Page 35 of The Irish Redemption

My worst crime is credit card debt. That’s it. That’s all I did, and that doesn’t deserve Dillon trying to force his way into my pants, or Harry threatening my life, and certainly not Cormac and his men now going through my already fucked apartment.

“You can’t lie to me,” Cormac yells back, and his voice is much scarier than mine when he yells. “You were seen, okay? You had a Russian in your home and so soon after I let you go. Bit fucking suspicious, don’t you think?”

“A Russian?” I can’t believe my ears. “How the fuck would I know who is and isn’t Russian? You want me to question every delivery guy that comes to my door to make sure they don’t have any kind of gang affiliation, huh? And at that—” It hits me suddenly that if he knows someone was here, he must have eyes on me. “Are you stalking me? How the hell do you know who has or hasn’t been in my home?”

“Harry Fox,” Cormac recites, and my gut plummets like I’ve just been dragged off a cliff. “Name ring any bells?”

“If you’d opened with that,” I snap, “instead of destroying my apartment. What was that noise, anyway? Did you kick my front door in, you psychopath?”

Cormac advances, but I hold my ground, clinging to this new rage inside me. Everything from the past week is piling up and it’s too much. From the motel to Cormac to losing my job and Harry, what else am I supposed to do?

“Didn’t want to give you a chance to run.”

“Run?” I laugh humorlessly. “Where the hell would I run? If you’re stalking me, then you should know I don’t have anywhere or anything! I’m not a spy, you hear me? And Harry, I wouldn’t fucking know what he is or isn’t, okay? He’s just a guy I have to deal with, and a very fucking unpleasant one at that.”

“You expect me to believe that five days after my brother is murdered, you’re shacking up with someone on the Russian payroll and that’s just a coincidence?”

A wave of rage at Cormac’s accusatory tone floods through me, drowning me from the inside, and I suddenly, can’t breathe. The urge to lash out is too strong, so I turn and launch the wine bottle at the opposite wall.

“Fuck off with that bullshit!” I scream at him, enraged. “I don’t know what the fuck you are talking about, okay? I’m just trying to pick up the pieces of my life after you and your brother fucked it, alright? So you know what? Go through my apartment for all I care. Tear this shit apart. Call my mother if you have to. I don’t have anything to hide because I don’t fucking have anything! I’m just me, but I don’t have to stand here and explain myself to you in my own fucking home!”

It feels so fucking good to yell. It’s more therapeutic than crying, and despite being breathless afterward, there’s an odd freeing sensation across my shoulders. I force a deep breath and hold it as Cormac stares at me through the dullness.

“I’m just me,” I repeat tiredly. “Do whatever you want. You won’t find whatever you think is here.”

I move around the table and push past Cormac, heading into the kitchen where I know there’s no more alcohol, but there is water and I’m suddenly very parched.

Cormac follows me, his angry footsteps like a drum beat on the chipped tile flooring. “Evelyn,” he snaps. “The evidence is piling up against you and I?—”

He stops talking so abruptly that I half expect him to fall over when I turn with a glass of tap water in my hands. The anger on his face is so clear now in the light of the kitchen, but in a blink it fades and there’s something else in his eyes. The same look he had when he stared at me after beating Dillon to a pulp.

“Your face.”

He walks forward, and I brace for him to pull another accusation out of his ass, but instead, he lifts his hand and grasps my chin between a gentle but firm thumb and forefinger and tilts my head up into the light.

“He hurt you?”

15

CORMAC

The bruise around her eye, the split skin at her lip, and the split at her eyebrow weren’t visible in the dull light of the lounge, but here, in the kitchen, it’s as clear as anything.

It dampens my anger faster than any Scotch, and a different anger begins to curl in my chest. It’s darker, heavier, and more dangerous than the rage I felt when thinking Evelyn was some kind of spy. Listening to her outburst didn’t make the truth any clearer and all the evidence points to her being some kind of plant or mole. The Russian connection seen leaving her apartment is the biggest evidence of this.

Suddenly, it doesn’t matter as much. At least not right now. The wounds are fresh and the bruise around her eye is still pink and purple. In a few hours, it will darken. Evelyn lifts one hand and attempts to push me away as she turns her head, but I don’t move and I prevent her from looking away.

“Tell me the truth,” I say firmly.

Evelyn rolls her eyes and jerks her chin out of my grip. “Oh, now you care about the truth. What does it matter what I say if you’ve already made up your mind about me?”

I catch her chin again, tilting her face back to me and studying the split on her eyebrow. It doesn’t look deep enough for stitches but it still needs some kind of treatment. “Sit down.”

“Don’t tell me what to do in my own home.”

“Sit. Down.”

Evelyn finally relents with a grumble and she drops into the rickety wooden chair by her small, circular table. I move past her to the sink and rummage through a few cabinets in search of a medical kit, but there’s nothing. I’ll have to do this old school. As I’m searching, Dale appears at the door and clears his throat to catch my attention. I look him in the eye and he shakes his head just once.

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