Crush(123)

He looked at me then with resolve and regret in his eyes. “I know. But listen to me, Elle, I can make this right.”

I slapped him. “You killed my sister.”

Tears streamed down his face. “I never wanted any of this to happen. Just know that you’re the right person to take care of Clementine, to be her mother. I’ve spent the day arranging it all. Promise me you’ll take her and leave Boston. It’s the safest thing for her, and when you do, and she grows up happy, never tell her about her mother or me. Tell her she had parents who died loving her but nothing else.”

“What are you talking about?” I screamed.

He grabbed my arms. “Promise me,” he cried.

I stared at him blankly.

“Promise me you’ll take care of her,” he cried again.

I shrugged out of his hold. “I promise. I love her. You know I’d do anything for her.”

My assumption was that he was going to turn himself in.

Just then, I heard the door open and Logan yelled, “Elle!”

That’s when Michael pulled a gun from his suit jacket.

Terror shot through me.

I didn’t know what to do.

Michael pointed the gun.

“No!” I screamed.

“Elle,” Logan called for me again frantically.

I turned my head for only a fraction of a second. “No, Logan, go. Get out of here.”

Ignoring me, the look on his face was determined. He looked fearless, dauntless, as his long, lean body rushed toward me.

I screamed again, “Logan, leave the room!”

He wasn’t doing it.

“Stay clear of the gun!” I cried.

My head was bouncing.

From Logan.

Toward Michael.

And back.

I didn’t see the gun go off, but I heard it.

An icy chill slivered down my spine.

The gunshot shattered the atmosphere.

The sound was deafening.

My ears were ringing.

I’d never realized just how loud a gunshot could be.

Blood splattered all over me. Warm, yet so chilling. It covered me from head to toe.

I was screaming, but nothing was coming out.

Pure terror was all I felt.

My entire body shook and I couldn’t move.

Whose blood was covering me?

Mine?

Logan’s?

Michael’s?

I turned back and that was when I saw Michael on the ground. He’d killed himself. Strong arms wrapped around me, pulling me backwards, trying to turn me around. There were voices, screams, sounds, but I couldn’t make out the words. All I knew was that I was pressed against a hard body.

Logan’s body.

Everything was white noise. The walls, the blinds, and the window were splattered in red and the floor looked like it was bleeding.

My stomach revolted.

My feet were off the ground.

What happened next . . . I don’t remember.

Slowly, so slowly, the walls closed in around me and then finally, I was lost between them.





DAY 36





LOGAN


Prince Charming I wasn’t.

He was supposed to walk into the room where his sleeping beauty lay and kiss her. Or at least that was how Declan thought the story went. My plan was to do that and then slip my grandmother’s ring on her finger.

That’s not what happened.

Rather, the ring sat in the silver box waiting for the right time and instead of being with Elle, who needed me right now, I was sitting in a room with Blanchet, Miles, and a team of DEA agents who love drawing on a f*cking whiteboard all day.

There had been some wrong assumptions made, Mickey O’Shea being the Priest one of the biggest. But I was confident now that we had all the dots. It was connecting them to compose the right picture that was slow in coming together.

My old man had gone to see Patrick and surprisingly, Patrick told him everything. That Seamus wanted vengeance on Patrick. For his mother’s death. For being sent away to Ireland. For his whole f*cked-up life. That Seamus had kept his identity a secret so that when he was ready, he would come out guns blazing and annihilate the Blue Hill Gang. Tommy’s f*ck-up with the drug fiasco had only served to accelerate his plan and only made it sweeter.

A voice pulled me out of my thoughts. “This is the only photo we have of Seamus O’Shea, otherwise known as the Priest,” Blanchet said, pointing to a copy of the picture from Erin’s house that Elle told her about when Blanchet went to see her in the hospital this morning. “Immigration is sending us over a more recent one but it hasn’t arrived. Details surrounding this man are sketchy at best, but it seems he was a miracle child, born seventeen months after Mickey O’Shea,” she pointed to a picture of an old man taken walking into his flower shop, “went to prison.”

O’Reilly, the poor sucker who was appointed her subordinate, coughed out, “It’s called conjugals.”

She narrowed her stare at him. “Prison records show Rose visited her husband every Sunday for the three years he did time but during family visitation hours only.”

He cleared his throat. “Sorry, go on.”

Another guy raised his hand and then glanced down at the report in front of him. “It says here Mickey was sentenced to five years.”