Her mere presence in my apartment made my balls tighten.

I came and I came and I came inside my fist. Liquid, white gel coated my fingers, and I wondered when was the last time I masturbated.

Probably when I was sixteen.

No, maybe fifteen.

Fuck you, Aisling.

I plastered my forehead against the tiles, groaning as the red-hot needles of water kept lashing my face and hair. I wasn’t her savior, I was her monster. These late-night calls, me following her, her seeking me out … they had to stop.

Before I did to her what I did to that painting.

Because I didn’t tell her the whole story.

Years after I’d moved out of Cat’s apartment, I came back. Paid the owner a large sum of money to get a tour around the place. I found the painting. The new tenants hadn’t gotten rid of it. I stole it, burned it, and tossed the ashes in the Charles River.

I didn’t know how to keep things.

I only knew how to break them.

It was time to break Aisling once and for all and ensure she would never, ever seek me out again.

Stop choosing what isn’t choosing you, mon cheri, Ms. B’s voice rang between my ears as I burst out of the door of Sam’s building on wobbly legs, the harsh whip of the wind slapping my cheeks.

I gasped for air, but no amount of air could satisfy my lungs.

Sam, Sam, Sam.

Broken, scarred, marred, imperfect Sam. Molded in the hands of an abusive mother, a mobster adoptive father, and a ghost of a biological dad he knew tried to kill his adoptive mother.

I wrapped my coat around my waist and jogged to the Aston Martin waiting around the corner from Sam’s building, slipping into the passenger seat. The minute I slid in, I grabbed the thermos waiting for me there and took a greedy gulp of coffee.

“Well?” Cillian asked from the driver’s seat, raising a skeptic eyebrow.

He didn’t believe Sam had anything to do with Athair. Neither did Hunter. I could tell Cillian was now looking at me, trying to see if I had sex with Sam. Any telltale sign to find out if we did something sordid. Puffy lips. Flushed cheeks.

My brother didn’t trust me not to throw myself at Sam.

I shook my head. “Couldn’t find anything, and he didn’t volunteer any information.”

“Of course you couldn’t. Because Sam has better things to do with his time than to mess with Athair for no apparent reason.”

“He was the only person at the table capable of poisoning one of the guests.”

“Athair had an oopsie visit to the hospital. Give that pretty head of yours a rest, Ash. Sam is innocent—in this case, of course. In general, he is probably responsible for every other bad thing that happened in Massachusetts since 1998. Case closed.”

When I said nothing, he groaned, lowering his head on his headrest, closing his eyes.

“Tell me you’ll drop it. I have enough on my plate as it is. I don’t need to extinguish another fire.”

“Fine,” I bit out. “I won’t sniff around him anymore.”

“Promise?” he asked.

“Promise.”

It was stupid. Childish, really, but old habits died hard, and I found myself crossing my fingers in my lap like a kid, between the creases and folds of my dress.

It was far from over.

Sam might be playing me, but now I was playing him, too.

I was going to find out the truth about what happened with my parents.

If it was the last thing I did.

A week had passed since I’d visited Sam’s apartment.

A week of radio silence from his end, and my brothers trying their hardest to restore something resembling normalcy to our household.

They visited after work a few times a week to check in on Da, convinced the poisoning was either Mother’s doing or Gerald’s unspoken mistake.

I played along, showering Mother with attention, watching her with hawk eyes to ensure she didn’t try to harm herself, but the truth was, something had shifted within me, rearranging itself into a different shape. I was beginning to change, and I didn’t know how or why but the past few weeks had a lot to do with it.

Outwardly, I went through the usual motions. I caught up with Persy, Belle, and Sailor at an up-and-coming Indian restaurant downtown. I even pretended to muster an amused chuckle when Sailor frowned at her phone with a long-suffering sigh and showed us a picture of Cillian. “This is his version of sending me dick pics.”

“But it’s not a dick.” Persy had blinked, not getting it.

“Not an anatomical one, anyway,” Belle had murmured, tearing a piece of naan bread and dunking it into a mint and mango dip. Persy had protested us calling her husband a dick, but of course we all knew that he was—to everyone but her.

Mother continued moaning about how horrible my father had been to her, yet every time she ventured out of her den and he had tried to speak to her, she would make a sharp U-turn and dart back to the master bedroom, leaving a trail of tearful accusations echoing over the opulent hallway walls in her wake.

Da was still sleeping in one of the guest rooms, floating in and out of it like a ghost, his disheveled white hair sticking out in every direction, unshaven and haunted by the state of his marriage.

It didn’t help that he started getting mysterious, cryptic messages threatening to drain his secret bank accounts in Switzerland—accounts that according to Da no one knew about.

The first couple days after the messages started pouring in, my father had made it a point to shower, get dressed, and go into his office. He had left his door ajar and sat there, motionless and quiet, waiting to hear my mother’s door flinging open so he could talk to her.

Once he’d realized Mother was truly uninterested in talking things through, he had retreated to his current state of shambles, hardly leaving his own room.

And that, I realized, was the difference between this time and all the others. Normally, my parents entered this tango, a dance of sorts; it was difficult to follow and only they knew all the moves to it.

My father would screw up, my mother would get mad, and he would win her back. Snatch her into alcoves in the house or steal her away to the butterfly garden, whispering sweet nothings into her ear. He would court her. Make her feel desirable. Shower her with gifts and compliments. Send heated looks from across the table at dinnertime. Watch as she chipped before breaking completely and taking him back. Then he’d whisk her off on a lengthy vacation, make all these promises they both knew he couldn’t keep, and superglue their relationship back together, even though it had chunks missing and was hollow from within.

Only this time, it hadn’t worked. Da had been poisoned. He blamed my mother. My brothers suspected her, too. I guess Mother had decided she’d had enough and cut them out of her life. She refused to see Cillian and Hunter whenever they visited.

Which brought us to where we were now.

To the annual charity event my mother hosted.

“Aisling, could you be a darling and ask your brothers to go say hi to Mr. Arlington? He made such a substantial donation to our charity tonight, and I know he’s been vying for Cillian’s attention for a long time. He needs advice about his new offshore company.” Mother elbowed me sharply as we stood in the ballroom of the Bellmoor, a boutique hotel in the West End.

The room glimmered in French neoclassical style—all cream, gold and ornate chandeliers, and an Instagrammable stairway with golden railings.