“You worked with mobsters?” I felt her tense under my arm.
“I did, yeah. When the family needed certain… problems… handled discreetly.”
The hand draped over my torso curled into a tight fist. “Like Billy Richards.”
“Exactly.”
I took a breath. And then, because I could, because the trust between a man and his wife was so sacred in this country that even the law protected our right to confide the very worst things to each other without fear, I told her everything that happened in Vegas before I met her.
About the call from Brendan that terrible night.
About Mac’s and my flight to Vegas and how we’d tracked down the last of Huntington’s thugs.
About how we’d dragged Billy Richards out into the desert with the intent to shoot him dead and leave him for the coyotes to clean up… but instead, I’d left him there alive, which could have been just as bad.
All throughout, Laney listened, eyes wide and open, accepting of my story, of my guilt, my flaws. Even my fears. She was surprised at times. Maybe even a little disgusted.
“And your dad has been making you do that kind of thing since…”
I closed my eyes. “Since I was old enough to make trouble. Which basically means forever.”
I honestly couldn’t remember a day when Dad hadn’t egged on my internal chaos. Even going back to Southie, he’d encouraged me to do things like nick a pack of gum from the corner store or pick a fight with someone on the playground. Like he’d been trying to see just how broken my moral compass was. Or how hard he could twist it.
Maybe it wasn’t broken at all, I realized as I spoke. Maybe it was just lost until it found its true north.
To her credit, Laney never looked away. She took me as I was, and when I finished, she kissed me, slow and long.
“I love you,” she told me. “No matter what you do or have done. I love you always.”
Something deep inside me split open completely. It felt like it might be my heart welcoming her home.
It made me want to tell her everything I’d ever done. Well, not everything. Some stories could wait. After all, we had a lifetime to share our secrets.
And the weird thing was? I was looking forward to it.
“So, Ares helped you locate him to clear your name, and now you owe him something in return?” She was lying on her side now, those big green eyes set off by the white of her pillow.
“That’s about it.”
“Do you know what he wants?”
I nodded. And then I admitted the thing I hadn’t told anyone yet. Not even Liam. “He wants part of my stake in Blackguard.He wants to go straight, and that would give him the means to do it. So… I’m going to give it to him.”
Her eyes popped open. “You’re giving a gangster shares in your family’s company?”
It was funny. She almost cared more than I did.
“I’m giving a man trying to be legitimate shares in a company I no longer want to be part of.” I sat up then, letting the sheets pool around my waist. “I think Ares wants out of the life. I think he hates being under his father’s thumb as much as I hated being under mine. He sees Blackguard as his ticket out.”
I didn’t have to say that it was a bit like jumping from the frying pan into the fire, going from a mobster father to working with mine. But maybe Ares Antoni wouldn’t have to deal so much with Niall Black. If he was smart, that is.
“And you’re just going to give it to him? Free and clear?”
“They’re my shares to give. And I already told my father I’m leaving Blackguard. The rest, I’m gifting to a nonprofit or something. I don’t want them. I don’t want anything to do with him or Blackguard anymore. I don’t want this life.”
By this point, she was sitting up too, clutching the sheet to her naked body while studying me. “Then what do you want?”
I turned, urging her to see the truth. “The only thing in this life that I absolutely know I want is you, Ari. Everything else just gets in the way.”