Page 35 of Colin (The Doherty Mafia)
“Cigarettes?”
“Coffee.”
“Are you serious?” he laughed with a snort.
“I wasn’t allowed to drink coffee and it gave me a buzz. So I started stealing packs of coffee and then drinking them in secret in my room when nobody was at the house.” I didn’t mention how I did it as an idiotic act of rebellion against what was happening with my parents.
“Of all the things you could have stolen…”
“I chose coffee because I was addicted to it.”
“And did you ever get caught?”
I shook my head. Colin laughed some more.
“That’s pretty badass of you, Marley.”
“I told you, you wouldn’t want to know.”
“Did you have a whole stash of coffee hidden under your bed?”
I nodded, smiling too. “Some pretty exotic stuff that I’d never even heard of. I had quite the collection. While other kids were smoking pot in secret, I was making strong coffee and drinking them like shots of tequila.”
“That’s your big secret?” he asked.
I shrugged.
“My mother died when I was a kid,” he said.
The tone of his voice shifted suddenly and a darkness fell on him again.
The smile disappeared from my face too. I didn’t know as much of the history of his family as I should have—another reminder of how under qualified I was for this task I’d set for myself.
But at least my reaction to this news was genuine.
“Colin…I’m sorry…”
“You don’t have to be. It was a long time ago, and our family has put ourselves through enough to avenge her death.”
“Avenge? She didn’t die of natural causes?”
“She was murdered,” he replied.
A chill ran through me.
“In her sleep. While the rest of us were asleep in the house. Our father was away for work, so she was alone in her bedroom. None of us heard anything. We discovered her the next morning.”
“That must have been so traumatic for all of you…”
“That’s one way to describe it,” he said in a hollow voice, then drained the rest of the beer down his throat. “Another word would be, insane. It drove us fucking insane.”
“Did you ever find out who killed her?” I dared to ask.
Colin stared into space and spoke like I wasn’t even in the room.
“Yes and we made them pay for it.”
“Pay for it? How?”
I wanted names. Any detail I could use.
Colin blinked rapidly, like he was trying to force himself out of a memory of something.
“The only way we knew it would make us feel an ounce of satisfaction.”
I gulped nervously. I knew what that meant. He glared at me with a thick vein throbbing in the center of his forehead. I wanted to know the names of the people his family had killed in vengeance.
“But it didn’t bring her back,” he continued. “Nothing we do will ever bring her back.”
I didn’t have to say anything more. The floodgates had opened and everything he wanted to say was gushing out at an unstoppable rate.
“And we did things…my family…my father and brothers, me, we got involved in it.”
“Involved in what?”
“The business we had been avoiding. The business our mother never wanted us to get involved in.”
“What business?” I asked and he snapped out of it again.
“All you need to know is that my family has the kind of power in New York that you don’t come by easily.”
“Colin…are you involved in…something…criminal?” I had to tread carefully, but I had to know the truth. I wanted him to say the actual words, but he wasn’t going to.
He smiled at me sheepishly, standing up again.
“More beer?” he asked, walking over to the fridge.
“It’s just a simple question, Colin.”
He slammed the fridge door shut and whipped around to face me.
“And how would it make you feel if I told you I am who you think I am? What did you call me? A criminal?” He narrowed his eyes at me.
I shook my head. “I didn’t call you anything, I’m just asking you what you did to avenge your mother’s death. I want to know what your family’s business is.”
“And why the fuck should I tell you, Marley? So you can leave in a few days and go straight to the cops with it?”
I felt brave enough to stand up and square my shoulders at him. I didn’t know where that courage was coming from. Maybe I didn’t care anymore. I had a feeling I was already doomed. Maybe he already knew exactly who I was and this was all a game.
“You said your family is powerful. Who would I go to with this information? What can the cops do to you?”
Colin cracked open another can of beer and held it to his lips with a smile.
“Nothing. They can’t do shit to us,” he replied.
We stood glaring at each other—almost like he challenged me to do something.
In a way, he had just admitted to me how dangerous he was, that his family was capable of doing things I couldn’t even fathom. Maybe he was right about everything—my goal of gathering information about him and his family was a dead end.
