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“You got your own shit to worry about. What’s happening with the Abruzzos?”
He shakes his head, nostrils flaring. “Poppy audited all the other businesses. They’ve all been paying the Abruzzo’s for protection for a few months now.”
“Shit.”
“Yeah, shit,” he sighs, “It’s always the quiet ones.”
“Mm. What are you going to do?”
“If it were up to me, I’d burn the whole fucking city to the ground, but it’s not. You know I just wait on Lorcan’s orders. He’s torn—Philly and South Jersey are the only parts of the East Coast not under our control. But it’s a big spot and a lot of fucking work, and between Boston and New York, we don’t have the manpower to rule it in the same way. I think he’s hoping to shake the Abruzzo’s up a little, remind them who’s in charge, and let them keep the spot.”
I shake my head. “Poppy made him soft.”
“Yeah,” he grunts. “He’s a family man now.”
“Well, you let me know if you need my help.”
“Always will, bro,” he says, clapping me on the shoulder. “Now get your chick out of your car and get moving.”
I grit my teeth and we swap keys. Then I pop the trunk, grab my duffel and Dahlia’s pink suitcase and stick it in the back of the Tesla. When Dahlia gets out of the car, she cowers under Donnacha’s blistering glare, staring at her sneakers as she slithers into the safety of our new car.
Sliding in next to her, we both watch in silence as Donnacha peels off to rejoin the highway. Eventually, I cut through the tension with the words that have been burning the back of my throat.
“You say you’re a yachtie from Philadelphia that got caught doing the wrong thing at the wrong time. Yet you’re in debt to a low-level gangster and now Donnacha Quinn is certain that you look familiar. Who are you, Dahlia Rose?” I muse, never taking my eyes off my steering wheel.
When I hear her sharp intake of breath, I raise my hand to cut her off.
“Don’t answer that.”
Dahlia
Even as I packed the contents of my life into a suitcase and stuck a hastily scribbled farewell note to Billie on the fridge door, I wasn’t sure if I was going to go through with it. Even as the sky-scrapers of Philly crowded in the rearview mirror, and the radio lost signal to the local station, I still couldn’t wrap my head around what I was doing.
Only when we swapped the Bentley for a Tesla and I got the third-degree from a bearded man with scary wolf-like eyes did it finally hit home.
I was leaving Lucky, his debt, and the second chance he gave me behind.
We turned off the highway long ago and have been driving through green countryside ever since. It feels like we’re getting further and further away from civilization—further away from anyone who could hear me scream—and the sense of unease washes over me in waves. When it hits it feels like I’m drowning in it.
This was a bad fucking decision.
And when I feel like I can’t get my head above water, I side-eye Cillian. He’s so calm, so still. Staring at the road ahead like he has nothing on his mind. I have no idea where he’s taking me or what he’s going to do to me while I’m there… but the excitement ripples through my body like a sonic boom when I think about it.
When I look at him, it’s easy to ignore that the reason I’m running away in the first place is that I have a life-long habit of chasing this feeling.
Curiosity replaces unease when the car turns down a narrow lane and slows. I glance at Cillian, thinking he just needs to pee or something, but he’s staring intently at the hill on the other side of the windshield.
“Are we here?”
“Uh-huh.”
“Uh, are we camping?”
Cillian’s eyes slash at me. “Questions, Dahlia Rose. Less of them.”
He pulls into another lane, one so small that you’d never realize it was there unless you already knew. Brushes and brambles scrape against the car as we follow the curve of the road, and when it opens up into a bigger clearing, we’re closer to the hill.
Now, I can see it’s not just a grassy meadow. There are concrete steps that slope down to a wooden door, and there are sweeping glass windows built into the face of it.
