Page 37 of Nolan (The Doherty Mafia)
“I’m sorry you’re going through this with your family, but there has to be some kind of resolution, right?”
“Yeah, I have a pretty good idea what that is.”
“Don’t do anything stupid, Nolan.”
“This won’t happen again if they never have to see me.”
“You can’t just disown your family.”
“And why the fuck not?” I shouted.
“Because I know what I’m talking about. I know what it feels like to have nobody in the world.”
I swerved the car to the side of the road and screeched to a stop. Cars whizzed past it, throwing their bright headlights on our faces.
“What is that supposed to mean?”
Amelia stared at me. Her blue eyes were wide and deep and I saw she had a story to tell—one she hadn’t told me yet.
“I grew up in foster homes, all right? I didn’t have a real family. I don’t know who my father is. My mother is dead. I don’t know if I have any siblings. I don’t know if I’ll ever find them. So, tricky family dinners like the one you just had isn’t something I’ve ever experienced and trust me, I’d kill for it.”
Her shoulders shook as the words left her mouth. She waited a few beats for me to respond but I had nothing to say. It didn’t look like she wanted me to console her. It didn’t look like she needed my kind words.
“You need to stay. You need to hold on to what you have with both hands. You can’t lose them, all you can do is get past the roadblocks and move on. You just have to make them see that you’re not who they think you are,” she continued.
No other chick had the guts to speak to me like this. There would’ve been some serious consequences to that, but Amelia was different. The way I looked at her was different.
“What about this Aldo guy? Your family seems to hate him…right? What if you do something about him?” she asked.
“They’re planning an attack on him,” I said.
I knew I shouldn’t have discussed it with Amelia, who was still technically an outsider to the family, but I trusted her. Besides, what would she do with this information? She didn’t know Aldo, didn’t know anything about the business.
“When? What kind of an attack?” Amelia asked. She turned to me, her eyes glowed with curiosity and excitement.
“They’re waiting on the right night for it, they’re closing in on locating his hideout.”
“What kind of an attack is it going to be?”
“A shootout,” I replied.
Amelia fell silent. I knew it came as a surprise to her because she didn’t belong to our world. She didn’t know what a shootout entailed and what’d be the consequences of it.
“A shootout? With weapons?”
I nodded.
“Are they going to…hurt him?”
“They’re going to kill him for everything he has done. He needs to be dead. He put every member of our family’s life in danger. He’d kill us if he got the chance.”
A darkness fell over Amelia’s eyes as she stared at me. Lost for words. Unsure of me and herself.
“My family is involved in some pretty fucked up stuff, but it’s the only way of life I’ve known. Do you understand what I’m saying?”
Slowly, she nodded her head.
“Yes, I think I understand…I just…I’ve never been this close to something like that.”
“You’re not involved, you don’t have to be involved. Hell, I’m barely involved,” I snapped.
“What if you take charge of the situation?” she suggested quickly.
“What are you talking about?”
“You want your family to see who you are, right? You need to prove yourself to them. Yes, you’re young and you’re the youngest in the family—but that doesn’t mean you’re not a Doherty. Show them what you’re capable of.”
I gripped the wheel hard, making my knuckles turn white. All this time, I had mostly stayed out of the war. I took orders and executed them when they were given to me, but I wasn’t given orders often.
“This is important. This could be our only chance to get him. If he escapes again we may never find him, and he has to pay for his crimes.”
“Crimes?” Amelia exclaimed with a gasp. “What kind of crimes?”
I started the car again and drove. Amelia sat silently beside me, accepting the fact that I wasn’t about to go into details of what happened with Aldo. All the fucked up shit he had done to our family and the rest of the community.
“And this could be your only chance to prove yourself to your family too,” she said as we drove.
My family wouldn’t have thought I was ready to take charge of a mission like this, and maybe Amelia was right. Maybe this was my opportunity to prove them wrong.
Nineteen
Amelia
We arrived back at Nolan’s apartment and even while I stepped out of his car, I knew I didn’t have to stay. It would’ve been a whole lot easier for me to just leave right now. I had some information, even though it was missing details. I knew they were closing in on Aldo’s location—waiting to attack when the time was right.
