Suddenly, I bent toward her, hissing, “No. I’m not hearing you. I do not give that first fuck you’re pissed.” Her brows shot up at this rarity and I leaned back, asking, “Tommy?”
“Fuck, Liv—”
“Tommy!” I snapped his name like a whip, aiming my lash her way.
She pushed away from her desk. “He gets orders just like Gill.”
I shook my head. “No he doesn’t. Tommy doesn’t. Not from you. Tommy’s mine.”
Her face lost some of its anger and her tone was softer when she said, “He isn’t yours. He hasn’t been yours for a long time. And you know it, babe.”
“He’s mine, Georgie,” I reiterated.
“He isn’t, Liv.”
I leaned forward and was again hissing. “He’s mine.”
My sister’s voice was actually gentle, as was her gaze on me, when she returned, “He wasn’t even yours back then.”
My torso shot back like she’d struck me.
“He does what he’s told,” she continued. “He doesn’t get special treatment. He doesn’t get the clean jobs because the boss’s daughter gave him her cunt and her heart. It should have been a long time ago I stopped letting you protect him. Keep him for yourself. Try to keep him clean. The time for that to stop is now. A job needs to get done, no matter how dirty, he proves allegiance by doing it quickly and doing it well just like anyone else.”
“So,” I began, “Green isn’t stupid enough to turn on us, he just lost his patience because he needs money to actually feed himself, he takes off and you send my ex-boyfriend to whack him to make a point?”
“A point that needed to be made. Not only to Tommy but out there.” She threw an arm wide before she pointed at her desk. “And in here, to all our boys.”
That speared through my heart.
“It was you?” I asked.
“It was me.”
“Not Dad?” I pressed masochistically, but holding on to hope that she was taking orders too.
Just like Tommy.
She shook her head, her manner still gentle. “No, sis. Not Dad.”
She hadn’t relayed the order.
She’d given it.
I stood just inside the door of her office, silent.
Defeated.
Tommy, my Tommy, had killed a man. That man was Green. My man. My soldier.
It wasn’t like Tommy was clean. Before and after there was a Tommy and me, he’d done things. Many things. Including that. He was a gangster, like me. That was part of the business.
Though, I’d never killed anyone nor ordered an execution. But I’d sat through listening to orders being given with and without saying a word against it.
But since there was a Tommy and me, it was Gill or another member of the crew.
It wasn’t Tommy.
Not my Tommy.