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Conor
I knew something was wrong the moment I stepped inside Dublin Ink the next morning.
Otherwise Mason would have been upstairs still with Miss Last Night instead of pacing back and forth with a bottle of whiskey. Otherwise Rian would have been facing the wall with his hands behind his back studying a beam of sunlight instead of waiting by the front door.
Otherwise Aurnia would have been there. Her eyes on me. Her gaze sending me into ecstasy. Into turmoil.
“Now whatever you do,” Mason said, confirming immediately my suspicions, “don’t freak out.”
The bottle of whiskey was shoved into my hands as Rian rubbed at my shoulders, saying, “Remember that violence is not the answer.”
“What’s going on?” I demanded.
The two of them were herding me like sheepdogs. I glared and tried to shoo them away as I went toward the back. They blocked my every path. I was big, but Mason was, too. And Rian was crafty. I could take them, or at least I’d tried in the past. But I first needed to know if it was worth it.
“It’s not a big deal,” Rian said in this soft, soothing voice that was only serving to piss me off. “I mean, it’s just money, right?”
“What do you mean ‘it’s just money’?” I asked, trying to dart past Mason who blocked me with another offering of whiskey. “Where is Aurnia?”
“We can solve things with words,” Mason said. “Right, Conor?”
I swatted away the bottle.
Mason shoved it back. “Maybe a shot would help before we tell you.”
“Tell me what? What the fuck is going on?”
“Nothing that requires the ripping off of heads or yanking away of limbs, eh, buddy?” Rian said.
I’d backed him up toward the counter. When he moved to block the cash register, I knew exactly what had happened. I pushed him aside and opened the bottom drawer: empty. Completely empty.
“Look,” Mason said with a hand on my shoulder that I wanted to bite off, “she’s still young. Still making dumb mistakes.”
Rian added, “We’ll just talk to her, Conor. We don’t need to go flying off the handle.”
I looked from one to the other. There was fear in their eyes. Fear of what I would do. Fear of what I was capable of.
I looked from one to the other and then said flatly, “Aurnia didn’t do this.”
It was more than obvious that this was the last thing in the world that either of them expected to hear.
Mason pointed at the empty cash register drawer like the only problem was that I hadn’t seen it. Rian’s head just tilted quizzically to the side as he regarded me silently.
“Conor, it’s empty,” Mason said. “Everything we’ve earned, scrimped and saved for…it’s not there.”
“I can see that,” I said.
Mason shifted from foot to foot as his hand, still pointing at the register, fell slightly. Rian did not move at all except to narrow his eyes almost imperceptivity.
“Conor,” Mason said slowly, “the money is not here.”
“Stop treating me like an imbecile,” I snapped. “I know it’s empty. And I know it’s Aurnia who didn’t take it.”
Mason’s hand dropped. He looked at Rian, who was eyeing me like I’d caught some strange disease. Mason blinked between Rian and me.
“But I don’t understand,” he said. “It had to have been her. It certainly wasn’t me or you or Rian.”
“It wasn’t Aurnia,” I said, setting my feet wide like I was in for a fight.
