He doesn’t look up from his paperwork as I step inside and shut the door behind me. “I thought I could smell that fancy cologne stinking up the place.”
I stand in front of his desk, feet apart, arms folded, looking down my nose at the little weasel while he takes in my rich-boy haircut, my clothes that cost more than a month’s salary, my smooth hands that have never done a hard day’s work. I hate doing this shit, throwing my weight and my money around, acting like the cocksucking entitled prats Dad’s always railed against. “Someone’s hurt my father again. I want him moved to a private cell.”
“No can do, little man.” His insult falls flat, and he knows it. His Adam’s apple bobs up and down as he swallows. “I’m bursting at the seams here, and private cells are for inmates who are a danger to the prison community, not second-rate crooks like your old man.”
I open the leather pouch and dump the contents on his desk. Two rolls of bills fall out. The warden cups his hand over them and slides them into his lap, cool as a cucumber.
“I’ll see what I can do.”
I wait until I’m back in my car before the weight of what I’d done falls on me. I crank the stereo loud, so loud it drowns out the screaming in my head.
I punch the steering wheel until my fingers bleed.
17
Mackenzie
“Bastard,” I mutter into the phone.
“You like this guy,” Antony chuckles.
“Cocksucker.”
“I bet he has a motorcycle. And dark, brooding eyes. You’re so predictable.”
“Wanker.”
Antony laughs. “That’s a new one.”
“I learned it from Gabriel. The British have such eloquent insults.”
My veins hum with rage, and I long to wrap my fingers around Eli’s neck and squeeze, or pull him to me and crush my lips against his. I can’t decide which. All I know is that every word in that diary has been burned into my skull. My house, my refuge, my ticket from hell is tainted now, the walls dripping with blood. It’s a gilded prison, a coffin lid nailed down tight over my parents’ abuse. And if it wasn’t for Eli, I would still be blissfully unaware of the horror in my past.
Eli wasn’t in school today, so I couldn’t talk to him about what I read in the diary. Which means Antony gets the brunt of my annoyance. Once he stops laughing, he says goodbye. He’s got a big fight this weekend, so he needs to focus on training. Even though I’m desperate to talk to him, I let him go – he’s done me a solid and sent one of his thugs to scare away the reporters at the gate, so for now, tonight at least, Malloy Manor is safe again.
I shove my phone into the pocket of my hoodie as I move through the kitchen, tearing the lid off a can of cat food and tipping it onto a gold-rimmed saucer for Queen Boudica. Queens deserve the best. She jumps up on the table and buries her face in the bowl.
When I first found Queen Boudica two years ago, she was a skinny, scrawny bag of bones living in the trash cans behind the diner. My boss, Lenny, said someone dumped a bag of kittens in the alley, and he called the animal shelter, but they didn’t seem to care. When I went out to dump some empty bottles, her fierce yellow eyes surveyed me from the shadows. She was scrappy. A survivor.
Like me.
At the end of my shift, I crawled behind the dumpster, scraping up my bare arms on the bricks. I managed to cradle her in my apron. I expected her to fight me, but as soon as I held her in my arms she curled up and went to sleep. The bus driver gave me a dirty look as I hopped on with her, but he let me sit down. I stared down at the tiny body in my arms and swore I’d look after her.
When I got home I set her down on the marble floor of the foyer and she sat as regally as an Egyptian statue, peering down her nose at me as if she expected me to wait on her. I named her for the Queen of the Celts, who stood up against the might of the Roman Empire. Ever since, she’s ruled this house and my heart. She’s probably the only thing that’s kept me sane.