Page 54 of Gray Area

“There’s nothing they can do, Vivian,” he says with a sigh, cupping my face.

“What do you mean? Declan, someone broke into your dad’s house. The police should be notified. I mean, what if there’s a burglar in the area?”

“We’ll take care of it,” he assures me.

Confusion floods me. “I don’t understand,” I tell him. “Why don’t you want the police involved?”

A look of wavering indecision covers Declan’s face before he replies to me. “It most likely has to do with business,” he finally says.

“What business?”

“Our business, my family’s business,” he explains.

“I thought you said you guys own bars and rental properties,” I say slowly.

“We do,” he says. Declan hesitates before he goes on. “But we also do some stuff that isn’t on what you’d call the right side of legal,” he finally admits.

I go stiff in his arms, and then push him away. “You lied to me,” I say to him, backing up to put more space between us.

“No, I just didn’t tell you all the details. I didn’t want you—”

“What? To be an accomplice? To know you are a criminal?”

“I’m not a criminal, Vivian,” he says patiently.

I point a finger at him. “You just said that you do things that are not legal,” I say, refreshing his memory. “That means that you are breaking the law, and that’s what criminals do!” I shout.

His stony expression shutters over his face. “I’m sorry I didn’t tell you everything,” he finally says.

I study him, and I see the remorse in his eyes and his body, but my chest aches from his deception. “What are you involved in?”

“Vivian…”

“Drugs?” I demand. I need to know. I need him to tell me.

“No,” he says firmly, “we have some gambling rooms at some of our bars and restaurants, and we loan money from time to time.”

That’s not so bad, I think. It’s not like he’s hustling drugs, I reason, but then shake my head trying to regain some of my common sense. Law-breaking assholes are who gave me the life I’d had up until this point. It is the reason I had been in fostercare for the majority of my life. This is why I was focused on the future, pushing myself through and away from my past. I have rules for myself, and not being associated with criminals is one of them.

“Say something,” Declan commands, and I meet his eyes. His tone is authoritative, but it’s uncertainty and desperation I see in his eyes.

“I don’t know what to say,” I admit. “Why are you taking business classes if you have illegal businesses? Why learn the right way?”

“My dad has never wanted us to do the illegal stuff. He’s really cleaned things up. He did it for my mom. No one sells drugs in our places, no prostitution. That stuff was rampant in all the bars back in the day. He wanted us to have legit stuff, but some of the things are hard to pull out of. Some of it just goes with the territory.”

I think about all the words he says and try to filter through them and match them up with everything he’s said to me before. “Have you ever killed anyone?” I ask him. I don’t know why it matters. It should be a hard no for me that he is involved in anything illegal, but for some reason I need to know the depth of it all.

“No,” he says firmly.

“Have you ever shot anyone?” I ask, and he just looks at me.

Declan strides over to me. “Vivian,” he says, taking my face in his hands, his eyes boring into mine, pleading with me. “I have done bad things to bad people. I give people money and they try to never pay it back, and I have hurt them until I get my money back. I have had people try to steal from my family by cheating at the table games and I’ve shot their knees. I could tell you details, but the truth is I am not ashamed of it. If I called the police every time someone took something from us, I would be penniless, broke because I would never see a cent of that money and itwould cost a fortune to get lawyers. The law is crooked. It tries to do what it can, but the laws are made by crooked politicians with white-collar criminals in their pocket. I want more for my life and my family than running bars and illegal gaming halls, but right now this is all I have. That’s why I am in school—to make us something more than, something bigger. But for right now, this is my life, and I have to protect it. The people who come to my places, they aren’t afraid of the police. But they’re afraid of me. I scare them, and so do my brothers and my father. I will do whatever I need to do to protect what is mine—my family, my business, you,” he says.

I shouldn’t like his answer. It shouldn’t make my heart skip a beat to hear him lump me in with his family and that he wants to protect me, but it does. And I have to close my eyes away from his beautiful gaze to center myself. I like this guy. I really, really do. But is it enough? Are my feelings for Declan enough for me to abandon my moral compass and all of the promises I made to myself?

“Life isn’t black and white, Vivian. There are a whole bunch of different colors around it and in between,” Declan says softly to me. I open my eyes and look at his beautiful gray gaze. “I live in the gray area, Vivian. I’m not all bad, but I’m no angel either.”

I don’t want the tears to fall, but they find their way down my cheeks.

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