AllFreeNovel Stories worth discovering

Wicked Auction

Page 50

by Jane Henry

“Tell me about it.”

“No one would be able to impersonate you, though.”

“Why not?”

She snorts. “You're too big.”

I take that as a compliment and keep scrolling.

“These men here,” I say, pulling up the next set of photographs. “They are the younger generation. My age or a bit younger. Boston Irish. Do any of them ring a bell?”

She looks carefully at each one. “No,” she says. “None of them. Honestly, the men who held me were older. At least my father's age.”

“Really,” I say, nodding slowly.

She looks at me for a moment. “You have photographs of every man in that family under forty and none of the men actually running it.”

“Aye.”

“Then describe them to me, and I'll tell you which ones held me,” she says. “Or I'll describe them to you, and you can go and find out who they are, because the fact that nobody has a picture of them is the most interesting thing you've told me all day.”

The first generation. The original Boston Irish. The ones with a genuine beef with my family, an old axe to grind, jealousy and grievance going back longer than any of us have been alive, over land and territory, and the kind of insults that old men carry to their graves and pass on to their sons like an inheritance.

“Shamrock. Ginger.”

“What are you talking about?”

“I didn't know their real names. Those were the names I had for them in my head. Shamrock had a shamrock tattoo between his thumb and forefinger.” Her jaw tightens. “He's the biggest asshole of them all.”

“Was he?” My own voice has gone very quiet.

“He hurt me. He's a bully who likes to push his weight around.”

“Fucking prick.”

“And Ginger,” she says. “He’s the one who brought me to the auction. There was Gravel too.”

“Gravel.” Why the fuck does she call him that?

“His voice was like gravel,” she says with a shrug.

Right.

“Who was I before you snooped?” I say sternly.

She squirms a bit. Good, she is learning.

“Um. Green Eyes. Before I knew that wasn’t your real eye color.”

I can’t help but smile at that. “Were you disappointed when I took the contacts out?”

She looks at me boldly and shakes her head, her tone dropping. “Not at all.”

I look at her for a moment. “Who hurt you?”

She swallows. “Shamrock and Ginger. Shamrock slapped me. Ginger would shove me around. Gravel was the one who'd grab my breasts and ass.”

My vision goes blurry at the edges. I set the tablet down carefully because the alternative is putting it through the wall. “Those'll be the first,” I say. “It's time to move.”