THE CALLAHANS (A Mafia Romance): The Complete 5 Books Series (77 page)

“I want to take you home. Make love to you in my bed.”

“Yeah?”

“I don’t know why it matters, but it feels like this thing isn’t real until we lie there together.”

I smiled. “Then we should do that. Really soon.”

We lay there quietly for a while longer, both lost in our own thoughts. I knew he was worried about the investigation into the bombing. He was worried that the police would find Kevin first. I knew the way he thought. It was so much like the way my father thought that it was almost frightening. But in this one circumstance, I was with him. The family needed to deal with this man, not the cops.

I peppered his chest with kisses, then pulled away.

“Go.”

His eyes widened slightly with surprise.

“Are you sure?”

“You won’t be able to enjoy yourself until you know what’s going on. So go, take care of this thing.”

He studied my face for a long second, then he moved into me and kissed me.

“Promise me you’ll stay here at the hotel. You won’t go home or run off with one of the other girls.”

“I promise.”

“And if you do leave, you’ll take one of the guys with you.”

“I promise.”

He kissed me again, then climbed off the bed and quickly dressed.

“Leave your phone on. I’ll call you.”

Then he was gone without looking back. I fell against the pillows, my eyes closed as I tried not to regret what I’d just done. But I knew he needed this. He needed to do all he could to make what’d happened last night right.

He was a good man. An honorable man. And I had to respect that.

Ian

They’d gotten the number Kevin used to call the bomb and set it off, but Pops and Kyle weren’t having much luck figuring out anything from it. All they knew was that it was a disposable cell phone—just like the one attached to the bomb, and it’d bounced off a cell tower near the reception hall, something the cops had discovered and Scarsorsi forwarded to Pops.

Not that any more information than that would be of much help. I might be able to figure out exactly where he’d been standing when he set off the bomb, but that wouldn’t get us any closer to finding him.

He had to be in the city. We just needed to figure out what his next move might be.

“Why is he so focused on the street war?” I asked to no one in particular. “If Pops is his goal, why not leak rumors to the press or try to have him arrested again? Why not take out one of us, or Pops himself?”

“Maybe he was hoping you and Mia would be in the reception hall when he blew it up,” Kyle suggested.

“I don’t think so. I think he was close enough that he knew where we were.”

“Maybe he can’t bring himself to actually hurt one of you,” Pops said.

I shook my head. “He didn’t hesitate to have that hit man go after Killian.”

“But that was a hit man. It wasn’t him personally.”

“Do you think the gas has gone out of his plan?” Kyle asked.

I shook my head again. “Then why come back? Why not stay on the run?”

It didn’t make a lot of sense. Everything Kevin had done spoke of great intelligence, but it was also kind of scattered, like he wasn’t quite sure what his goal was. Kidnapping Brianna to gather information he already had. Paying a hit man to continue going after Killian when he knew Stacy would try to call it off, and then spreading rumors about the hit man so that he would torture Killian to find out what his game was. Getting Pops arrested, but then refusing to testify against him when his testimony—given anonymously—would surely have put him in prison for life. Manipulating Amelia into marrying Kyle so that he could get information from their private conversations in a scheme to start a street war, but then shooting both Carmine and Jack.

None of it made sense. It was like he just wanted to play with our heads and make us so paranoid that we couldn’t see straight.

Was that the real goal? Was he trying to drive Pops insane? He could have just done that by revealing it was him from the very beginning. Why hide?

I wished I could find him so I could simply sit him down and ask him what the hell he was doing.

“You should go home,” Pops said, resting his hand on my shoulder. “Mia needs you there.”

“Mia’s the one who told me to come here.”

Kyle snorted. “Amelia’s going nuts, calling me every ten minutes, asking when I’m coming to the hotel.”

“She’s worried. You should go see her.”

“I want to. I’m just…I’m afraid once I see her, I won’t be able to leave her again.”

His phone rang as the words fell from his lips. He stood and stepped out of the room, mouthing Amelia’s name as he did. Pops watched him go, shaking his head with a little bit of amusement.

“I never thought I’d see the day when that boy was so caught up in a woman.”

“It happens to the best of us.”

Pops chuckled, a sad sound if there ever was one. “All my boys are pretty much settled down now. Abigail would be shocked if she could see it.”

“The two of you set a good example.”

“Maybe.”

Pops crossed to his desk and picked up a piece of paper, bringing it back to me.

“Carmine wrote down the email addresses and phone numbers Kevin used to slip him information over the last two years. We thought there might be a chance you could do something with them.”

I looked them over, chewing my lip as my mind was already spinning over the possibilities. “Yeah. Let me take them home and I’ll let you know.”

“Thanks, Ian. I appreciate your help, considering.”

“When this is all over, we’ll have a big party. A do-over.”

Pops smiled. “We will.”

I drove to my apartment alone, parking in the underground garage as I always did. The apartment was just as I’d left it, clean and quiet. Mia’s boxes were stacked in a corner of the living room, pushed out of the way until she was able to go through them and decide what belonged where. I offered to allow her to redecorate the apartment, but she assured me that those things would come in time. Right now, she just wanted to live there for a while and get a feel for it.

Everything she said made me love her even more.

I settled behind my computers in the study and began a check on the email addresses, running them through a program I’d designed that could tell me all kinds of information about someone’s email, including the name they registered under and the IP address they most often accessed the account with. The email addresses Carmine had given Pops were all registered under different names—no surprise—and from different IP addresses—again, no surprise. But then I noticed that the email accounts were often accessed by one IP address.

“Oh, brother,” I whispered, “you finally fucked up.”

It took time. Hours. But I slowly traced the IP addressed he used most often through a winding trail of misdirection, searching for its origin. I found it just a second before the phone rang.

“Brianna’s heard from him.”

“What do you mean?”

“He called her. He wants her to run away with him.”

I called up another program on my computer and identified the most recent call that’d come into Brianna’s phone. Even though I essentially had her phone bugged, I tried not to listen to the conversations she had unless the program alerted me to certain words or turns of phrase. It hadn’t alerted me about this particular call, but I realized why as I perused the transcript the program automatically generated. Kevin talked to Brianna in some sort of code that didn’t use any of the words—such as runaway or meet—that I was looking for.

“Are you sure?”

Killian cleared his throat. “If you saw the look on her face right now, you wouldn’t ask me that.”

“Ask her something for me. Ask if he ever mentioned Orlando to her.”

I could hear Killian asking the question though his words were muffled. Then he was back.

“He talked about it a few times. Told her that he had friends there.”

“I think that’s where he’s been. Might even be where he’s headed when this is all said and done.”

“I don’t know. Brianna thinks he’s headed out of the country. She says he told her to pack her passport.”

“Maybe. Or maybe he knew she’d tell us.”

“Either way, you should probably get over here, Ian.”

“Okay. You still at the hotel?’

“No. We moved to the house a couple of hours ago.”

“Pops’ house?”

“No. Mine. Stacy wanted to be able to put the baby in his own bed.”

A heavy feeling began to settle over me. Something was wrong, I could feel it deep in my bones. I just wasn’t sure what.

“Is Mia with you?”

“She went with her parents to their house. She didn’t call you? I told her she should.”

“No, I haven’t heard from her.”

“Well, I’m sure she’s fine. Carmine wanted his family at his place so they could make some decisions for his sister’s funeral. Maybe she just got caught up in all that.”

“Probably.”

But that heaviness on my shoulders was growing, a dread that was threatening to lead to panic. I disconnected the call and checked my text messages, hoping I’d missed something. But there was nothing. No calls. No texts. Nothing.

I called Carmine, my heart pounding with every second that passed.

“Is Mia with you?”

“She said she was going over to Killian’s with everyone else because you’d be there.” There was confusion in Carmine’s voice. “Why? Isn’t she there?”

I cleared my throat even as I grabbed my keys and rushed toward the door.

“Probably,” I said as calmly as I could. “I’ve been working. I must have misread her text.”

“You’d tell me if anything was wrong, right?”

“Of course. It’s just been a crazy couple of days. I’ll have her text you when I see her.”

I disconnected that call without waiting for Carmine’s response. Then I called Mia’s phone.

“Finally figured it out, brother?”

It was Kevin.

Kevin had Mia.

Mia

I lingered in the bathtub after Ian left, figuring I had every right to pamper myself. Afterward, I applied the expensive lotion I’d been given as a gift at my bridal shower and wrapped myself in the soft, cotton robe provided by the hotel. I ordered strawberries and champagne because I’d always heard that it was romantic, thinking I might pamper myself some more before Ian came back. It wasn’t every day that I got a little time on my own with an entire hotel at my fingertips. I was going to enjoy my honeymoon even if I had to do it alone.

When the knock came on the door, I assumed it was room service. One of Jack’s men had been in the hallway when Ian left, so I had no reason to think danger. I opened the door and this man I’d never seen before hit me across the jaw with the butt of a gun and knocked me onto the floor.

That was my introduction to my brother-in-law, Kevin Callahan.

When I came to, I was handcuffed to the headboard of the bed, still dressed in nothing but the cotton bathrobe.

“I didn’t think you’d be Ian’s type, but I guess I can see the allure. You aren’t much like your father.”

“And you aren’t much like your brother.”

He was sitting in a chair that was perfectly situated to see the balcony door, the main door to the room, and me. He had a gun in his lap, a Glock like the one my father had carried for years. 9mm. It could do a lot of damage in the wrong hands.

“Your father called up here a little bit ago. You’d probably better call him back.”

“Afraid he’ll come looking for me?”

“No. But I’d rather not kill him here. Too messy.”

“Then why are we still here?”

“Because this is where Ian will come looking for you once he realizes you’re missing. And this is where I intend to trade you for Brianna.”

“What makes you think Brianna would want to have anything to do with you after everything you’ve done?”

“Because she loves me. That’s something you should understand.”

“What do you know about love?”

“You’d be surprised.”

Kevin stood and began to pace the room, swinging the gun around at his side. “I really didn’t think you and Ian would hit it off the way you did. At first I thought you’d be this big, obese girl with a honking nose like your father’s. When I saw that you weren’t, I thought that you weren’t really Ian’s type. I mean, that girl in New York was about as different in body type from you as anyone could get.”

I blushed with lingering jealousy even as I found myself wondering how long he’d been watching his brother.

“But then the two of you made that little trip to New York, and he defended you when your ex showed up at the church—quite convenient, actually. Some of the honest cops investigating the explosion actually think he might have done it.” He shook his head even as he smiled almost maniacally. “Very nice. I realized then that the two of you were actually in love. Not great for my original plan, but not bad for this back-up plan.”

“Why don’t you just leave them alone? What did they ever do to you besides giving you a family and a home?”

Kevin’s face seemed to change in an instant, going from the friendly face of a young art student to the twisted darkness of a sociopath.

“Brian Callahan took away the one woman who ever loved me! He killed Abigail, suffocated her with a pillow while she was struggling to overcome her cancer! She might have survived if not for him, if not for his selfishness!”

“She had pancreatic cancer. She was going to die no matter what anyone did.”

“No.” He shook his head like a bobble head in the back window of a car. “We could have found a way to help her, could have made her get better. But he killed her.”

“What makes you think it was him?”

“I saw the coroner’s report. He said there were fibers around her mouth, in her nose. He said that someone likely held a pillow to her face until she died. And no one else was there before Sean but Brian.”

“If that’s true, why didn’t they press charges against him?”

“Someone paid the coroner off. One day the report was there, the next it was a totally different report. Poof! Like it never happened. But I saw it.”

“So you kidnapped a daughter he didn’t even know he had? Brilliant plan.”

Kevin smiled widely, like I’d actually given him a compliment rather than being sarcastic.

“I found Brianna. It was the best move of this whole thing.”

“What’s your end game, Kevin? What are you really after?”

He glared at me, that sociopathic expression coming back. But then my phone rang. He snatched it off the table where he must have placed it while I was unconscious.

“It’s your daddy. Tell him you’re going to Killian’s with everyone else.”

“What if he checks?”

“He won’t. He has more than enough on his plate right now.”

He connected the call and held the phone to my ear.

“Daddy?”

“Hey, princess. Where are you?”

“The hotel.”

“Is Ian there?”

“No. He went to help his father out with the investigation over the bombing.”

“Oh.” There was a brief silence. “Well, everyone’s getting a little stir crazy. I’m going to take Momma home and talk to everyone about Angela’s funeral. You want to come with us?”

“No, I think I’ll go to Killian’s with the others. Wait for Ian there.”

“Are you sure? Wouldn’t you be more comfortable with the family?”

“They are my family now, Daddy.”

He chuckled softly. “Yeah. I keep forgetting.”

“Go home, Daddy. I’ll talk to you later.”

Before he could answer, Kevin pulled the phone away from my ear.

“Good girl.”

He set the phone back on the table and took his seat again.

“Now what?”

“Now we wait for Ian to figure out you’re missing.”

“Why? What are you going to do to him?”

Kevin smiled softly. “Isn’t that sweet? His little wife’s worried about him.” He leaned forward a little, the gun between his hands. “Makes me feel so good, that it’s because of me that the two of you are together.”

I turned my head away, not wanting to see that smirk on his face. And I really didn’t want to admit to myself that he was right. It was because of him that Ian and I were together. But that didn’t mean I had to be grateful to him.

We sat there like that for a long time. I tugged at the handcuffs holding my wrists above my head, but I could slip free of them. Besides, every time I made them rattle, he stared at me, this threatening gaze that made my blood run cold.

I felt sick, sitting there like that, aware that Ian would come for me eventually. I was hoping that he wouldn’t come, but also hoping that he would. It was stupid, really, but I wanted to know that he would come looking for me once he started to miss me. But I didn’t want him to get hurt and…
fuck!
I was tired and scared and I didn’t know what I was thinking.

“You killed my aunt.”

“A couple of cousins, too, from what I heard.”

“It doesn’t bother you? Knowing that you killed people in cold blood?”

“It had a purpose.”

“What about Caroline McGuire?”

He shrugged a little. “She wasn’t supposed to be there. But in every war there’s always some collateral damage.”

“It doesn’t bother you? You grew up with her as a part of your life.”

“The only woman who ever mattered to me was Abigail, and she’s gone. No one else makes much difference.”

“What about Brianna?”

He reared up from his chair. “Don’t say her name!” He waved the gun close to my face. “Don’t you dare even speak her name!”

“How would you feel if someone blew up her aunt on her wedding day? How would you feel if she’d been the one to take Caroline to the reception hall?”

He hit me across the face with the back of his hand, smacking my head back against the headboard. I saw stars for a moment, and when my vision cleared, he’d backed off.

“Don’t make me do that again. I really need you in one piece when Ian arrives.”

“What are you going to do to Ian when he gets here?”

Kevin smiled almost pleasantly. “Brian’s going to begin finding out what it feels like to lose the things that matter most to him.”

My heart sank as real fear made its way through the core of me. I’d been afraid, but this fear was something more, something different. I couldn’t imagine my life without Ian in it, not now that we’d gotten to know each other. Not now that he’d confessed his love for me.

I couldn’t do this.

I pulled at the handcuffs, testing them again. Kevin laughed.

“You’re not getting free of those.”

“What makes you think Ian even cares enough to come rescue me?”

“I’ve been watching the two of you. He’ll come.”

“What if he doesn’t come alone?”

He laughed again. “You don’t know my brother as well as I do. He’s a hot head. He acts before he thinks. He’ll be here. And he’ll be alone.”

I closed my eyes, praying that he was wrong. He had to be wrong, because if he wasn’t, Ian was walking into an ambush. I couldn’t just sit here and watch my husband die.

Kevin paced the room like he was bored, humming some song I didn’t know under his breath. Every few minutes he would walk up beside me on the bed, once brushing his fingers over the raw skin on my wrists, once wiping a bit of blood from my lip. If I’d been free…I thought about swinging my legs and smashing him in the balls, but I knew I couldn’t get enough force to do any damage. And then he’d turn his rage on me, and I was afraid as crazy as he seemed, he wouldn’t be able to stop.

I had to stay alive to help Ian.

He kept checking his watch like we were on some sort of schedule. Then, maybe an hour after our last altercation, he pulled a flip phone out of his pocket—one of those old ones that I had in high school—and pressed a button.

“Brianna, my love,” he said softly. And then he spoke in a jumble of words that made little sense to me. It was clearly a code, common words replacing other common words. He said something like, Train to boat to car…I don’t know. It didn’t make sense. But she must have said something right because he smiled brightly.

“She still loves me,” he said when he hung up. “When this is done, we’re going to run off together, make babies, and live happily ever after.”

“You really think she wants you after finding out you were the one behind her kidnapping?”

His eyebrows raised. “She knows that I did it for a good reason.”

“Does she? You held her against her will. For months!”

“Brianna loves me.”

“You keep telling yourself that.”

He didn’t get angry this time, and that made me nervous. He acted as though he knew something I didn’t.

Was there another bomb somewhere? Was he planning on taking out more than just Ian? Who was he after next? Killian, Kyle…Sean?

“Are you going to kill me?”

He looked over at me. “It’ll be a beautiful murder-suicide. I couldn’t have planned it out better. And Carmine…if Caroline’s death didn’t destroy that pact, this definitely will.”

“Why? Why are you trying to start a street war?”

“So that they’ll all kill each other. What’s more poetic than a man dying from the same sword his wife begged him over and over again to put down?” He came toward me again, pacing in such an agitated manner that I could almost smell the carpet burning under his feet. “Abigail told him, every time they fought, that she hated what he did for a living. She wanted him to give it up, to be a normal, mundane businessman. She wanted him to turn his back on all this. Instead, he killed her and ran back to the fold. And now that fold is going to kill him.”

“That’s been your plan all along? To turn his friends against him?”

“To turn everyone against him. And once the war has begun…there will be no stopping it next time.”

“What makes you think that? They managed to stop it before. They made a pact—”

“Jack gave up half the gun trade! Who could have predicted that?”

“Maybe that’s how determined Jack is to make sure this war doesn’t happen.”

“But now Caroline’s dead. And when you’re gone, and Delaney’s lying dead in the street, there won’t be anything to stop the two of them from throwing all they’ve got at each other.”

“But they know it’s you.”

“Won’t matter. They’ll still turn on each other. And Brian will watch everything that ever mattered to him implode.”

“You’re insane! My father, Jack, Brian…they’re all too smart for that!”

“We’ll see, won’t we?”

“We will.”

I closed my eyes again as he turned his back on me and sent up another prayer.

Please, God, let me be right!