Page 1 of Dearly Betrayed

Chapter1

Fallon

“Are you willing to do anything for the family, Fallie?” My brother stands with his back to me staring down at Papa’s grave, the dirt freshly turned. It smells like wet leaves and cut grass in the cemetery. Ancient oaks drip rain. Twenty feet away, several soldiers for the Grady Clan stand guard, their compact submachine guns barely hidden under their large overcoats.

My breath fogs the air faster as my heart races, but the answer’s easy.

“I’ve been doing that my whole life,” I say, stepping up beside him. I tug my rain jacket tighter around my body. The sun’s only just beginning to poke out from behind the clouds, and Papa’s been dead for two weeks now. He would’ve enjoyed a morning like this. “Why stop now?”

“This won’t be easy.”

“Nothing’s been easy since Papa died.” The wound of his funeral still burns barely a week after it ended.

I still wake thinking I can call him, hear Papa’s craggy voice, laugh at his cussing and his stupid jokes, get a smile on my face knowing he’s still there.

Now he’s gone. Body mangled to pieces, torn to shreds, his old, brittle bones ripped through with jagged pieces of hot steel. Dead like so many Irish men before him. Not coming back.

“This will be worse.” Rian turns away from the grave and folds his hands behind his back as he walks along the shaded path. I fall into step even though I want to stay behind with Papa for a while longer. My older brother is the acting clan chief now, and he’s due some respect.

“Worse how? Not sure it can get any harder.”

“We’re ending the war, Fallie. And you’re going to help do it.”

I stare at him in surprise. Rian still won’t look at me. He’s tall, this brother of mine, with dark hair and dark eyes, sharp cheeks, an Irish nose, skinny and pointed. An intense stare, like he’s always seeing his own death marching toward him. Always been like that since we were little. Like he’s got one foot in the grave and he knows it.

“Why?” I ask, genuinely curious. The war against the Costas has been dragging on for months and months now, one of the bloodiest confrontations my family’s gotten involved with in my lifetime. Too many dead friends, cousins, and now a father. Too many of our people to avenge to stop now.

“First, I want you to understand something. I haven’t forgotten Papa. I’ll never forget what they did to our father, God rest his soul in paradise.” Rian crosses himself, stoops his head. We move slowly down another path between looming concrete edifices consecrated to the saints.

“God rest his soul,” I echo. “I never said you would, anyway.”

“We’ve all sacrificed in this fight, and now I’m going to ask something of you an older brother should never ask of his sister. If there were another way, I’d find it.”

“What’re you about to make me do, Chim?” My old nickname for him, short for Chimney, since he’s skinny and tall, and it’s like there’s always smoke coming from his ears on account of him being so damn serious all the time.

He still won’t look at me. “The Costas want a gesture. They need proof that we’re serious about this peace thing, and in many ways, I agree with them. A big gesture’s the only way we’ll end it without more killing, and I’m tired of the killing. I’m tired of losing the people I love, and we’ll keep on losing if we don’t stop this now.”

My feet go numb like I’ve stepped in a puddle. I slow, losing a step, as he pulls ahead. “Rian. Just get it out. Say what you’ve got to say.”

Surrounded by the dead, headstones like pale teeth rising from the earth, my brother stops and looks directly at me for the first time in an hour. “You’re arranged to marry Jayson Costa. That’s the deal I struck with Adler. We agreed it’s the best way to solidify this truce and to make sure the cycle of revenge doesn’t continue on forever. New life in place of old death.”

I don’t know what to say. My jaw works and I stare at that familiar, serious face, pale now. Strained with pain, even. Five years older than me, big Chim. He’s been a mystery since I was a girl, always keeping to himself. But like me, he wanted to please Papa. Everyone wanted to please Colm Grady, most of all his children. Now we’re setting aside our beloved father’s memory for this. For some flimsy peace built on my own damn womb.

“You’re joking,” I finally manage to say.

“I’m not. I’m sorry.”

“Jayson Costa? The actual man that killed our father? You want me to go off and marry the fucker that did our Papa in?”

“Yes. I do.”

“Fuck you.” He doesn’t react. I step closer. “No. Seriously. Fuck you. There’s no way on God’s green earth I’ll ever marry Jayson Costa, not for any fuckin’ reason. You hear me, Rian? Absolutely no fuckin’ way.”

I’m so livid I could scream. My ears turn red, my cheeks flush, and my vision swims. My own flesh and blood, trying to sell me to a murdering bastard, to the piece of trash that caused this nightmare to begin with. It’s a waking nightmare.

“You have a choice,” Rian says as if I hadn’t just cussed him out in a graveyard. God forgive me, but I’m not at my best. “You always have a choice, Fallie. This isn’t what I wanted, God knows it, but we all sacrifice. We do what we have to for the clan.”

“Fuck off,” I say, waving a hand in the air. “Did you marry some foreign girl? Did you marry the woman that murdered your own father? I don’t think so.”

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