Page 38 of Severed Rivalry
Seamus fell prey to a shrewd scheme. Someone else after him will too.
I don’t know the ins and outs, but if it follows the patterns, Murphy Enterprises is done for. Cian made some throw-away comment about wanting to leave the business when we were on the phone the other night. How much of this did he know? How much did he participate in? Is this Seamus’s doing or did Cian make this deal?
He’s not the type, if the victims’ profiles are anything to go by. If they’re the pattern, he doesn’t seem motivated by the same things the others were. That is, assuming I know him.
I think I do. I wish I could say IknowI do.
The men in the police reports are in federal custody. Those that survived. “Random gunfire” is suspicious, but I don’t care even one little bit.
Federal custody doesn’t feel permanent enough when they claim diplomatic immunity. It’s custody, not detention. They should be free to move about until visas are revoked.
Assuming of course, that murderous drug dealers respect the rule of law. I’m not putting money on that bet.
Because Cian offered it, I looked up his sister.
Wow. Talk about a glow up. She was striking as a teenager, but she’s stunning now. It’s almost unfair that beauty of that magnitude also has that caliber of talent. Her passion for photography has become a business, and a successful one at that. She has write-ups in local magazines. Her work hangs in the governor’s mansion.
How I never realized Aspen & Evergreen, which is mere blocks from my office, was hers is testament to my go-to-work-come-home eyes-down life. I stay in the shadows and count on being unseen. The Picstagram account for her gallery makes the sheer magnitude of her talent look unapproachable. Her personal account, though, that’s stalker gold.
The pictures are varied and un-themed. Is that a word? It should be in the day of cultivated accounts. It’s un-curated to the extreme. Ayla on a gorgeous man’s arm in formal attire with flashbulbs going off. Ayla in a beanie and a Carhart jacket with acamera to her face. A fluffy brown dog. A macro shot of the tattoos of a man’s hands. A fruit stand and the man selling its wares. Her laughing with Cian.
She’s with him in several. There are a few with him and that chocolate pup who looks at him like he’s her whole world. I scroll further back to see how often he appears. More appear earlier on. The pictures morph from family and hikes and college antics to married life with the more recent date stamps.
Cian isn’t in all. He’s not in many, but he’s in a fair few, and I get to watch the last decade as he went from young man to all man. His features lost their boyishness after he left CSU. The lines at his eyes—either from worrying or from smiling—grooved deeper over the last decade. His shoulders got broader, more solid. And they weren’t small when I knew him back then.
His smile though. It went from wide and full to more reserved. He smiles in her shots, but there are a rare few where that smile meets his eyes.
When it does, he’s all I can see. When they don’t, I see more than he would ever want revealed.
But that’s just me. I knew the man who was worried about the responsibilities he felt so firmly on his shoulders. The one who wanted to keep everyone happy. The one who set aside his own dreams to be what others asked him to be.
Me: When you were eight, what did you want to be when you grew up?
I send my question into the ether as I switch searches to Seamus Murphy. It doesn’t take long to have the ick with what I find. There’s just something about the presence of the man that makes my skin itchy in a weird way, the way it feels when someone’s leering at me and I can’t break their fixation.
I know that feeling. I know the all-encompassing desire to stand in a scalding hot shower and scrub the abhorrent sensation, when no abrasive loofah and no amount of soap will do.
I close my laptop and do just that. Take a long shower until the hot water runs cooler, then I slather with lotion that smells like lavender and lemongrass and climb into my sheets.
I want a do-over on my day. Fortunately for me, I’ll get it. Unfortunately for me, it’ll be like this until I’m seventy-five at the rate I’m going.
Real estate, school supplies, food, teenage girl… the list goes on and on about how much money flows out of my ever-shrinking wallet.
Cian
My sleep schedule is all off. Rather, all I do is sleep.
It’s depressing as fuck.
To be fair, it’s only been twenty-four hours since I got to my sister’s place, and I got no sleep at all two nights ago, but this gentleman-in-distress gig is not my thing.
I slide out of bed, stepping over Eleanor at my feet as her head pops up. She’s used to early mornings, but usually that’s a walk or a run. “Sorry, girl. Concussion and all this”—I point around my face—“mean that’s impossible for now. I hate it too. You can come with if you want.”
Heading down the stairs to the kitchen, Eleanor peels away toward Ayla’s room, her paws quiet, but her nails clicking all the way down the hall. I find Christian’s in his home office. The last time I barged into his work, it was literal. The door went flying. This time I knock before letting myself in and taking the chair across from him.
“How’s your hip?”
“Being shot sucks.”
