Stay With Me (17 page)

“Ian.”

“I left because staying put my family at risk, Savi,” he said, not looking up. “It put anyone I loved at risk. I wasn’t in the trusted fold anymore, which meant my father wasn’t either. They looked at me as a traitor who could just as easily go to the police for protection, and these people did not want to go to jail over my stupid ass.”

“So—so your dad—” I began, trying to piece it together.

“Was part of it, yeah,” he said. “It started decades ago, he and the Greene brothers and a couple of other buddies who were doing the same. They skimmed off their own businesses in the beginning, and over the years realized how profitable extortion might be. Sharing the joy and all.”

“Shit.”

“Yep,” he said. “And dear old Dad paid me off to shut me up and get me out of the way.”

I couldn’t even wrap my thoughts around what he was saying. James McMasters was an ass, but— “Is it still going on?” I asked. “Did Jim know?”

“He found out when Dad died and someone approached him,” Ian said. “Told them to go to hell as far as I know.” Ian grabbed a paper towel and wiped his mouth. “Jim never talked about it again. I don’t even know if he told Lily. But you can see where things have gone since.”

Holy hell. “The financial problems?”

Ian held up a hand. “There were perks, evidently. Helping those in need. Bribing suppliers.” He spread both hands out on the counter. “It goes the other direction, too. That’s why I’m here.”

I narrowed my eyes. “Why you’re here,” I echoed, my voice trailing to a whisper. His eyes moved back and forth to each of mine as if trying to determine how far to go. “Spill it, Ian.”

His jaw clenched, and he turned to face the counter, setting down his knife and gripping the edges. “Bobby paid me a visit several years back,” he said.

“In Florida?”

“On a damn dive boat I was working,” he said. “Right after my dad died. He and his wife were on vacation and
decided to take up diving.”
He cut his eyes my way. “It was everything I could do just to keep everyone on course, I was so fucked up with him watching me.”

“How’d he find you?” I asked.

“He’s Bobby,” Ian said. “Anyway, we had a heart to heart the next day. I apologized for trying to screw him over. He spouted a bunch of shit about me being family and how we should help each other, blah blah blah—wanted to know what my intentions were with McMasters Meats.”

“I thought you sold to Jim,” I said.

Ian nodded. “He said that Jim wasn’t playing by the rules and that he was going to have to get serious unless I did something else.”

I frowned, the story getting longer and more crazy as the minutes passed.

“Something else like what?”

“Like opening a dive shop and giving him a cut,” Ian said under his breath. The way his eyes closed as he said it, I knew the words were painful.
I may have sold my soul later . . .
“He claimed he could see the lucrative potential of the diving business since he’d gotten certified and all that. He offered the money to start MJ’s in exchange for a flat percentage.” He looked straight at me. “Or he was going to sink Jim and the business.”

My jaw dropped. “You wouldn’t take your dad’s money, but you took that?”

Ian stepped forward, his eyes flashing. “I didn’t have a choice the second time around, Savi. And you want retribution? Karma? I’ve had to do exactly what I used to bully other people into doing.”

I swallowed hard. “Does your friend know?”

“Sy?” Ian shook his head. “No. I pay Bobby out of my salary instead of the company account so he doesn’t get screwed.”

I blinked and raked my fingers through my hair. “Okay, fast-forward.”

“Bobby reneged. He’s leaning on the shop, on the suppliers. Jim and Lily can’t pay their employees and they can’t run it by themselves. It’ll go under if—” He stopped and shook his head. “Jim won’t take my money, but I can come here and do what I can. And try to stop this shit once and for all.”

Jesus. I stood back up and fanned my shirt out, suddenly hot.

“Stop it how?”

“I’m working on that.”

“This is crazy,” I said. “So what were the—” I stopped and met his eyes. “Wait, old buddies from where?”

“What?” Ian said, looking confused.

“Bobby and Georgie and some old buddies started this, you said.”

Ian’s expression cleared and he looked away, and my skin instantly prickled. My dad and James McMasters were old school buddies. “Is my dad in this mess?” My legs felt like water. “Is that why he wants to sell?”

Ian went very still. “He wants to sell?”

“Ian!”

“I don’t know.” After a pause, he glanced my way. “But it’s not a bad idea.”

“Oh, fuck,” I said, my hands coming up to hold my head together. Everything in me went sour. “I’ve got to go talk to him.”

“Hey,” Ian said, crossing the space between us in seconds. His hands were on my shoulders, his face just above mine. “Hey, breathe for a second.”

“There’s no breathing here,” I whispered, closing my eyes. “Not when everything I’ve ever known is suddenly a sham.”

Ian’s thumbs worked my shoulders and then his hands slid slowly to my neck.

“It’s not a sham,” he said, his tone softer. “And I didn’t tell you this to freak you out. I just wanted you to understand.”

“Understand why you had an illegal job you never told me about, then left without telling me what was going on—yep, you covered that. Why you fucked another—” I flashed again on his face, looking at the doorway, waiting for me. Then looking away. “You did that on purpose,” I breathed. “You st-staged it?” I asked, looking up at him.

His face was inches away. The tiny lines fanning from his eyes, the sun in his skin, the light dusting of gray in his otherwise dark hair—all so different, and yet the heated way he looked at me was all too familiar.

“You would have tried to come with me,” he said under his breath.

Angry tears burned my eyes, and I pulled out of his touch, out of his reach.

“Savi, I didn’t know if your family was involved or not, and I couldn’t put you and Abby in the middle of it. You would have put up a fight, made a lot of noise about it,” he said. He slapped himself in the chest. “I know you would’ve, because I did.”

“Damn right I would have,” I said, the hot tears coming. “You had no right playing God like that. Not letting me choose for myself.”

Ian’s jaw twitched. “I was protecting you and Abby.”

“Protecting,” I spat. “No, you were dictating. Just like your father did to you.”

The words struck him where it hurt. I saw the pain flash through his eyes.

“Savi—”

“I loved you!” I cried, completely mortified that I was saying it and yet unable to stop. His stricken look only spurred me on. “In case you’ve forgotten, that doesn’t come easy to me. It doesn’t come
ever
to me.”

The silence rang around us when my words stopped, and I backed up, hugging my arms around myself. “I have to go find my dad.”

I turned and walked blindly down the little hallway and out the door.
Don’t follow me.
When I glanced back and found that he wasn’t, I was morbidly disappointed. By the time I reached my car, however, I was nothing but cold. Cold in a way that made no sense on such a hot muggy night. Cold like the day I watched him drive away on his motorcycle.

• • •

My father’s driveway was twenty yards of gravel, so he knew I was there before I ever stopped the car. That had been the bane of my existence as a teenager, not that I drove much. I’d usually have Ian roll to a stop at the corner and walk me in.

I realized he might not be there, might be at Mrs. Sullivan’s house. He parked his pickup in the garage to avoid bugs or stray cats walking on it, so it was a toss-up. The lights were out in front, but that didn’t mean anything either. He’d be kicked back in his recliner in the back living room with a root beer and a big package of chocolate-covered graham crackers. Or a bag of Chili Cheese Fritos.

I sat in the car after I turned the engine off, letting the quiet and the dark soak in. I needed it. I needed something to quiet my crazy nerves, which were pinging off each other like a pinball machine gone haywire.

Was my dad, Theo Barnes, model of everything old-fashioned and wholesome—minus Mrs. Sullivan and her jigsaw puzzles—involved in something illegal? And by trickle-down math, that would include me? It made me nauseous just to consider it. But Ian’s dad had been. With old buddies. My dad had gone to school with James McMasters, and worked right across the street.

And Ian—I couldn’t even think about that.

A light switched on in the front room, meaning Dad was coming to see what was taking so long. Family came in the back door. If you were dilly-dallying out front, especially after dark, Dad was coming. With a large dog named Rambo.

When the porch light lit up the front yard, I knew it was time. I got out and walked to the door, where Dad was waiting, unlocking and pushing open the storm door.

“What are you doing, honey?” he said.

He was in pajama pants and a T-shirt, his bare white feet glowing as much as his hair in the overhead light.

“Sorry, I was on the phone,” I lied, hugging him.

“Well, come on before the bugs get in,” he said, holding the door for me.

I scooted past him, smelling Fritos. That was the guilty pleasure of the night.

“Where’s Rambo?”

“Passed out on the couch,” he said, shutting everything back up.

I gave a thumbs-up. “Way to guard and protect, Rambo.”

Dad shook his head. “He knows your car from three blocks away. If you’d been a stranger, he’d have been up before me.”

I trailed behind Dad, past the walls of ticking clocks, through the hall of photos where our bedrooms once were. Mine was now storage. Lily’s had become Mom’s sewing room, and had pretty much been left alone since.

Rambo, an ancient German shepherd with gas issues, thumped his big tail when I entered the back room.

“Don’t get up,” I said, crossing the room to give him some love. Rambo rolled over for a belly rub the second I sat down. “Yeah, you’re such a slut.”

“Did you eat?” Dad said, setting his TV tray laden with the Frito bag and a small, partially dismantled clock aside. “I’ve got some spaghetti leftovers.”

I thought of the perfect steak I’d left behind. “No, but I’m good.” My appetite was gone.

“Get that garbage taken care of?” he asked, sitting back in his recliner.

I laughed, kind of a snarky sound, and it made him look at me funny.

“They padlock theirs too,” I said.

His brows came together. “Who does that?”

“Seems to be a trend.”

“So we still have that stinking mess in the kitchen,” he said.

“No—I got it in Lily’s anyway,” I said.

Dad laughed. “You busted the lock?”

“Not exactly.” At his befuddled look, I sighed. “Ian came out and opened it for me.”

I left out the part of nearly kissing him, cooking a steak with him, rehashing old times, and oh—the part about the Copper Falls mafia. Okay, yeah, maybe that was a little extreme.

His smile dwindled. “I should’ve taken it over there myself.”

“It was fine.”

“We gotta get that under control, Savi,” he said. “This is ridiculous, not having trash pickup.”

“I’ll go down there this week,” I said.

I was stalling. Suddenly, with all that was holy, I didn’t want to broach this subject. I didn’t want to believe it. I didn’t want to know. Wasn’t that how mob families typically worked? Love and denial and all that?

Glorious.

“So what’s up?” he said, putting his feet up, grabbing the Frito bag and the little clock.

I did a face shrug as I buried my fingers in Rambo’s thick fur.

“Nothing. Just on my way home.”

“This isn’t really on your way, honey,” Dad said.

“I know.”

He adjusted his glasses and worked some little gear meticulously with a tiny screwdriver. “In fact, it’s the opposite direction.”

“I’m aware, Dad.”

“So what’s eatin’ you?” he asked, setting the screwdriver down and tossing a handful of chips in his mouth.

My gaze drifted over the room, over the things that hadn’t moved, hadn’t changed in my lifetime. A room I could probably describe pretty accurately with my eyes closed. Except there was something new. My mother’s cedar hope chest was across the room, under the big-screen TV, with the DVD player and of course a small clock sitting on it.

I pointed. “Mom’s hope chest.”

Dad looked over. “Yep, brought it down from the upstairs closet.”

I gave a surprised laugh. “By yourself?”

“No, I got Jim to help me,” he said, waving a Frito at me. “Been a couple of weeks ago.”

“Well, I guess I’ve been slacking,” I said, getting up to cross the room. Suddenly, I needed to touch it. “What made you do that?”