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“Alfie—"
“Everything’s fine, I swear. I know I haven’t had my head in the game lately—”
“It’s more than that,” I flipped the body over and dug the wallet out of the back pocket. “You were missing for two days, Alfie. Right after Moretti’s guys torched our warehouse, a warehouseyouwere supposed to be supervising. I was nearly ready to start dragging the river for a body.”
“I know.” Alfie exhaled and pushed a hand through his unruly curls. “I know. Callum gave me an earful.”
“As he damn well should have. And ever since then, you’ve been distracted. On your phone constantly, sloppy sweep work…it’s not like you.”
Alfie stood and folded his arms over his chest, staring down at the bodies without seeing them. He was so uncharacteristically grim, that I felt a sliver of worry start to bite into my frustration. I rose from where I’d been crouched, meaning to wrestle an answer from him, but a sharp twinge in my side made me hiss, and I pressed a hand to my ribs. It came away wet with blood.
Alfie’s eyes widened. “Shit. Why didn’t you tell me you were hurt?”
“I didn’t realize it until now.” I pulled up the hem of my dark shirt, the fabric saturated with blood. “It’s not too bad.”
Alfie batted my hands out of the way. “Bad enough to need stitches. He got you pretty good before you put a bullet in him.”
He poked at it, and I grunted. “Just help me bind it, I’ll take care of it later.”
“No way. I’m driving you home.”
“Home?”
“Your wife just happens to be a doctor,” Alfie smirked. “Or have you forgotten?”
I hadn’t forgotten. If I was accusing Alfie of being distracted, then I needed to shoulder some of that, because Cassidy had been on my mind every hour of the day for the last two weeks. And frankly, I was worried sick.
Putting her on lockdown was not going over well. Our interactions were clipped and formal if we even spoke at all. I hated denying her the only thing she’d asked me for—to return to work. I knew she was going stir crazy up there without anything to do, but it just wasn’t safe. The drive-by at her old apartment had made that painfully obvious.
I felt like I hadn’t slept in a month. Knowing how close that bullet had been to hitting Cassidy had taken at least a year off my life. Feeling her in my arms again was enough to take some of the chill out of our relationship, but seeing that bullet hole in the bricks was sobering. I couldn’t take any chances with her, no matter how much she hated me for it.
So, yeah. I hadn’t forgotten that Cassidy was more than capable of putting in a couple stitches. But that would involve explaining how I got hurt. I couldn’t risk pushing her over the edge after the drive-by.
I pulled off my shirt and peered down at my torso. The slice across my ribs was still seeping blood and nearly the width of my hand, but it was straight and looked clean enough. Tommy could stitch it up later. He wasn’t the best seamstress, but he’d do.
“We’re meeting Sullivan in an hour, clear across town. And now we’ve got to clean up this mess, too.” I pointed at the bodies on the floor. Christ, what a mess. It wasn’t often that the two Clans that controlled South Boston met up, but this thing with Moretti was enough to justify it. I had the feeling Callum and Sullivan were about to go on the offensive.
“I can take care of this. Just go,” Alfie said.
“Callum needs me there with Sullivan.”
Alfie was sullen as he tore my shirt into strips, binding it tighter than he needed to. “You need to get this taken care of.”
“You need to stop being a mother hen.”
“And you need to stop being a stubborn asshole.” Alfie tied off the binding, then leaned back to light a cigarette. He exhaled heavily, and it struck me how much older he looked. That carefree perma-smile of his hid heavy weight, I realized, and I wasn’t the only one who was stressed. He pulled off his sweater and handed it to me to hide the makeshift bandages. “Is there a reason you don’t want Cassidy to know about this?”
“Things are already tense enough, after everything has happened. You know her history.”
“She’s stronger than you think.” Another silence, then he said quietly, with the faintest trace of a smirk, “You like her, don’t you?”
“And what would you know about it?”
“Let’s just say I’ve had a bit of perspective shift,” Alfie said cryptically. “I can tell. You like her. And for what it’s worth, I’m happy for you.”
I was about tell him that he was wrong. I was about to tell him that I was simply protective of someone who was placed in my care. But that was a lie. I’d known since Maine that the feelings I’d developed for Cassidy ran deep, but I’d be damned if I knew where I’d gone wrong. Now, she barely spoke to me. It was like a switch had been flipped, and no matter what I did, she remained cold and distant. I was beginning to wonder if she hadn’t been playing me in Maine.
I was also about to ask Alfie about his “perspective shift.” I realized he’d never answered my question about where he was during those two days he was missing, or what had him so distracted lately, but before I could get the chance, my phone rang.
