Page 5 of Little Bird
Jesus Christ, what the hell is going on here? Why is this guy arresting me?
And where in the love of all the saints are my friends?
Taryn
“But I didn’t do anything,” I say for what must be the tenth time. “You can’t hold me without charges.”
The officer—Burbank, according to his badge—slams the door in my face, then leers at me through the bars. “We can do whatever we want,” he snaps. “Until you give us your name and the name of your lawyer.”
I shut my mouth at that, because he’s right. I didn’t take my wallet with me to the café, mostly because I didn’t want anyone to know who I was if we got caught, so I’m here without any identification.
And I’ve refused to tell them who I am. Or call anyone to come save me.
I’m sure they think I’m insane for that. Here I am, locked in a jail cell without any idea of why I’m being held, and I’m refusing to do anything to get myself back out. I’m wearing clothes that label me as a rich girl, and I’m positive the cops have guessed that I have family that could get me out of this.
And I do.
But I don’t want to see them, because I’m not sure I can trust them.
My name is Taryn Matthews, and I’m surrounded by people I can’t trust.
That wasn’t always true. For a while, I lived the dream. My mother and father loved each other so much it made me sick, and we had a gorgeous brownstone in the city. My father was a surgeon, my mother a stay-at-home mom who did society parties on the weekends. We had enough money to be safe, and my father believed in putting me above anyone else. He took me to carnivals when they came to town. Street fairs every weekend. Ice skating in Central Park the moment they offered it, and the zoo when it was warm enough for the animals to be out. He taught me to dance to our song—Brown-Eyed Girl by Van Morrison—and promised me everything I asked for. We went to upstate New York a couple times a year to do wholesome things like apple picking and tours of the old-fashioned farms up there and I went to sleep every night to the sound of my mom and dad’s laughter downstairs, knowing my place in the world and feeling like nothing would ever destroy the beautiful, rainbow-colored bubble that surrounded my life.
Then my father was killed and my universe shattered.
And I was left with only my mother. She’d loved me for my father’s sake, but we’d never quite been close. She was disappointed in me from the start and never bothered to hide it. I wasn’t smart enough. Pretty enough. Adventurous enough. If I did something, I did it wrong. And if she caught me doing anything I wasn’t supposed to be doing, I was in trouble for weeks.
She told me regularly, through words and deeds, that I wasn’t enough, and that belief crawled into the depths of my soul and stuck.
Now that I’m older, I wonder if half of it was jealousy. My father loved her, sure.
But he’d loved me more, and I suspect she knew it.
Still, she was my mother, and part of my foundation. I didn’t love her and knew she didn’t love me, but I still thought she would take care of me when it came down to it. Then, in the space of five bullets and one horror-filled night, the mother I’d known all my life disappeared and became someone who only thought of herself. She worried about getting the brownstone sold and moving as far from New York as possible. Getting a new husband. Finding security for herself.
She didn’t ask what I wanted, because it didn’t matter to her.
She never even told me what actually happened to my father. I had to find out through the newspaper clipping my best friend handed me under our desks at school.
I run my finger over the scars on my palm, pushing on them until they hurt, and feel a single tear slide its way down my cheek, wet and sticky. My heart still breaks when I remember my father. Blond, hazel-eyed, and always smiling, he was sunshine on a fall day. Hot chocolate and autumn leaves. Flannel and scarves. Warm and hazy, bathing your skin in the glow of love and laughter. He always had a joke to tell. Always held my hand when I was scared.
He loved caramel apples.
Bought us the biggest Christmas tree and left it up until February, no matter what my mother said.
He was my best friend, my safe space, and when he died and my mother changed...
A part of me went into hiding to protect itself.
He would have saved me tonight. He would have been my first call if he was still around, and I know he would have showed up, no questions asked, and laughed at how I was always giving him a new challenge. Then he would have taken me for milkshakes and French fries and we would have conspired over how to keep this information from my mother.
I shake my head and dash the tear from my face. This isn’t the time for reminiscing. I’m in jail, for fuck’s sake, and need to find a way out of here that doesn’t include calling my mother or the man she’s now married to.
Johnny Massimo. Part of the leadership of the Massimo family, and though I’ve never done much research into them—I’ve tried not to be involved—I’ve been in the city for four years now, and it’s been nearly impossible to avoid finding out who he is. Nephew to the head of the family and cousin to the man trying to take over, he handles the business arm of the organization, and though that should mean he’s not an assassin, I’ve never believed that.
The first time I met him, when I was only sixteen, his eyes roved from my face to my toes and back, taking in every inch of me with a glittering interest that told me everything I needed to know.
I don’t know how my mother met him, but I do know I can’t trust him. And ever since she took up with him, I can’t trust her, either. She never wanted to hear about my needs or take my feelings into account, but since she married Johnny, she...
