Julia had already ignored her father’s summons as many times as she could. It was time to go back home or face the consequences.
Or, knowing her father, both.
Twenty-two-year-olds about to graduate from college should assert their independence. Or, anyway, that was the excuse she planned to use when he lit into her about it, assuming he was in a mood to listen to excuses. Because he was going to be furious—there was no getting around that.
No one was suicidal enough to ignore Mickey Sheeran for too long.
Julia was one of the few people who dared pretend otherwise, and—filled with bravado while safely on campus and protected by university security—she’d decided to prove it.
She was already feeling sick with regret about that as she turned onto her parents’ street in their unpretentious neighborhood outside of Boston proper, which was filled with the regular Joes her dad claimed he admired as true American heroes. Julia knew that what he really meant by that was that all their neighbors were as in awe of him as they were afraid of him. Just the way he liked it.
Most people were just plain old afraid of him, Julia included.
More so the closer she got to the house she’d grown up in and hadn’t been able to leave fast enough. And never seemed to be able to put behind her, whether she lived there or not.
There wasn’t a single part of her that wanted to go back. Ever. And particularly not when she’d deliberately provoked him.
Sure, all she’d actually done was ignore a couple of phone messages ordering her to leave her dormitory and come home. But she knew her father would view the delay between the messages he’d left and her appearance as nothing short of traitorous. She was expected to leap to obey him almost before he issued a command, as she well knew. He didn’t care that she had exams. He probably didn’t know she had exams.
But Julia knew it was foolish to imagine her father was dumb. He wasn’t. It was far more likely that he knew full well it was her exam period and had waited until this, her final semester of college, to force her to take incompletes and fail to graduate. He was nothing if not a master at revenge served cold.
Mickey hadn’t been on board with the college thing, something he made perfectly clear every time he sneered about Julia’s “ambitions.” He’d also refused to pay for it and had gone ballistic when Julia had found her own loans and a job in a restaurant to help with costs.
She still thought it was worth the bruises.
Her sister, Lindsay, was fifteen months younger and had never made it out from under their father’s thumb. She still lived at home, grimly obeying his every command in the respectful silence he demanded, because females were to be seen, never heard.
She’d even started dating one of Mickey’s younger associates.
You know where that’s going to lead, Julia had muttered under her breath when she’d been forced to put in an appearance on Easter Sunday. Straight to an entire life exactly like Mom’s. Is that really what you want?
You’re the only one who thinks there’s another choice, Lindsay had snapped right back, her gaze dark and her mouth set in a mulish line. There’s not.
Julia had looked across the crowded church, filled with the people who came to Mass one other time each year, and stared at the back of Lindsay’s boyfriend’s head. She wished her gaze could punch holes in him.
I don’t accept that, she’d said quietly. I refuse to accept that.
Next to her, her sister had sighed, something weary and practical on her face. Julia had recognized the look. Their mother wore it often. Soon it would start to fade and crack around it turned into beaten-down resignation.
He’s not a nice guy, but at least it gets me out of the house and away from Dad every now and again, she’d said. That’s not nothing.
Their brother Jimmy, the meanest of their three older brothers, had turned around from the pew in front of them. He looked more and more like Dad by the day, and the nasty look he’d thrown the two of them had shut them both up. Instantly.
Sometimes Julia lay in her narrow cot in the dorm, squeezed her eyes shut so tight she expected all her blood vessels to pop, and wished. For something to save her. For some way out. For the limitless, oversized life her college