Page 53 of Colin (The Doherty Mafia)
“You thought you would single handedly bring me and my family down.”
I was burning hot all over. I had to force myself to look him in the eyes. If he didn’t hate me before, I knew he had to hate me now.
“And Aldo Baron found you,” he added. He figured it all out himself now.
“He found out everything about me. He knew exactly who I was and what I was trying to do here. He threatened me to work for him. He said we both had the same interests and that he would help me build the case.”
“And you went along with it.”
I shook my head.
“I agreed so that he would let me go. But I never…I didn’t want to work with him. Colin, I changed my mind…about everything.”
He smirked sadistically and shook his head.
“You changed your mind,” he stated.
“I did. After I…got to know you and your family…after I spent time around you guys, I realized I was not going to achieve anything. I didn’t want to do it anymore. That is the reason I was leaving today.”
“You were leaving so you could get back to Las Vegas and to your precinct with all the information you collected.”
“Search me now,” I said, throwing my phone at him. “Look through my phone. I’ve deleted everything. I didn’t want to keep anything. Search my bags, I haven’t stolen anything. I don’t want to do this. I’m not going to. No matter what you may have done in your past…” I had to look away.
“In my past? What do you think I’ve done in my past, Marley?”
“Aldo told me how you lost your girlfriend, and now I know why you can’t get close to another girl. Why you didn’t want to be married to me.”
I told him what Aldo told me.
I stared at him while the words left my mouth, looking out for every twitch on his face—the way he sat with his fingers clenched on the steering wheel still. I watched out for any sign that it was real. That what Aldo told me had actually happened.
Colin waited several moments in silence after I finished telling him the story about the murder.
Then he slowly turned to face me again.
“You think I murdered my girlfriend?” he asked.
“I didn’t know what to think. I didn’t know who to believe. I knew Aldo was dangerous, and someone I couldn’t trust. And you…”
“You don’t know me enough to decide whether you could trust me either.”
I said nothing.
There was silence in the car. He had been silent for far too long. I’d been suffering under the heavy burden of this story Aldo told me and I needed to know if it was true.
“Did you do it?” I asked in a low voice.
Colin said nothing again.
“Damn it, Colin, why can’t you just answer the question? I’m not asking for any other information on your family business. If you think I’m going to implicate you and use this against you somehow, you’re mistaken. Search me and see if you can find a recording device. I just want to know if…”
“If the man you’ve been sleeping with, you husband, if he is capable of killing his own girlfriend on a whim.” Colin’s green eyes bore a hole into me. He breathed fire as he glared.
“Can you blame me for wanting to know?” I asked.
“I blame you for even having to ask. I didn’t realize that was how little you thought of me. And if you have to ask me that question, why would you even believe me if I said no?”
Tears filled my eyes. The one thing I told myself I wouldn’t do—cry in front of him, I did exactly that.
“I never thought you did it, Colin. I didn’t believe Aldo for a minute. I just told myself I couldn’t trust you to make it easier for me to leave you,” I said through my sobs.
“So don’t leave,” he said, and those words silenced me, even though I knew it would never work.
I had to leave.
Twenty-Eight
Colin
“Tina died in a car crash, pretty much the same way your parents did. When you told me about their accident that night at the restaurant, I thought it had to be some kinda cruel joke,” I said.
Marley sat beside me, maintaining a perfectly respectable distance between our bodies.
It was dark all around us, except for the headlights of cars that flashed us every time one passed by. I didn’t know how long we’d been sitting like that. All I knew was I had to tell her everything.
Anyone else—I wouldn’t have given a fuck what they thought of me or how much they knew. For some reason, I wanted Marley to know the truth.
“I remember seeing the change in the expression on your face. I didn’t know why you suddenly looked agitated when I told you about their accident. Like you knew them or something,” she replied.
