The Untouchables (31 page)

“Monte…”

“A Beau Brooks. Get me everything you can on him, stalk him if you have to. Find out who his dealer is and then make him mine with whatever force necessary. Are we clear?”

“Yes—”

“Then why are you still standing here?”

They looked at each other for a moment before turning to leave.

“Look at you,” Fiorello said.

“There’s nothing to look at because you have a bank to call. So why aren’t you doing that?” His eyebrow raised before he bowed and left.

LIAM

She left the hospital so quickly, I swear she left a trail of smoke behind her. I knew Declan’s announcement would affect her, but I wasn’t sure how. What was going through her mind right now? She couldn’t have been thinking clearly; if she was, she wouldn’t have left without telling anyone. She’d grabbed the keys to the Range and drove off and I couldn’t call her because I still had her damn phone.

She was going to drive me insane, I could feel it. I was just going to lose it and murder her one day. If it weren’t for the damn GPS in the car, I would have been fucking ready to call in the National Guard.

It didn’t take long for me to notice her when I pulled up to the remains of what used to be the Giovanni Villa; her old home here in Chicago, the place where I first met, and was shot by, her. She sat on a pile of old rusted pipes, just staring, completely oblivious to the world around her. Parking right next to her car, I grabbed the water bottle. The moment I stepped out, a gunshot went off and I dropped to the ground. She just broke out in laughter.

“Have you lost your damn mind?” I yelled at her, looking at the hole in the car door.

“Stop stalking me. I wanted to be alone!”

“Then use your fucking words! You could have killed me!”

“Stop being melodramatic,” she said. “I knew I wasn’t going to hit you. I’m a better shot than
you
are.” She sighed, looking up at the stars.

Fuck that, she can get dehydrated for all I care,
I thought, throwing the water bottle back into the car.

“Hey, wasn’t that for me?” she asked, watching as I came over to her.

“No, that water was for the wife who doesn’t shoot at me,” I replied, glaring at the glock in her hand.

She frowned. “How many wives do you have, Mr. Callahan?”

“As much as I love this banter of ours, what are you doing here, Mrs. Callahan?” I didn’t understand why she didn’t just rebuild it. After the home was burned down, she wouldn’t allow anyone to touch it. It was nothing but rusted scrap metal, broken china, and a few walls fighting to stay erect.

“Did you know it was here I decided to fully join—run the family business?”

“No, I wasn’t aware you spent much time in Chicago.” I wasn’t sure how I would know.

“I usually came for two reasons: my father had business to attend to, or he had a doctor’s appointment.”

“There were no doctors out in California?”

“There were, you ass,” she said, rolling her eyes at me. “However, Dr. Anderson was here. I never knew why they had such a bond. But he was the one who helped deliver me, so I’m guessing he never told the police that Orlando made sure Aviela didn’t leave. Loyalty was a big thing to him, yet he held none. He told me once, with his hands around my throat, only ever be loyal to myself. To only love myself.”

“He put his hands around your neck?” Now I was more than glad I put the needle in his arm.

“Calm down, macho man. My father didn’t abuse me, it was the cancer talking. While he was on chemo, he would get so violent, so cold. He was dying, and because of that he didn’t want to take it. We would have weekly fights about it. He locked himself away so he wouldn’t flip out on me. And when I was seventeen, I was ready to walk away. I was done. I was tired. I had gotten into UCLA, my father was almost near bankruptcy and people were jumping ship faster than we could blink.”

“And you turned it around.” Everyone in our “world” believed that it had been her father who had breathed life back into the Giovanni name once more. She was amazing.

As she smiled up at me, her eyes glazed over with a look I knew brought only trouble. “You want to know how?”

I wasn’t sure.

“Ok?” I replied, taking a seat next to her.

“My father had money stashed away for you.” She laughed, running her hands through her dark hair. “He was worried that you wouldn’t marry me if I had no money, and worse yet, no power. He kept a black book of every judge, police officer, and politician that were indebted to the family. Not to mention a few stretches of weed fields down south. I was so pissed when I saw it. First off, I am worth way more than seven mil.”

“Yeah,
now
,” I joked, to which she just lifted her gun at me.

“Seriously?”

I couldn’t help but laugh. “So you took my seven million and…?”

“I took
my
seven million and bought product through one of Beau’s associates.”

“Beau? As in Officer Brooks?”

“Yep, he was just a poor beggar when I met him. I still don’t know if he was a junkie or not.”

“What is with you and bums? First Jinx, now Brooks?” She sure liked strays. Hopefully that was out of her system.

“I’m not going to ask how you knew about Jinx, because I may shoot you.” Her brown eyes narrowed in on mine. It made me want her more when she looked at me like that.

“Anyway, Beau knew a soldier in South America smuggling it in. I offered him a job, he offered me everything he had: connections, workers, smugglers. In return, I gave him a way out. Apparently, he had two kids to feed and he didn’t want to be a drug dealer all his life. Seven million was enough; I owned it all, and the moment I did…”

“The Gold Rush,” I whispered, grinning. “You were behind the gold rushes. It damn well pissed the shit out of Dad. Every junkie and dealer in the goddamn country wanted only gold rush. You sold it cheaper and stronger than we ever could. We were bleeding money and we had no idea who was behind it.”

My father had damn near went mad searching for the source of her shit.

“Seven million became twenty eight million in the first month. By the end of that summer, I had stopped the bleeding, and all those rats who left us came running back.”

“I’m sure you had a field day with them.” Rats had no loyalty after all.

“Fiorello took care of them.” She laughed and shivered, not because of the cold air, but at something I clearly didn’t understand.

“Fiorello?” I asked her, placing my jacket over her shoulders.

She stared at it for a moment, then back at me before nodding, stretching out her legs in the rubble. “Our head butler. The day you came, he most likely bowed.”

“Ah, the guy from
Downton Abbey
.”

“Yes,” she rolled her eyes. “To celebrate, I invited all the men for a large banquet at this very villa. A video was played from all the men who left. To prove their loyalty, they were supposed to shoot themselves. None of them did and so I had snipers do it. The rest of them were warned by Fiorello.”

“You didn’t want Fiorello with you when you moved in?”

She frowned once again and I hated it. “No. He wouldn’t have come, and I wouldn’t force him. He stayed for my father and after my father died, he went back to Italy. I found out Brooks had applied for the force but was rejected a year before he came to me. Part of me believed he could bring my family down and get the credit if he joined. Still, I used my father’s black book, cashed in a few favors, and he was in; my personal mole, working the Chicago police. It took me years, but I did it. Even after the Valero burned down our fields, the Giovannis were still on top. After the gold rush, the feds were on the hunt anyway, so I focused on the crystal and heroin.”

“And Coraline’s…” I couldn’t even bring myself to say it. It was so odd. She was good. She tried her best to be as tough and as bad as us, but she was too good. I liked that about her.

“And Coraline’s illness brought it all back. It made me wonder how things would have been if my father never had it. Would I have gone to UCLA? Who would I be?”

“A cute, sweet, college graduate, most positively still married to me. My life sure as hell would have been easier.”

“You really want me to shoot you, don’t you?”

Laughing, I pulled her to me, wrapping my arms around her. “I can see it. You would actually be as innocent as you look.”

“All I see is you walking all over me and bending me over for sex like your personal plaything.” She pushed back, clicking the safety on before putting the gun away.

Watching her handle her gun made me want to bend her over now. This wasn’t the place. The last thing I needed was for her to get sick again, but the car…

“Why are you looking at me like that?” she asked, to which I just grinned.

Leaning over, I grabbed her legs and picked her up bridal style.

“Liam fucking Callahan, put me down right now!”

“Not until I bend you over in the car. Of which you owe me a new one anyway!” I smiled.

“You stupid, Irish brute!”

TWENTY-SEVEN

“
Everything Dies. That is the law of life-the bitter unchangeable law”

—David Clement-Davies

DECLAN

Up the halls, down the corridors, in circles, I ran. She just upped and left, not bothering to speak to a nurse or even text me. I had no idea where she was or where she was going, and what pissed me off the most was the fact that it was my fault. I never should’ve left her alone, but I just needed a goddamn second to breathe, to gather the broken pieces of myself. I should have been with her; I should have never left her side.

“Declan?” My father grabbed hold of me in the middle of the lobby, but I couldn’t meet his eyes. I just stared at all the faces passing me by, some in snow white coats, others in blue scrubs, but most of them were just visitors wandering about. None of them were Coraline.

Where was she? Damn it, where was she?

“Declan? Son? What’s wrong? Speak to me.” He shook me like he did when I was child, forcing me to meet his eyes. They looked just as tired as mine. I wouldn’t be surprised if I now shared the wrinkles he now wore.

“Coraline. She’s gone. I don’t know where she went. The nurse said she checked out.” She’d checked out without me, without anyone in the family.

“Son, she’s at the church down the street. I had Monte follow her….”

I didn’t even wait for him to finish speaking before I broke out of his arms, rushing out the automatic double doors and into the blaring streets. I had no idea what street I was on, my mind was coming undone every moment she wasn’t next to me.

The church my father spoke of was in sight, farther down the road. Pushing through the crowd, I did my best not to run, to stay calm and to think of what I was going to say to her. With each step that brought me closer to the looming brick cathedral, I felt the words drip out of my brain and disappear into some gutter.

I wasn’t sure what to say. I must have been going out of my mind. Like a madman, I’d been running all over the damn hospital, calling her phone over and over again. Now I was standing outside of the intimidating wooden doors of Saint Margaret, unsure of what I could possibly say to her.

Mind went back to the first time I had met her. I was entering Eastside Diner to escape the monsoon that was pouring over the city. The moment I saw her run in, out of breath, dripping wet, and laughing like a madwoman, I found myself unable to look away from her. She had this presence about her and it drew me in.

It felt like a lifetime ago.

Sighing, I grasped the church door and pulled. As the door swung open, I saw her. She stuck out like…well, like a drunk in a church. She sat in the candle lit cathedral with her legs propped up on the pew, and a bottle of vodka in her hand. Not a soul dared to rear their heads. Blessing myself, I walked the aisle, my feet echoing as I hurried to reach her. She didn’t even look up. She just drank.

“I called you,” I whispered to her.

“A lot of people called me. I threw my phone out the window.” Again, she put the bottle to her lips.

That was rational
.

“Okay.”

“Okay.”

I was waiting for something…anything. For her to break down like before, maybe even scream, but instead, she sat comfortably in the second row staring up at the cross hanging over the sea of candles.

“Coraline, talk to me. Please.”

“I don’t want to talk. I just want to drink.”

“Coraline…”

“You want to talk? Talk to God. Ask him why he’s such a dick. Why does he give with one hand and then slap you across the face with the other?”

She got up from the bench and stumbled forward. I reached to help, but she simply pushed me away, spilling some of the vodka over her hand and over me. Ignoring it, she continued moving towards the altar.

“Did you know only four percent of women diagnosed with ovarian cancer are my age?” she asked. “Slap one. Thanks, Big Guy!” She laughed, drinking at the foot of the cross. “I have stage two, which means both of my ovaries are shot! Because, why the fuck would I need ovaries, right? Oh, and so is my uterus. It’s not like I haven’t been dying for a child anyway.
Dying
, funny,
Big Guy.
You’re just hilarious!”

“Coraline—”

“Stop Coraline-ing me! Damn it! If I live…”

“You
will
live!” I wanted to grab her, but she kept pacing away from me. Watching her pace like that was driving me crazy.

“Yeah, because you’re an almighty Callahan. You see all, know all,
are
all, right? Every one of you walks on water! You all can do as you please and God simply looks away! Olivia is right, he’s picking favorites, but what else is new? We thought we caught it early, well we were wrong! I was wrong…so wrong…I thought I was pregnant. What kind of idiot thinks they’re pregnant? How did I not know? I didn’t see the signs until I was too far gone! How did I not notice?”