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She sighed and he thought she would argue with him, but she remained silent.
“What did Webber mean when he said about you leaving the mayor’s office?” His question could be considered prying, but he was working on a need-to-know basis.
Harper studied him for a minute. “I was Will’s assistant but I was dating another assistant at the time, Kenny Jacobs. The unions threatened to strike and Will made a quiet deal behind the scenes to grease the wheels to avert the labor dispute. Kenny told a reporter all about the secret deal and they quoted it as a source in the Mayor’s office. When the article came out, the world assumed it was me. I bore the brunt of all the mistrust and the antagonism. Kenny even played like he couldn’t believe I’d done it.
“Asshole,” Flynn muttered.
She nodded. “Yup, but Will knew the truth. He also knew his days were numbered so he gave me a glowing reference and I got out of there as quickly as possible. Now Will is on a bunch of boards and is pretty much retired with a golden parachute and Kenny works for the borough president in Staten Island.”
The list of people he wanted to kill on Harper’s behalf was growing exponentially. “I’m sorry you had to go through that.”
She shrugged. “It was all for the best, in the end. I saw who Kenny truly was so, I didn’t marry him. He just became my biggest mistake. I came home to Maine, and got a great job, which means I get to spend time with my friends and family. It was a win for me.”
“You’re very tough. It took guts and courage to survive that kind of shitstorm.” He meant every word. Harper was the whole package. Too bad it wasn’t a package he would get to keep.
“Your turn,” she said.
He cocked an eyebrow. “To do what?”
“Tell me about your biggest mistake.”
Flynn leaned back in the chair and straightened his legs out in front of him, crossing them at the ankles. “I’ve made a lot of mistakes. Not sure one qualifies as the biggest over any of the others.”
She met his gaze. “Pick one.”
He could tell her about running with the gangs, about joining the army to get away from them and becoming a sniper which led him to realize he was good at killing, not something he wanted her to know. He could tell her about the stealing and drugs he did in his youth. Instead, he thought if he was going to share a big mistake it had to be one that mattered.
“Her name was Siobhan. We grew up together in the same neighborhood in Queens. I’d had a crush on her for years. She had red hair and blue eyes and a razor-sharp tongue. We both ended up hanging out with the group of kids that parents always called the ‘bad lot.’” He chuckled before going on. “It was a gang and eventually Siobhan and I turned to each other as a way to keep safe. Any port in a storm. We dated through our late teen years. Siobhan was tough and smart, but she was also erratic and had a wicked temper.
“I decided that I’d had enough of gang life, of that neighborhood and I wanted out. I asked her to come with me. Told her we’d just go and make our life somewhere else.” He still remembered the look on her face. “She laughed. Said people like us don’t get out. I told her I was going; she could come along or stay, it was up to her. She picked staying.”
He lost himself in the memory of her laughing at him. Calling him stupid for thinking he could get out.
Harper shifted in her chair, a sympathetic look in her eyes.
Flynn sighed. “She told the head of the gang, a guy named Colin, that I had delusions of grandeur, and I thought I was getting out. Colin had his boys jump me to teach me a lesson.”
The next bit was going to be tough for her to hear but she had to know who the real Flynn O’Connor was. Chances were good it would be enough to end this thing between them and he needed it to be over, but he wasn’t sure he had the strength to do it himself.
“I killed the two kids who jumped me. And then I killed Colin.”
Harper’s eyes widened. Her knuckles turned white on the arms of the chair, but she said nothing and showed no other reaction.
“Siobhan stood there and watched. She didn’t help me, she didn’t run. Just stood there and watched the whole thing. When it was over she tried to hug me. Told me she loved me. I turned my back on her and left. Joined the army the next day and got out.
“I came back a few years later, home for a visit. Ran into her at a party. She was hanging off some asshole gang leader. He was playing cards with his cronies. Whoever won the pot got to screw Siobhan. That game happened every weekend. She’d become just another commodity for him to bet. I tried to get her to leave but she just laughed. Said I ruined her life. It was all my fault. The next time I came home, she was dead.”
CHAPTEREIGHTEEN
Harper didn’t know what to say. She knew there was a darkness in the man across from her, but she’d never dreamed he’d be a killer. No, that wasn’t true. On some level she knew he was a killer, but she just didn’t want to admit it. The world he’d lived in…probably lived in still…was so far removed from hers. But if she’d learned anything in the last few days, she’d learned that life was fragile and no one was safe from violence.
“I’m so sorry, Flynn.” She couldn’t think of anything else to say. There were no platitudes for this kind of situation. She understood, though, why he was so protective. He didn’t protect Siobhan and now she was dead. That’s how he saw it because that was a typical male thought process. “It wasn’t your fault and there was nothing you could’ve done to change things.”
“How would you know that? You weren’t there.”
“You know what? Men rarely give women credit for making their own decisions and making their own mistakes. It’s always ‘it was my fault she didn’t get to work, it was my fault that she two-timed me.’ Like we don’t have a mind of our own. Let me tell you something, Siobhan made her choices for whatever reasons, and she had to live with the consequences. Tuck your fragile male ego in your pocket and realize it was all on her and had nothing to do with you. You weren’t the center of her world. So, stop carrying any responsibility.”
He stared at her.
