Page 60 of Tasting Sin

“I don’t want to talk about him.” I chewed on the inside of my cheek.

The woman grabbed my hair, yanking it and pulling my head back. “Oh, but I do.” She sneered at me, clearing her throat. “Seventeen is so young for a boy to get involved in such a dirty business, but he did. Moving money and drugs for the Moretti family. Then, the FBI caught wind of it, and they got involved. Pulled poor little Dickie into their grasps.”

“That’s not true.” I shook my head. Dickie had always been an honor student, so well behaved.

She clicked her tongue, and the masculine voice behind me laughed. “Oh, but it is. Your brother was one of them until the FBI got him. Then, he was caught in the middle. Do you know what happens to someone who talks to the FBI?” I shook my head. The woman made a gun with her pointer finger and thumb and brought it to my head. “They die.”

“My brother committed suicide.” It felt suddenly like I was a little girl again, explaining to people at school why I didn’t have an older brother anymore. It no longer felt like it had been seventeen years since he died. I felt like we just buried him.

The woman hummed again, but she smiled. “And why do you think he did that, hmm?” I closed my eyes, no longer wanting to listen to this conversation. She continued anyways. “It was either tell the feds everything and take a bullet to the head, tell them nothing and go to jail, or kill himself and make everyone’s lives easier.”

“How dare you?” I shrieked. “He was my brother!”

When she hit me again, I bit my tongue, and my mouth filled with the taste of iron while it swelled. “Stop screaming, or I’ll kill you before your boyfriend makes it here to try and save you. He’s really all we want anyways.”

“Why?” I asked. It was a trap, and Ronan was going to walk right into it. Was anything they were saying real?

“Even knowing he broke your family apart, you’re still worried about him. Charming.” She rolled her eyes, standing back up. The woman didn’t answer my question. “Keep an eye on her, Frank. If she acts up, slap her around. If she gets completely out of hand, kill her. And let me know when Moretti shows up.”

I tugged frantically at the tape holding my hands, kicking my feet against the cement ground like it would help me pull harder. It didn’t, and I dropped back against the pole in defeat while a big man rounded the room and came into my line of sight. He smiled, and my stomach flipped nervously.

“We’ll be just fine here, won’t we?” he said, weaving his hands into my hair and tugging. I tilted my head, choking down a sob that threatened to rip from my chest. This couldn’t be happening to me.

You’re untouchable. Protected.

I didn’t feel very protected. A tear I couldn’t stop painted its way down my cheek, and I wasn’t sure if it was from the fresh bruises on my face or the old wound newly ripped open. All I could see were images of Dickie’s face and the silence we faced afterwards.

The man sat down in the chair on the side of the room, kicking his feet up on the shelf in front of him. “Be a good girl. Don’t cause any issues, and I promise I’ll let you get out of here alive. Deal?”

I glared at him, spitting at the ground. “Go fuck yourself. When Ronan gets here, I won’t make you the same promise.”

Chapter 40

Ronan

“How do you know she’s here?” Enzo asked, walking behind me toward the back door of The Full Spread. He looked over his shoulder to make sure nobody was following us.

“I recognized Frank. I watched him take her.” I gritted my teeth, clenching my hands into fists at my sides. When I tried the door, it was locked. Did I really expect it not to be? “Take the window.” I pointed to the window leading into the men’s restroom.

“But I don’t get it. Is he Irish? Why would she be here? Do you think Nikki is in on it?” He covered the back of his knife with his jacket and slammed it into the corner of the window, shattering the glass. If anyone was inside, they heard it break and heard the shards sprinkling on the tile floor.

I urged him with a nod. “My guess is there’s more of a connection there than we realized. Will you just climb through and let me in?”

Enzo rolled his eyes, pushing up on the side of the window and pulling himself through. He dropped into the bathroom, and his boots crushed glass beneath his feet. Not a subtle entrance. Within a couple seconds, the door was opening, and I was following him in.

“Do you think she’s helping them push the drugs?” he asked, stopping suddenly and turning toward me. “Maybe the Irish are helping her!”

“I don’t know.” I looked around each corner, checking the shadows for any hint that Nellie was nearby.

He stopped, pushing open the door to the office and peering around it. The room was empty, and he huffed quietly, leaving the door ajar when he continued down the hall. “I mean, really, though—do we think she’d kill her own girls?”

“At this point, I’m not sure what she’s capable of, but something tells me she’s been in with the Cassidys the whole time.” It was eerily quiet in the building, but the tension was thick. At this time, there should’ve been dancers flitting around and bartenders preparing shelves of bottles for opening. Instead, it was empty.

Enzo shook his head like he was trying to wrap his mind around the influx of information neither of us had any grasp on yet. “Jesus fuck, this is wild.”

Then, there was a crash, and we both whipped around back toward the hallway behind the bar. “Fucking bitch!” a man shouted, followed by a high-pitched shriek. Nellie.

We raced back down the hallway, skipping past the doors to the office and the bathroom we had already checked. There was only one other door, tucked in the back of the office.

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