Sparrow(5)

“How can you tell? You haven’t looked at me once since I stepped into the room.” Brennan’s voice was frosty and unapproachable, but it didn’t sound like he cared.

I gingerly lifted my chin and dragged my gaze to meet his eyes, every muscle in my face tightening as I watched him. “Very nice,” I repeated, not a trace of sincerity in my voice.

I heard Sherry fussing over God knows what in the other room and Joe talking on the phone, or at least pretending to. Meanwhile, the hair stylist and Connor, the bodyguard who followed me everywhere, were silent, which was coincidentally louder than any of Sherry and Joe’s futile attempts to sound busy. The buzz of a disaster rang between my ears.

He has a troubled past.

A disastrous future.

And I’m about to become a part of his present, whether I like it or not.

“Connor, Sherry, everyone—get the f*ck out,” my groom ordered as he continued staring me down through narrowed eyes.

I twisted my fingers together and felt my mouth drying up. This wasn’t me. The insecure, little Mary-Sue wasn’t the Sparrow I had built over the years. But he was dangerous, and I was giving him trouble.

I was giving him trouble because ten days ago, completely out of the blue, he dragged me out of my house (a guy who was no more than a distant childhood memory in an expensive suit and a shady reputation) and threw me into his luxurious penthouse and announced (two days after he left me there with nothing and no one but a bodyguard and a number for a takeout joint) that we were going to get married.

Yes, Troy Brennan was one hell of a sociopath, and he didn’t bother disguising his nature and putting on a mask when he faced the world.

He stood in the presidential suite’s bathroom, looking at me like I was a bitter pill he had to swallow. It didn’t seem like he was mildly interested in me. He’d barely spoken to me, and when he had, a mixture of disappointment, boredom and apathy leaked from his gaze.

I was beyond confused by his behavior. I had heard of powerful, rich men forcing themselves on women before, but usually they desired the women they pursued. This wasn’t the case with Troy Brennan. The way he acted, it almost seemed like he was doing this because he’d lost a bet.

I stared back at my future husband, waiting for him to do something. Hit me, yell at me or break the whole thing off.

I wasn’t sure why the hell he wanted me in the first place. We grew up in the same Boston area, a blue-collar sketchy neighborhood. Our childhood scenery consisted of barred windows, ripped posters, old buildings in desperate need of repair and empty cans rolling down the street. But that’s where our similarities ended.

While I was the poor, working-class daughter of a drunken bum and a runaway mother, Troy Brennan was Boston royalty, and grew up in the nicest house in our zip code. His father, Cillian, once ran the infamous Irish mob. By the time I was a toddler, Cillian had moved on to more legitimate businesses, and by “legitimate” I meant strip clubs, massage parlors and other sleazy South Boston entertainments for guys barely making the rent. My dad, one of his last loyal soldiers, had worked as a bouncer in more than a few of Cillian’s joints.

Troy was an only child, with people saying Cillian’s wife couldn’t have more kids. He was therefore the apple of his father’s eye.

And while Troy might not have carried on with all of his dad’s old businesses, he was no choirboy either. Rumors about him spread like wildfire on the streets of our neighborhood, and at this point he was so talked about he was almost a legend. Word was that politicians, businessmen and rich people from all over the state reached out to him when they needed someone to do their dirty work.

And dirty work he did, and got paid plenty for it.

People called Troy “The Fixer.” He fixed stuff. Not in the handyman sense, mind you. He made people disappear faster than characters in Dennis Lehane’s books. He could cut your prison sentence in half and fix you up with a passport and a fake Social Security card in hours. In days, he could even convince the people who were after you that you didn’t exist. Troy Brennan was Boston’s master manipulator, pulling strings like we were all his puppets. He decided who lived and who died, who disappeared and who made a comeback.

And for some unknown reason, Mr. Fixer chose to marry me. I had no way to fight, escape or even defy his irrational decision. All I could do was beg for a feasible explanation. So I decided to use our first encounter together alone—without Connor, Sherry or any of Troy’s staff—to do just that.

“Why me, Troy? You never spoke a word to me all those years we lived on the same street.” I gripped the creamy vanity top behind me, my knuckles whitening. Maybe calling him by his first name would inspire him to be nicer to me.

He cocked an eyebrow, an expression that looked like Well, shit. She can talk, too. He buttoned his suit jacket with one hand and checked his cell phone with the other.

I was wind, I was a ghost. I was nothing.

“Troy?” I asked again. This time he lifted his eyes to meet mine. My voice dropped to a whisper, but I kept my stare trained on him. “Why me?”

His brows furrowed, his lips thinning into a hard line.

He didn’t like the question, and I wasn’t satisfied with the answer.

“We don’t even know each other.” My nostrils flared.

“Yeah, well…” He kept punching his cell phone, his eyes dropping back to the screen. “Familiarity is overrated. The less I know someone, the better I usually like them.”