It was time that the marauder of Hell’s Kitchen, me, reclaimed the streets that belonged to us, and at the same time, find out what Scott Stone had been up to. Find out what he kept locked up in that heart of his.
Once I did, I’d steal it from him.
2
Keely
Only those who have tasted the saltiness of true grief can understand how sweet the other side is. But if bitterness lingers too long, the other side always tastes too sweet. Enough to turn the stomach.
I could usually find balance between the two, but December… I sighed, and my breath billowed out of my mouth in a cloud. In December, I felt nothing but open wounds, and I tasted nothing but salt. Salt that never seemed to clean the wounds. No amount of tears could ever heal what I’d lost. Instead, they aggravated the old wounds, making them deeper and angrier.
Leaning down, trying not to be too morbid, despite my surroundings, I placed a bouquet of lilacs and baby’s breath on the cold ground before the grave.
Purple was her favorite color. Green was mine.
It made sense back then, and it made sense in that moment. She was the twin who would always be victorious in life. I’d forever be the envious one. Of her. Even at five, jealousy had been a bitter pill to swallow.
“I wonder if that’s true for all twins,” I wondered aloud. “One is this, will be this, will do this, and the other one is that, will be that, will do that.”
“In my experience, that’s true.”
I whirled around so fast that a gust of wind moved between me and the man suddenly standing close to me. Something that sounded like “shit-a-motha-fooker-wooooo!” left my mouth in a garbled rush. My heart felt like it was in my throat, and my hand shot up, covering the area so it wouldn’t jump clear out of my mouth. “You—” I was about to lay into the stranger, curse him even in a cemetery, but the words died in my throat.
My eyes flew up—yeah, up—and crashed into the eyes of a green-eyed man who no doubt had trouble running through his veins. It was at odds with how well he was dressed, like a businessman. He wore a custom-made suit and a hat that looked like it came straight from another time. Even through the thick mist of a dreary day, his green eyes seemed to sparkle with mischief and something else, something predatory and dangerous.
“I should punch you in the face for scaring me like that!” I whisper-hissed. Yeah, I might not be as big as this guy, but being a tall girl with curves gave me the courage to not back down. And being raised with four brothers didn’t make me timid, either. I was rough, and if I had my bow and arrow, I could take down any predator that was after me.
Unfortunately, my bow and arrow were stowed in my junky-ass car parked across the cemetery. And this predator could take me down, even if he had to fight a little to put me out for the count.
His eyes narrowed, but he didn’t say anything for a minute or two. Somewhere between then, I realized a bottle of whiskey dangled from his fingers, along with two shot glasses. “Roisin Ryan was your sister.”
That mouth of his was a mixture of Irish and New Yorker. He had a soft lilt, and when he said “Roisin,” it came out as “Ro-Sheen.” Which was the correct way to pronounce her name. Being in an Irish cemetery, I wasn’t surprised at his accent. Still, I wasn’t expecting him. At all.
“Why are you ignoring what I said?” I wasn’t ready to answer his question, so I deflected.
“About punching me in the face?”
“What else?”
He sighed. “Are you going to do it, darlin’?”
After a shiver tore over me at the way he said, darlin’, I looked around. “No, only because this is not the time nor the place. I would, if we were anywhere else—”
“But we’re not,” he said.
I studied him for a minute; he seemed to be studying me, too. I wondered what his smile was going to be like. I just knew, knew, that his grin, or his smile, was going to be charming, at odds with those dangerous eyes. Men like him never made sense.
“It’s just rude to scare someone like that,” I said after another minute had passed. “This is a place where people