He sighs, seemingly tired of my shit. As if I should just read his mind and know where he’s going with this. “You’re being targeted byLa Cosa Nostra.”
“Why?”
Sean sighs, shaking his head. “Because you and Paddy are in a relationship. Because Camille is a selfish bitch, or because Camille probably seduced Patrick on purpose for this exact reason. So that her family is tied to ours.
“Because a marriage alliance between the Italians and the Irish will cause a riot with the Russians when we’ve only just managed to pacify them. Take your fucking pick.”
I don’t respond, silence filling the room. What is there to say? Everything he’s just said is right. I’m not sure how to process any of this.
“There’s something I want you to see.” He pulls out a flash drive from his pocket.
I stare at the small usb device, torn on what I should do. Do I take it and watch whatever it is he wants to show me? Part of me wants to, but the other part is forced to remain true to what I’ve stood for since the moment my father died. Whatever’s on there that I’m about to see is most likely a crime. And the second I watch it, I’ll become a witness. I’ll be roped into the Southies when I’ve tried so desperately to get out.
“Trust me. You need to see this.”
I nod, taking it, and he follows me into my home office.
Ten minutes later, Sean paces back and forth while I stare at the computer monitor. The security feed plays on a loop while I process the frame over and over.
Camille Sorrentino adjusts her dress and shuts the door to the hotel room. She messes with her hair a bit while leaning against the door. And then she walks away. The frame starts over again, switching to the first one that had been on the screen. I’ve already had each surveillance tape on a loop for the past ten minutes.
It’s embedded in my mind. I don’t have to keep watching to see a stumbling Paddy walking down the hall with Camille’s bodyguard holding him upright. I already know that Camille walks behind them, reaches into Paddy’s pocket to get his key card and that two minutes after the three enter the room, the bodyguard leaves Camille and heads for the elevator.
It’s clear each time I watch this that Paddy was not coherent enough to consent to whatever happened in that room. Seventeen minutes later Camille leaves the room, and then her bodyguard returns and is inside for eight minutes.
It’s clear Paddy is too incapacitated to consent to sex. It’s clear he was given something to make him compliant.
I chew the inside of my lip, the guilt eating away at me. This entire time I’ve assumed he cheated. I’ve been hurting him for something he didn’t actually do. How could he let me do that? Was he too embarrassed to tell the truth? Did he even know what truly happened? And why the fuck did Camille do it?
“Why him?” I say out loud.
“Because he was an easy target.” Sean steps forward, clicking on the screen. “Callum was there, sure. But Paddy? He was visibly stressed out.” He pulls up a time stamped feed from earlier in the evening where Paddy is sitting beside Camille. He’s pulling at the collar of his shirt, his head down. And I know he’s reading one of my texts from that evening.
I want to rage, go back in time and fix whatever it was we were arguing about, or punch Camille in the face. I can’t do any of those things. I can’t fix what I’ve done, and I can’t ask Paddy to forgive how awful I’ve been to him either.
Sean moves through the clips again, faster this time. “I have nothing that shows where they slipped him anything. I’m thinking they had to have the bartender in on it.”
“We can’t kill her. She’s pregnant.”
“I know,” he says. “I’m taking this to Callum.”
“No,” I say, too quickly, yanking the flash drive from the computer.
“He has to know. The person I caught trying to break in the other night? He’s Italian. I think Sorrentino figured out who you are to Paddy and he’s trying to eliminate the source that’s preventing his daughter from marrying Paddy.”
“You think that he’s in on this?”
“I think Camille is a middle-aged single woman. She’s never been married, and she’s running out of time to be arranged with someone in the organization. She’s probably about to be stuck with a foot soldier and her dad saw a way to take care of that.”
Sean’s gaze falls to the flash drive in my hand. “Callum needs to know.”
“This isn’t how Paddy comes out, Sean.”
He crosses his arms. “Do you have another suggestion?”
I swallow the lump in my throat. “Without proof she drugged him, there’s nothing we can do. We kidnap the guard and get him to confess.”
Sean grins. “Awesome. Let’s just fly to New York, clobber him over the head, and bring him back on the plane. No one will see.”
