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Henri leaned back against the wall beside the open door. “Want to go find that speedboat you were talking about earlier?”
Bailey knew Henri was trying to feel him out, trying to see if he was okay with all that had been said. But nothing so far made Bailey believe anything other than what he’d always believed: that Henri was a good man who had fought his way out of a horrible situation.
“No,” Bailey said, and shook his head. “But I do want to know the rest of the story.”
Henri looked away, toward the open door, and Bailey got the impression that maybe he was looking for that speedboat.
“Bailey…”
Shit, Bailey knew that tone. Henri was shutting down. Those bridges he’d burned through? That wall he’d knocked down? Bailey could see them all re-forming right before his eyes.
Henri ran a hand through his hair. His jaw was bunched tight and he looked everywhere but at Bailey. All color had drained from his face now, and he looked as though he were going to be sick. Bailey got off the bed and walked toward him. Henri looked his way, and their eyes collided.
Fear, worry, and heartbreak stared back at Bailey, and when he took a step closer, Henri shook his head.
“Don’t.”
Bailey felt as though he’d been hit by an arctic blast, and his feet automatically froze in place.
“If you touch me right now, if you come any closer, I’m going to do the one thing I promised I never would with you.” Bailey frowned, and Henri said, “I’ll lie.”
Bailey blinked, and Henri pushed off the wall and closed the space between them.
Henri cradled Bailey’s face between his hands. “I’ll lie because I don’t want to hurt you. I’ll lie because I don’t want to disappoint you.” Henri bent his head until their foreheads met, closed his eyes, and whispered, “But most of all, I’ll lie because I never want you to look at me any other way than how you’ve looked at me since yesterday.”
Bailey’s stomach knotted and his heart raced at the desperation in Henri’s voice. He cupped Henri’s face and said, “Then trust me. Trust that I love you, and trust that I’ll understand whatever it is you’re going to tell me.” Henri opened his eyes. “Tell me the rest of the story, Henri. Let me in.”
What Henri told him after that was a story that was so horrendous, it was difficult to believe it was true.
It was of two young boys who were the sons of monsters. Friends by accident, each other’s champion because they had to be, and with every word Henri spoke, it became more and more obvious as to why he and Priest shared such a strong bond, even after their romantic one had been severed.
Those two little boys had lived through hell, and though one had gotten out and the other had stayed behind, they’d somehow come out on the other side intact for the most part.
Bailey wasn’t sure how long he sat there listening, perched at the end of the bed with Henri pacing back and forth. But as words like crime boss, prison, threats, and murder left Henri’s mouth, that niggling, anxious feeling Bailey had had earlier morphed into a gnawing sensation in his gut.
Henri stopped in front of him and said, “Have you heard the name Jimmy Donovan before?”
The room plunged into silence as Henri waited for an answer. And like one of those dreams where a person found themselves falling or running or trying to get away from what they knew was going to be the worst possible ending, Bailey blinked and hoped to God he hadn’t just heard Henri right.
Jimmy Donovan? As in the Jimmy Donovan the cops had fished out of the Calumet River after he’d killed a couple of guards back in Louisiana and escaped prison? Of course Bailey had heard of him. Every cop in Chicago had heard of him, because it had been so strange that one of the most notorious crime bosses had—
Bailey stopped, licked his suddenly dry lips, and tried to swallow.
“I’ll take that as a yes.”
Bailey knew he needed to say something, or at least ask the question that was rattling around in his head. But talking now seemed close to impossible, probably because he couldn’t seem to make sense of what his brain was now piecing together.
Priest was the son of numero uno?
Priest?
My friend, Priest?
Joel Priestley was Jimmy Donovan’s son? Holy fuck. How was that even possible?
“After what happened between me and Joel, when we were…broken up, I guess, I went back to New Orleans but fell off the map. I became a ghost, but I made sure to keep my eye on the two fuckers rotting away in prison. I knew the way they worked; my dad had already told me that Jimmy had an eye on Joel. But I figured as long as I kept an eye on them, I’d be able to warn Joel if anything happened.”
