AllFreeNovel
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I took the cigarette from his fingers and drew in an inhale. I’d been taking hits off his cigarettes since the first time I snuck out of the house to see him. Something we shared that seemed intimate but didn’t cross the lines of our friendship. Maybe back then, it was to be closer to him. I put my lips where his had been and then he had his where mine had been.
Now, it was just another one of our things.
“You’d think so,” I said about the wedding being canceled. “Especially after I confessed to watching porn to learn about sex.”
“Ah, Ally, you know you can ask me anything.”
“You can barely listen to me talk about being his wife. I didn’t think you’d want to teach me how to suck his dick.”
“Fucking hell. Did you?”
I shoved my shoulder against his. “I don’t think you want the details because I’m smiling for a good reason.”
“When is the wedding?”
“Temporarily postponed. He’ll be back in a couple weeks.” I took another hit off his cigarette.
I pulled one knee into my chest and wrapped my arm around my shin. The park was busy. The screech of skateboard decks sliding across rails blended with the sounds of traffic. Dogs barked in the sectioned off-leash area.
“This is dangerous, Knox. Why did you need to meet me?”
He stood. “Let’s walk.”
I stuffed my hands into the pouch of my hoodie as we followed the cement pathways weaving through the park.
“Fuck.” He raked a hand through his dark blond hair. Dirty, just like the boy who’d become a man in the Irish mafia. Honed, whipcord tough and radiating aggression, his presence intimidated even the air around him.
But the same qualities that kept others away blanketed me in a comfortable familiarity.
Knox glanced over his shoulder, then stepped closer, and lowered his voice. “Irish have expanded their interests.”
I glanced into his face.
“Fuck, okay, listen. This is shit you can’t know about. Ally, I’m fucking serious. You have this good heart that wants to protect people, but sometimes shit is out of your control. Sometimes, the only thing you can do is keep your mouth shut.”
I curled my fingers around his forearm. “What’s going on, Knox? You’re scaring me. Are you in trouble?”
“No, but I think Dee might be.”
Pressure instantly choked me, the tightness seeped into my chest, and a turbulent spiral of fear twisted in my gut. “What about Deidre?”
We stayed on the path that led away from the clusters of skateboarders, dogs, and kids squealing in the playground.
“Byrne has a taste for teenage girls. Always has. A couple of years ago, he got caught. Cops never got involved because he paid off the family. But it wouldn’t have mattered. Last month, he had the governor out on his yacht. There were two fourteen-year-old girls for entertainment.”
Nausea rolled in my gut. I couldn’t argue the criminality of what Knox told me. We lived in a world where the law only applied when you were caught, and then there weren’t always consequences. Money and power, wealth and privilege, whatever the cost.
“What does this have to do with Dee?”
“Byrne is untouchable. His bitch, Jessie, grooms the girls. She tells them what they want to hear, spends a few days gaining their trust. Once she finds out what they’re into, she lures them in for Byrne. Most want to get high or they like the money, and some go because they want to have sex with older men.”
As he spoke, a dark feeling of dread burned in my chest.
“Even if the girls realize their fucked, they don’t say shit,” Knox said. “Byrne makes sure they know the consequences. And then they go home with a couple hundred bucks in their pocket.”
“Why are you telling me this?”
His gaze softened on me. “Because Byrne has discovered some girls are worth more than a few hundred bucks. Those girls don’t all make it home. He sells them.”
