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“I told you, it’s a short documentary on the food industry. I didn’t ask too many questions, Eoghan.” I felt bad for lying, but this had to be done. Hopefully some good would come of it, even if I was killed.
“How’s Jack?” Eoghan asked, sounding exhausted.
“Still asleep.”
Eoghan grunted. I thought I recognized a voice speaking in the background, but Eoghan ended the call before I could come to any conclusions.
Pocketing my phone, I entered Jack’s bedroom. He was sleeping atop the comforter. It took a few pulls, but I was able to move him. His body hit the floor with a sickening thud. Jack moaned, turning his head left and right. When his eyelids fluttered, I swiped the leather case from the bedside table, fumbling with the zipper. By the time I knelt by his side, syringe at the ready, he was nearly awake.
Jack’s expression was wrought with pain, but when he saw me, his frown disappeared. He looked at the syringe in my hand, his eyes widening.
“Emma?” he slurred, fumbling over my simple name.
“I’m so sorry, baby,” I whimpered, pulling up the sleeve of his T-shirt and sticking the needle into his tattooed shoulder.
He flinched, but I felt it more than he did. Having to do this to him was a necessary evil. Jack’s eyelids drooped, his muscles relaxing as I pressed my lips to his forehead. My eyes burned with tears I refused to let fall. There wasn’t enough time.
I returned the syringe to its case, then tightened my ponytail. “You can do this, Em.”
Jack was close to one hundred pounds heavier than me, so moving him strained muscles in my body I hadn’t even known existed. It took over thirty minutes, and I was drenched in sweat by the time I’d laid him on his side in the panic room, a blanket wrapped around his large frame.
I grabbed a pen and paper from his office, having thought about what I would write on the drive back from Boston. Still, seeing the stack of novels on his bookshelf made my chest constrict. They were books that Jack had stolen from my apartment over the months. Steinbeck, Angelou, Vonnegut, even Stephen King—we’d read them together, lying side by side, our heads touching.
Pushing the memory down, I taped a note to the inside of the panic room door, making sure Jack had all he needed until I returned. If I didn’t survive, he could push the panic button. The entire mob would descend, just to realize his ex-girlfriend had locked him in his own panic room. Jack would feel like an idiot.
Because that was exactly what I was doing. I changed the code to the safe so Jack wouldn’t be able to escape until he guessed it right.
“Sweet dreams, Jack,” I whispered, shutting the heavy door.
When I turned to face the interior of the closet, Fia startled me. The dark cat sat upright on the island, his green eyes brimming with what I assumed was judgment.
“Don’t give me that look,” I said, scratching him under the chin. He dodged my hand after a few taps, sinking onto his belly. “I’m trying to help him.”
* * * *
Jack
My dreams were relentless. I fought with all my might to pull myself out of them, but had no such luck.
They started off with Emma, as most did. She was warm and soft, asleep in bed after I got home from another late night. Stripping down to my black briefs, I crawled under the blankets to join her, pressing my hard body against her supple one. She sighed with contentment—the best sound a man could come home to—but when she faced me, it wasn’t Emma. Faye Walsh smiled at me, her white teeth glowing in the city’s lights.
“Fuck!” I scrambled backward, falling off the bed.
Instead of hitting the plush rug, I landed on a cold linoleum floor. I recognized the cheap, beige-and-white diamond pattern. I was in the tiny kitchen of my family’s old Boston subsidized apartment. My father towered over me, younger than I remembered. He held a black pistol in hand, his gaze withdrawn.
“Shoot him, Jackie Boy,” he ordered.
I rose to my feet, taking the Ruger from him. The metal weapon was unfamiliar in my grasp. My arms were skinnier, the limbs of a child.
My gaze roamed the face of Tony Greco, the mobster. In my dream, he was foreign to me. I didn’t know why my father wanted him dead. “What did he do?”
“It doesn’t matter. If I tell you to kill someone, you do it without hesitation.”
“I’m not a child anymore,” I argued, the gun growing heavier in my grip, dragging me down. I strained to keep myself upright. “I decide who dies, not you.”
“He tried to kill Emma.”
As the man opened his mouth to protest, I aimed the gun and shot him. He’d tried to take Emma from me. That was a death sentence in my book.
