Sparrow - L.J. Shen Page 0,6

dirty work he did, and got paid plenty for it.

People called Troy “The Fixer.” He fixed stuff. Not in the handyman sense, mind you. He made people disappear faster than characters in Dennis Lehane’s books. He could cut your prison sentence in half and fix you up with a passport and a fake Social Security card in hours. In days, he could even convince the people who were after you that you didn’t exist. Troy Brennan was Boston’s master manipulator, pulling strings like we were all his puppets. He decided who lived and who died, who disappeared and who made a comeback.

And for some unknown reason, Mr. Fixer chose to marry me. I had no way to fight, escape or even defy his irrational decision. All I could do was beg for a feasible explanation. So I decided to use our first encounter together alone—without Connor, Sherry or any of Troy’s staff—to do just that.

“Why me, Troy? You never spoke a word to me all those years we lived on the same street.” I gripped the creamy vanity top behind me, my knuckles whitening. Maybe calling him by his first name would inspire him to be nicer to me.

He cocked an eyebrow, an expression that looked like Well, shit. She can talk, too. He buttoned his suit jacket with one hand and checked his cell phone with the other.

I was wind, I was a ghost. I was nothing.

“Troy?” I asked again. This time he lifted his eyes to meet mine. My voice dropped to a whisper, but I kept my stare trained on him. “Why me?”

His brows furrowed, his lips thinning into a hard line.

He didn’t like the question, and I wasn’t satisfied with the answer.

“We don’t even know each other.” My nostrils flared.

“Yeah, well…” He kept punching his cell phone, his eyes dropping back to the screen. “Familiarity is overrated. The less I know someone, the better I usually like them.”

This still doesn’t explain why you thrust yourself into my life with the finesse of an army tank.

I glared at him under my newly fake eyelashes, trying to figure out whether he was even good-looking or not. Troy Brennan was never on my radar, but he was on everybody else’s. He was like the IKEA canvas pictures of London and New York in bachelor apartments, like fast food, like Starbucks, like a freaking Macbook Air for a preppy student—mainstream and well liked. At least among women. Buying into his bad boy, influential, rich mobster’s appeal was the polar opposite of who I was.

And still, even under the unforgiving bathroom light, I could see he might be a monster inside, but on the outside, he was anything but.

His thick black mane—so dark it had an almost bluish hue—was trimmed into an expensive haircut with smooth and soft edges. He had the palest, frostiest blue eyes, and a slight tan that made them pop even more. From afar, he was old-fashionedly good-looking. Tall as a skyscraper, wide as a Rugby player and with prominent cheekbones you could cut diamonds with. As he neared you, though, the dead expression behind those baby-blues made you want to run the other way. His eyes were always lazily hooded, vacant of any trace of emotion. Almost like if you looked deep enough, you’d see all the horrific things he’d done to his enemies running in slow motion.

Then there was also the sneer. The challenging smirk plastered on his face 24/7, reminding us all just how unworthy we were in comparison.

I feared and loathed Troy Brennan. He was practically untouchable in Boston. Loved among the cops and respected by the local gangs, he was able to get away with murder.

Literally.

Three years ago, Troy had been the prime suspect in the murder of Billy “Baby Face” Crupti. There wasn’t enough evidence to make the charge stick, but word on the street was the murder was payback. Supposedly Crupti was the one who’d killed Cillian Brennan. No one knew who had sent the simpleton gangster to off Troy’s father or why. The timing was odd. Cillian’s illegal activities were pretty irrelevant to gangland Boston by then. Then there was also the Father McGregor tale, about how Troy killed him too, for ratting about his father’s whereabouts to Crupti.

Yeah, Troy Brennan wasn’t one to take any prisoners.

I still remembered how, growing up, I used to wait for my turn to ride Daisy’s bike (she was the only girl in the neighborhood to have one, and with training wheels, too),