Prologue
Laura
The first year Seth moved to the East Coast, years ago
The journal in my hand is thick and the edge of its pages are worn. As though she didn’t just write in its pages daily, but instead read and reread the scribbled confessions of the past three years constantly. The spine itself is cracked and it divides the journal in two.
Guilt riddles its way into my thoughts. I shouldn’t be reading a patient’s journal, not when she only gave it to me because I told her I’d fix it for her. She trusted me because I’m her nurse. I’m supposed to help Delilah and take care of her.
The poor woman who lives on pills during the day and is haunted by nightmares when the sun sets gave me all her secrets. I know I shouldn’t take it, but the second half of the journal starts with the description of a barn Marcus took her to.
Marcus. Just seeing his name chills me down to my bones. I don’t even realize that I’ve stopped moving, breathing, that I’ve simply halted in the middle of the narrow hall until a sweet new resident asks me if I’m okay. I think her name is Bethany.
“Fine,” I tell her and force a smile, although the scribbled name, Marcus, lingers in my mind. The whispered hiss, Marcus, repeats itself faster and faster as I make my way to the office to read what she wrote about him. The Rockford Center deals with mental health, so naturally, drugs and violence are a conversation starter. Many of my patients talk about Marcus. Marcus and the Cross brothers. Recently, Seth King is a name that’s going around too. I have to close my eyes, swallowing thickly as I shut the door to the dark office, leaning my back against it and simply trying to breathe.
Seth King, the man I loved on the other side of the country. The man I ran away from. He gave me time, but I knew he’d come for me. It’s been a week since I first heard he was here, only miles from me, and I’ve been praying. I begged God to give me a sign, to tell me what to do. Opening my eyes, I stare down at the notebook. My salvation.
I photocopied every page of Delilah’s journal, hiding in the small back office of the Rockford Center. I can still remember how anxious I was and how heat smothered every inch of my skin. Knowing I could be fired instantly, I still had to do it. I’d only just started working at the center, my first job as a nurse. I had to do whatever it took to survive. I suppose I’d been saying that a lot back then.
That journal was my leverage for when Seth inevitably came for me. Filled with multiple entries all about Marcus, the boogeyman, the Grim Reaper. A faceless villain who made deals in back alleys, running the streets around these parts, battling for power along with the Cross brothers. Unlike Carter Cross and his brothers, no one knows who Marcus is. They’ve never seen his face, but his signature power plays and ruthless reputation are notorious.
I thought that if Seth came for me demanding the money I stole, I’d give him the copies. I thought maybe it would be of value to him because I knew he came to work with the Irish mob who ruled this part of the East Coast, a.k.a. the Cross brothers. And they’d give anything to uncover any details on their faceless nemesis, Marcus, and his secrets.
They were all in the worn journal. This woman Delilah, my patient, had seen him. Felt him. She loved Marcus. She had a single journal when she was first admitted. It described details of where they met and what he wanted with her. It was leverage. Several years have passed; my patient’s collection has grown as she’s come in and out of the Rockford Center, when her mental state is too harmful to be away from the help we give her. She has a journal for every year, five years now, and I never stopped photocopying them. I could give Seth information on Marcus, in hopes that he wouldn’t hold our past against me.
I kept waiting and waiting for Seth to come for me. Didn’t he know he’d have to be the one to make the first move? I wouldn’t even be able to look him in the eyes or say his name out loud.
Seth King.
Years came and went yet he never approached me. It wasn’t relief I felt, it was like a prolonged mourning. Maybe he wanted me to feel his presence, to know I couldn’t have him. I remember the first night that thought came to me, and how hard I sobbed against my pillow at the thought. I’d take my punishment; I deserved it.
Fate is a cruel sorceress, but this time I love her. Because last night, I saw him. I spoke to him. He called me Babygirl and even through the fear, I want him to say it again.
Seth
She still doesn’t know how badly she fucked me over.
I try to keep that in mind as I wait for Laura. Waiting for her is all I’ve done since she said good night two weeks ago. Each hour has felt like an eternity. She whispered it when she opened the back door of my car, sliding out with tears running down her cheeks. She never cried in the open; she hated the tears. “Useless” is what she used to mutter when she was on the verge of tears.
Back then I always held her while she let it all out. That night, fourteen days ago, I merely watched as she stayed as silent as she could, wiping the tears from her cheek. Maybe that’s why she whispered “good night”—she didn’t trust herself to speak too loud or else I’d realize she was crying.
I already knew though. She should know better than to think she can hide from me.
If she thinks I don’t know how much it hurts, she’s dead wrong.
The tick of the clock in Jase’s office doesn’t stop. It reminds me that I’m getting closer to seeing her again. She’s to meet me, to come prepared to pay for the damages. She doesn’t know though, just how much she fucked me over.
“Anything else on Walsh?” Jase questions his brother, Declan, as I sit in the corner chair, a dark leather wingback. I listen to the two of them go over the details Declan’s been able to gather on the crooked cop hell-bent on revenge against the man known as Marcus. Only half my attention is on them. Until Declan says something about pitting the two of them against one another.
For a moment, I’m torn from my obsessive thoughts of seeing Laura tonight. The thoughts have been coming and going throughout the day. In the dark of night, alone in my bed with nothing but the memories of her, not a damn thing could get through to me. Certainly not sleep.
“Seth, what do you think?” Jase asks me, rolling up the sleeves of his crisp white dress shirt. Watching him lean back against his chair, the tailored suit jacket draped behind him, I’m reminded that I have shit to do other than deal with the woman who broke what semblance of a heart I had.
“I think being between the two of them is a piss-poor place to be,” I say, speaking up so Declan can hear me from where he is on the other side of the expansive office. His head is down as he types on the keys of his sleek laptop. It’s state of the art and expensive as fuck with all the software loaded onto it. He’s constantly searching for more information on Cody Walsh, the cop and former FBI agent who came to this town wreaking havoc.
“It would be easier if Walsh wasn’t blackmailing us to help him find Marcus.”
“It’s not like we can give him Marcus anyway. He’ll learn that it’s not that easy,” I comment but the foresight of what will happen along the way, and more importantly, after, breeds a disdain for the scheming cop. Months of surveillance on Marcus’s men have given us nothing but a list of men who work for the man. Nothing about him in particular. We don’t have a damn thing to give Walsh.