Could I really trust him, though?
Was he playing a game too?
My jaw twitched. “What about the girl you attacked outside the boutique?”
“She was collateral damage.”
I pushed against the table. “What the fuck are you talking about?”
“I thought she was Lizzy’s sister. She was wearing the same red hat I’d seen her sister wearing.”
Anger ripped through me. “You just told me you promised Lizzy you wouldn’t hurt her sister. Now you’re telling me you thought it was her when you carved up her skin. Make up your fucking mind and stop feeding me a line of bullshit.”
“It’s not like that. The night before, Lizzy had gone missing, and I needed to keep you away from her sister in case she was somewhere out there waiting to talk to her. And the only way I could think of to make sure you stayed clear of her sister was to leave my mark.”
I found myself in a haze of needing to know what the fuck he was talking about. “You have less than three minutes to make any sense out of all this bullshit. After that I’m walking.”
He sucked in a breath. “It all started when Lizzy and I had decided to take off. We were going to grab the kid and leave Boston. Disappear. But in the midst of making out plans, I got this call with an offer I couldn’t turn down.”
“What kind of offer?”
His smile was sly. “One that would make me more powerful than my old man.”
“What kind of offer?” I repeated. Like I cared about his power trip.
“To be a wholesaler for the biggest drug supplier in Boston. Me. To be one step under the top of the cocaine chain. It had the potential to be a fucking gold mine.”
“Who was the supplier?”
He shook his head.
I rolled my eyes. “Okay, so what happened next?”
“I told Lizzy that we couldn’t leave. That I was going to make so much money it would be worth staying. She agreed and even offered to help me unload the product. We started pushing the coke and just like I thought, were making money hand over fist.”
He said the last part with a pride that nauseated me.
“It wasn’t long before I was able to increase my buys. The supplier was happy. I was happy. I was doing a fucking great job. But Lizzy wasn’t happy. She still wanted to leave town. She didn’t like her life and she was ready to start over somewhere else. The thing was, I wasn’t.”
“Who was the supplier?” I asked again.
He laughed, but this time he answered. “Come on, you have to know. The Priest.”
“What’s his fucking real name?” I demanded.
He shook his head. “I don’t fucking know.”
Doubtful, I narrowed my eyes at him. Was he feeding me a bunch of bullshit? Maybe. Still, I didn’t stop him. I wanted to hear what he had to say. ”Go on.”
“One morning when I was about to make my biggest buy yet she shows up. Said she couldn’t stay in that house one more minute. I was in a hurry. She had parked behind me. We took the Mercedes and the five mil and went to make the buy.”
Five mil. The missing money. It was beginning to make sense. “But,” I interjected.
“The shit storm that followed is still a blur. The exchange went off without a hitch. On the way back to my place, I was out of cigarettes and asked her to stop at a corner store. When I went inside, she fucking took off with the drugs and left me there.”
Doubt coated my brow. “Let me get this straight—she stole two hundred fifty kilos of cocaine from you?”
“She called me as soon as she took off. Told me she was going home to get that kid and then it was time for us to leave town.”
“So she blackmailed you?”
“No, she’d just had enough of that husband of hers.”
“Why not just leave the guy?”
“Come on, she had a record. She was a drug addict and a prostitute. She knew no court would award her custody of that kid and for some reason she wasn’t willing to leave her behind. Her only option was to run.”
I shook my head. “Okay, so then what happened?”
“Then she never showed up.”
“Why?”
“Because the fucker hijacked the drugs.”
“And what happened to Lizzy?”
“The Priest took her.”
“Took her?” She’d been taken? Hadn’t she disappeared on her own? That I wasn’t buying.
“Aren’t you listening to me? O’Shea sabotaged the whole fucking thing. He took the drugs and arranged for her to disappear.”
Surprisingly, the events were making more and more sense. Patrick was demanding both the money and drugs as retribution, which I always found odd. How could both disappear? Obviously, just the drugs had been stolen. Oddly, I got the feeling Tommy wasn’t feeding me a complete line of bullshit except for one thing—I’d seen Tommy with Lizzy, and recently. I kept that to myself. “So what happened next?”
“I went to the Priest, told him what had happened. Hoped he’d help me, and instead he laughed in my face.”
“Not a surprise I suppose.”
Tommy narrowed his eyes at me.
“What did you do next?”