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I nodded. The baseball coach was one of the first priests I sent to meet his maker.
“I saw him handing Dad a thick envelope of money when he picked me up. Dad wouldn’t look at me. It was like he went out of his fucking waynotto look at me. That’s when I realized that asshole knew what was happening. And he chose to ignore it.” Jasper took a drink from the tumbler and reached for a cigarette. “I heard him thank Father Johnson once, and that old fucker laughed and said, ‘No, thank you, Colm, and God bless you.’”
Jasper lit the cigarette and took a long drag, staring out into the garden. “God fucking bless you, he said. Can you believe it?”
My skin was cold to the touch. All the blood had fled to some other location as the clarity of just how long Jasper had carried this burden, this secret, hit me.
“Jasper.” His name came out in a whisper. Worse, it came out in a teary whisper.
He nodded with the same stoicism that had become his trademark. I now knew why.
“Like I said, Ma, I get why you did what you did, and I appreciate it. It was a long damn time before I could have done that without getting caught, and I’m grateful to you for doing it, but now we need to figure out what the fuck Beck has. Or thinks she has on you.”
“If all goes well, they can all just think she’s another cop with a grudge against the family.”
“And if all went well, we wouldn’t be in this position. Would we?” He didn’t wait for an answer. “I’ll talk to Ellison again, but in the meantime, we need to make sure we’re virgin clean on this shit, and that means we need to bring everyone in on this.”
“I’m not ready,” I admitted. “I will be, but right now, I’m not, Jasper.”
He gave a nod of understanding and took another drag off his cigarette. “Okay, not tonight, Sadie. But soon. We can’t put this off for much longer. You know Beck. She won’t have a problem approaching Cal or Virgil with her theories.”
He was right. I knew it even if everything within me fought against it. “I know.”
“Okay.” He finished his glass and stood, opening the sliding doors to let the family back inside.
“We’re ready for dinner,” he called to one of the waiting housekeepers and dropped back down into his seat, stamping out his smoke in the crystal ashtray. The weight of the world on his broad shoulders.
As I looked at Jasper, the weight he carried, the pain, sorrow, and anger in his eyes, I hated Colm even more. I hated him for forcing me to show my children a side of me they never, ever needed to fucking see.
CHAPTERFIFTEEN
Sadie
“This place is shit.” The words came out slurred and to no one in particular, mostly because there was no one inside the VIP room with me to hear them. It was Saturday night, and Lucky Lopez was—finally—open again. The place was packed. All the headlining acts showed up begging for the main stage slots now that the doors were open again, and all the bars were three people deep. I could practically see the dollar signs floating in the air.
Bass thumped from the speakers.
Red lights gave the whole place a sexy glow.
Skin. Flesh. Hot bodies ground on poles, the stage floor, each other. Whatever was required to get more bills in their pockets. Or thongs.
Everything was exactly as it was before.
Before Brendan Rhymer got his brains splattered all over this room.
Before Tits had been carved up and murdered in the back alley.
Before Mueller.
Before Bonnie.
It was exactly the same, but to me, it was wrong. All wrong.
The door opened, and Jasper entered first, but I saw a group of men behind him. He stopped abruptly when he saw me and frowned. “What are you doing in here?”
“Observing. Problem?”
He glanced over his shoulder. “This room has been rented,” he said, indicating the clients following behind him.
