else she’s looking for. Her steps quicken, and she legs it several blocks like a thief in the night, darting over broken footpaths and between shoddy buildings. We’re in a commercial district now, and Ivy takes a visible breath when she crosses over the threshold as if it were her saving grace.
The wheels are turning in my mind, trying to sort out her motivations for being here. But a minute later, that mystery is solved on its own. Ivy checks both ways to make sure nobody is watching as she disappears down another alley. It’s not a throughway. It’s three brick walls merged together and a bunch of garbage cans. The kind of place that the homeless usually sleep. Or the kind of place that addicts like to shoot up. Except, she didn’t have anything on her this morning, which only leaves me with more questions.
For the next hour, I watch and wait, but she never comes out. My mind goes to a dark place, wondering if she’s passed out cold. Wondering if she’ll even be alive when I check on her. Jaysus. It’s too much, and I don’t have the patience to sit here all bloody day.
I leg it down the alley and peek around the corner of the garbage can, and there she is. Laying on a fecking piece of cardboard with a shabby ass blanket to keep herself warm. Her eyes are closed, and she’s asleep like this is the most normal thing in the world for her. It’s an image I won’t soon forget.
Whatever she may have seen or done in her past, she shouldn’t be living this way. Not like an animal. Not like this is all she deserves.
This isn’t fecking right, and I want to do something about it. But then I think of Crow and my brothers in the syndicate. Everything they’ve done for me. I promised him I would take care of this, and helping the girl isn’t going to help anyone. Not if she has a ticking clock on her life anyway.
