Kathleen O'Brien - The Cost of Silence

Red shrugged. “Crazy people eat pizza, too, don’t they?”

This trip to Windsor Beach was doing double duty. He’d set aside the morning to get a glimpse of Allison York, and now he could devote the afternoon to checking out the single storefront that had become available. Scouting new locations for Diamante take-out stores was Red’s piece of the family business, and he’d had his eye on swanky, touristy Windsor Beach for months.

He’d been waiting to find the right spot. He thought this might be it. The strip mall was fully occupied—this vacancy was rare. He’d only found out about it because he had a friend who had a friend. The building had easy access, ample parking and about a thousand bored, hungry rich people within a three-mile radius.

“And the price is right,” he said, opening the door to the storage closet. He recoiled as a cloud of vanilla-scented air wafted over him. The Bath Goddess had moved out of the space yesterday. “Damn, we’ll have to do something about the stink, though.”

Colby, who was the company lawyer and therefore wouldn’t get really interested until he got his hands on the lease, had already wandered over to the windows, where sunset-pink was seeping into the western sky.

“Stink?” He tossed a grin over his shoulder. “Oh. I thought that was you.”

Red ignored him. As the youngest of three brothers, he was used to being insulted. He poked around some more, though he’d already decided to take the store. He’d put out an SOS to Colby because, after the assault on the Mercedes, he needed a ride home. Not because he needed permission to rent this place.

It had taken him a while to find out where he fit into Diamante, but he had finally carved out his own niche. Nana Lina had long since taken the training wheels off, allowing him to make these acquisition decisions more or less alone. Turned out he had great instincts about real estate.

And he owed it all to his mentor. Victor Wigham.

Which brought him full circle to Allison York. Irritably he kicked a small net full of rose petals into the corner that was functioning as a trash can. What was he supposed to do now? What on earth was he supposed to do about Allison, the waitress with freckled cheeks, a snub nose, and Scheherazade eyes?

He’d been so sure that, once he met her, he’d be able to size her up easily. He assumed he could calculate what it would take to buy her silence, just as he could look at a property and sense what he would have to pay to acquire it, almost to the dollar.

But this situation hadn’t worked that way. Instead of being a simple, money-grubbing “mistress” type, she’d turned out to be a stew of contradictions. Part kid, part sorceress. She was an unwed mother, a waitress living on tips who needed a new pair of shoes. But somehow he could sense she was also a force to be reckoned with. She could coldheartedly betray Victor’s wife and kids, but she was a marshmallow for an eighty-year-old nut job.

She didn’t break down into logical, predictable elements. And yet somehow he had to fix this. What a mess.

“You know—” He turned and saw Colby watching him with a worried big-brother expression in his eyes. Red straightened, scowling. “What?”

“Don’t pretend with me,” Colby said. “I know that look.”

“What look?”

“The holy shit look. You’re thinking about Allison York. You’re regretting it already, aren’t you?”

For a minute, Red wanted to deny it. Right from the start, Colby had told him he was a fool for agreeing to “take care of” Allison. “God, Red,” he’d said. “If Victor had asked you to rope-swing naked into a snake pit, would you have promised to do that, too?”

But Red put aside his instinctive defensiveness. He wasn’t a kid anymore. He was thirty-two years old, and, though Colby might occasionally revert to using a paternal tone, the three years between them hadn’t really mattered for a long time.

Besides, Colby might rib him, but ultimately he had Red’s back, no matter what. And, as a lawyer, he might have some good advice. Red decided to come clean. He wiped his hands on a piece of sparkling tissue paper left over from some Bath Goddess purchase, then joined Colby at the window.

“Yeah, I am. Well, not regretting it, exactly. Just not sure what to do next.”

“Can’t you do what you said you would do? Present the deal, and hope she takes it?”

Red took a deep breath, though it made him inhale so much potpourri he nearly choked. “It’s not that simple. If it was, Victor would’ve sent Lewis.”

“He should have.”

“Yeah, maybe, but you know Lewis is bullheaded. No subtlety. I’ve noticed lawyers tend to be like that.”

Colby couldn’t have missed the joke, but he didn’t allow himself to be diverted. “We’re bullheaded because we know how tricky the law is. I’ve warned you about this before, but it’s worth repeating. Private settlement agreements with confidentiality provisions are not only tricky…they’re begging for trouble. You get even a hint of coercion, exploitation, improper influence—”

“There’s no improper influence, damn it.” Red felt his pulse quicken. “He simply wants to give her some money to help with the baby. In return, he wants her to promise she won’t drive to Russian Hill and toss a bomb into what’s left of his family. If she says no, she says no. No one’s going to threaten to break her knees.”

Colby shrugged. He wasn’t the nagging type. He’d said his piece—said it twice, in fact, which was rare enough—and Red knew that he would back off now.

“So, anyhow, Victor didn’t think Lewis could handle it. That means she’s prickly?” Colby’s voice was carefully neutral. “She needs to be charmed, and he thought that, as a Malone, you could charm her?”

Red turned away. The sunset was a hell of a lot easier to look at right now than Colby’s face. “Charm? I don’t know. Obviously he doesn’t mean I should order roses and candlelit dinners. I think he hoped I could…you know…finesse the presentation. The last thing Victor needs is to antagonize her.”

“Well, I guess today put paid to that. You got her favorite old geezer arrested. I assume you’ll be handing this off to Lewis now after all?”

Red shook his head. “Victor doesn’t want Lewis involved.”

An awkward silence hung between them. It seemed to stretch, though it probably wasn’t more than a few seconds.

“Red.” Colby’s voice dipped low. “You know you keep talking about Victor in the present tense.”

Present tense. Of course. As opposed to past tense. Dead tense.

For a horrible second, Red wasn’t sure he could answer. His throat closed up, as hot and painful as if he’d swallowed broken glass.

He clenched his jaw until it burned. He hadn’t cried since he was a kid, not even when he sat in Victor’s shadowed bedroom and watched him drift between the sweating clarity of pain and the terrifying morphine hallucinations.

But how the hell could he accept the fact that Victor was dead? The man had been only fifty-two, at the top of his career. So completely alive.

Victor was the closest thing to a father Red had ever known. He’d literally saved Red’s life fifteen years ago, when he happened to be in the right part of the Pacific to drag a stupid, unconscious teenager and his surfboard to safety. But he’d also saved Red’s life again, metaphorically, five years later, when he showed him the way to a career.

Victor’s wife, Marianne, was too young to be a mother figure, but she was a good and loyal friend. And, by God, Red would do whatever was necessary to protect her.

Whether Colby approved or not.

Red might not have gotten off on the right foot with Allison York today. But today had been merely the first skirmish in a much longer campaign. Colby was right. Victor had obviously picked him for this mission because of the Malone charm. That charm might be diluted a bit, sifting its way down to him, the youngest brother. But surely he’d inherited at least enough to get the job done.