Page 42 of Illusive
Ronan couldn’t even consider what he would do if Ireland never returned because the ferocity of his reaction to the mere thought wouldn’t allow him to.Whenshe was home again, she would need time away. Certainly from work, possibly from him. He had the vacant condo in his Harlem building on hold. Marcelle would enjoy helping him furnish it and spending time with her brother, but for how long?
As he rode the elevator down to the parking garage, Ronan acknowledged the likelihood that Ireland could withdraw from the world—and him—entirely for a while. Which would leave him living in a city that didn’t suit him, trying to save a company he’d worked hard to destroy, while he waited for a woman who’d cast him aside and had never committed to a relationship topossiblywant him again.
From the garage, he walked up the exit ramp to the street and was relieved to find it mostly deserted. Just around the corner on Fifth Avenue, he knew the lobby entrance was still shadowed by the mass of people and news vans clustered on the street outside.
He flagged a passing cab. When it pulled over, Ronan slid inside and gave his destination. “48thand 7th, please. Vidal Records.”
Gerald John Crosby, called Gerry by those who knew him, was five years old when he first killed something. It was a neighbor’s stupid cat who kept shitting in the apartment complex’s playground sandbox, the one place he could have fun while johns visited his whore mother for drugs and sex.
The rush was powerful. Something like the first time he’d licked white powder off the cigarette ash-littered coffee table.
Gerry had an anger problem, or so his teachers and school counselor had said when he entered kindergarten. His temper was always simmering and could flash boil at the slightest provocation. As the years passed, it exploded more frequently and with more violence.
Terrorizing his classmates and stray animals helped soothe the rage that burned in him, but that was nothing compared to when his twelve-year-old self decided to show his slut bitch mother who was actually in charge. She finally figured it out as he choked the life out of her drugged and drunken body with his bare hands.
The most exhilarated he’d ever felt was watching the terror finally dawn in her unfocused, red-rimmed eyes. Resignation followed, then relief, and finally sightlessness. When she’d gone slack, it’d made his dick so hard it hurt.
The idiot cops blamed her murder on one of her johns and shuffled Gerry into the foster care system. He’d been stuck with a couple of families who had rules, curfews, and expensive shit to fence for drug and whore money, but then he was placedin homes not unlike the one he’d escaped from. Some weren’t terrible, and some were even fun, if other kids were housed with him that he could fuck with.
He was sent to juvie for the first time at fourteen. The only people excited about that were the head shrinkers. Talk talk talk… that’s all they wanted him to do. But he’d made some friends along the way. People with connections and skills. Others like him. He slid in and out of jail over the years, but he got smarter. Found people who liked how he handled his shit and wanted him to handle their shit, too. They helped him get better at leaving no evidence behind.
He preferred spontaneity—there really was nothing as exciting as killing someone on a whim—but he conceded that planning and preparing kept him out of jail.
Which was why he and Livi made such a good pair. She liked the plan and prep bullshit. He’d say she liked it too much, was too focused on the details, and was sometimes too cautious. If he’d had his way, they’d be living large at some foreign beach resort right now, fucking like feral cats on piles of untraceable cash and occasionally drinking something with those idiotic umbrellas that poked you in the nostrils. She appreciated flourishes like that.
But she was too busy enjoying the power of having someone completely at her mercy, and that was screwing everything up.
She’d never told him why she hated the Vidals so much. She hated their privilege for sure, but it seemed a lot more personal than envy.
Picking up his phone, Gerry called her again. He’d been calling her all morning, but she wasn’t answering, and he was getting more pissed with every hour that passed. The television was airing nonstop coverage of the kidnapping, and if he saw another replay of Gideon Cross spouting his bullshit, he might just throw the television out of the window.
He didn’t want to admit that he was worried Livi had already bailed and left him behind to face the music alone. She was just as much a faithless cunt as any other woman. He liked her because they were simpatico. Twin flames, she said. Her temper was worse than his, and she had a mean streak a mile wide. She let him be who he was, helped him get away with living as he pleased, and she could take a pussy pounding like no other bitch he’d ever met. She let him do things to her that he’d killed other women for, so they wouldn’t turn him in to the police.
“Hello, my love,” she answered. She sounded happier than a pig in shit, but that was just the modulator she used to hide her voice. He liked her real voice better. She said his phone disguised his voice, too, but he’d never called himself to hear what his alter ego sounded like.
“Where the fuck are you?” he snarled. “I’ve been trying to call for hours.”
“I keep my phone powered off when I’m out so it’s not pinging off any towers near that rich asshole. I told you that.”
Yeah, she had. He didn’t understand how that crap worked and kind of resented that she did. He couldn’t stand stuck-up, entitled bitches, but the clever ones really got his goat. “I need to get out of this fucking place, Liv. I’m bouncing off the walls here.”
“I know, I know. But don’t worry. I’m on the way with takeout. And your favorite beer. Got a couple of joints, too, so you can relax a little.”
Gerry hated that his temper softened at hearing she’d been thinking about him. He liked it better when he was angry—it made him feel like a fucking god. “I can’t stay here forever, but I can’t show my goddamn face in public!”
“I told you to wear those facial prosthetics.”
“I can’t hardly breathe through my nose as it is! That rubber shit was suffocating me.”
“Baby, we’re going to get all that money, and we’ll fix your nose. Your scars. Whatever you want. You can look like a movie star. I’ve always wanted to fuck Brad Pitt.”
“Fuck that guy. I happen to like my face, and now it’s got a target on it!”
There was silence on the other end of the line. Gerry hated that it caused a little spurt of fear. “Livi? You still there?”
“Are you done whining?”
His fist clenched hard around the phone. “I’m going stir crazy, Liv.”
