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“I’ve been a Morelli for ten minutes. I’m not that invested.”
“You’ve been a Morelli your whole life. And you can run from it.”
I smirked into my glass of whiskey.
“Or you can fight it. I don’t recommend that option. The world isn’t a safe place for people on their own. I think you learned that the hard way. But you can find a place here. A place where you belong.”
“By working with you?”
“Get to know your family.”
I sucked in a breath and finished my whiskey. “That’s never really worked out for me,” I said. “Family.”
“No?” Leo asked, his eyes across the room on the girls. “Though, I suppose I understand.”
Haley reached up for a book, revealing a bump beneath her dress. Was she pregnant?
I’d forgotten…or if not forgotten, pushed it to the back of my mind, where it had attached itself to all sorts of feelings. And not all of them were fear.
Poppy might have been pregnant, too.
“What’s the job?” I asked. “Security?” I did security for Caroline. Bryant wanted me to do security for him, too. I knew what that job entailed. It might look like guns hidden in suits to most people, but the darker side had eaten my soul. Fixing. Murder.
Leo shook his head. “I work in real estate. You’ve done enough destruction. Try building something.” He quirked his lips. “It’s actually satisfying.”
Building something. That does sound satisfying.
He stood and poured us another drink. “It will give you a chance to meet your cousins,” he said.
“Cousins.” I said it like it was a foreign word.
“Not all of us are bad.”
“Haley is a Constantine,” I said. “How does that work?”
A ghost of a smile. “It’s simple, actually. I don’t give a fuck about her parents. Or mine. We’re building a life together. That’s all that matters.”
I got to my feet and made my way across the big room to Poppy, who greeted me with a smile. Her hand outstretched towards mine.
She might be pregnant. This moment. The start of something brand new. Our family.
I took her hand. A life line in an unexpected sea.
* * *
“That was nice,” Poppy said, her head against my shoulder in the back of the car. “Wasn’t it? Like not scary nice, but actually nice.”
I didn’t answer her and she didn’t seem to need me to answer her.
“I liked Haley. A lot.” It was good to see her happy. Smiling. Easy. I took a deep breath and let it out slowly. “She invited us to dinner next week. I said we’d have to see if we were free. Which, you know, is hilarious.”
I didn’t laugh at all her charm and she stroked my arm.
“What’s wrong?” she asked.
“He offered me a job.”
“Do you want a job?”
“No. And I don’t need one.” I had money saved up over the years. Accounts in Ireland that were doubling every year thanks to Niamh. I looked out the window at the dark sky. There were stars out here in Bishop’s Landing. Lots of them tonight.
“He kept talking about family. About… how I could run from being Morelli. I could fight it or I could make something out of it.”
She made a sound in her throat, her body pressed to mine. “I have cousins,” I said. Apropos of nothing. “I’ve never had those before. I’ve never had…any of this before.” I looked at her, her sunny face. “You only had one glass of champagne.”
“Noticed that, did you?”
I didn’t have the bravery to ask. Maybe I didn’t want to know. I wasn’t sure, but we left it there. In the quiet between us.
“Caroline’s kids were like cousins to me and Zilla.”
“Yeah?”
“Truthfully, it was nice. I miss how nice it was. I always wanted a big family. Big holidays. Lots of noise. Lots of kids.”
Of course she did and I’d never thought about it. Not once. But in this moment I could see the appeal.
We were passing her old house. It was dark, none of the external lights on.
“Can we stop?” She asked.
“Why?”
“There’s something… I want to see if it’s still there.”
“Raj,” I said. “Stop the car.”
* * *
Poppy
I expected a burnt-out shell, broken windows and all my dresses strewn across the lawn. But it looked much the same as the night we left it. There was yellow caution tape across the front door and the windows were all dark. The lawn care service had even been by—there was one of those little signs at the edge of the lawn.
“You all right?” Ronan asked.
Parsing through all my feelings, I came up rather empty. “Yeah,” I said. “I feel…nothing for this house.” For the two years I’d lived terrified within its walls. “Nothing.”
We got out of the car and Ronan snapped the tape in front of the door and we walked right in through the unlocked door. I turned on the lights to reveal absolute chaos. Cushions destroyed, paintings torn off the walls and ripped apart. Every drawer on the main floor had been emptied. The overhead light fixtures in the kitchen had been destroyed, leaving only bare bulbs to illuminate the minefield of cutlery on the floor.
