“Simmer down, will you? I hadn’t told your secret to a soul, just wanted us to enjoy our time together. Mary… she might be brash and not the brightest, but she’s nice. Pretty. A born cathouse girl. I thought you might like her.”
Ned took a deep breath to calm down, but all he could see any time he closed his eyes was Cole’s seductive smile. “Thank you for that. I… I’m no prude,” he said, even though he was realising that maybe he was, “but I want to do things right. As right as this new life allows me. I don’t want to bed girls willy-nilly and risk bringin’ children into the world, when I’m not ready for it. I wanna make something of myself here. Only then I’ll be ready to do right by a woman. She don’t need to be a proper lady, but she’ll be mine.”
Cole blinked slowly this time, and his Adam’s apple bobbed. Eventually, he met Ned’s gaze again and took a step back. “You’re real different, Ned O’Leary. Real different.”
Ned swallowed, his thoughts returning to the tense exchange Cole had had with Tom moments earlier. “When he said he put one cross on you, what did he mean?”
The roguish smile waned from Cole’s face, and he pulled up his right sleeve. On the inside of his forearm was a cleaver. Etched in skin with ink, it was in its most basic form, with a handle and a line running alongside the blade to signify its cutting edge. It had been put there a long time ago, and the ink that surely used to be black, had faded into gray. On the handle was a raised scar that must have started as two crossing lines carved deep in flesh.
“We all get this once Tom thinks we’re good enough to become Gotham Boys for real.”
Ned’s head fizzled with unwanted heat. “But… isn’t that a dead giveaway if you were caught by law?”
Cole shrugged. “We don’t get caught. And it’s a sign of the commitment that Tom demands of us.”
Ned hesitated but brushed his thumb over the scar. “What does this mean?” he asked, nervous about the answer he might get.
Cole rolled the sleeve back to his wrist, as if he were ashamed of the mark. “You can always make mistakes or fail at jobs, but Tom has no sympathy for the disloyal. Got this one, because I was meant to get rid of a traitor, but I felt sorry for him and let him go. It was a stupid thing to do and got me in hot water. Not only with Tom,” Cole said, lowering his voice to a whisper. “A man only gets to make a mistake like this once, and he’ll carry the reminder of what he’d done forever. The second wrong choice is the end of the line, so you better prove yourself, Ned O’Leary, or you might just be the death of me.”
The tone of his voice was light, but Ned recognized the very real worry behind that statement. Cole had chosen to trust him by bringing him to Tom in the first place, but he wasn’t sure what had earned him the privilege. Sure, he’d saved Cole’s skin at the saloon, but they didn’t know each other, and there was no obligation for Cole to come back and thank him.
Cole was a good person at the core, corrupted by the Gotham Boys, and Ned would keep him from the noose. Even if only for the boy Cole had been, the boy who’d spared Ned’s life many years ago.
“I’ll need guidance. You gonna be on my side? Help me find my footing?”
Cole’s mouth quirked, and he grabbed Ned’s hand, shaking it with vigor. “You just keep close to me. I’ll sort you out.”
With his heart quickening, Ned held on to Cole’s hand. The bank scheme wasn’t dead in the water. There was always the next month. Ned just had to bide his time.
And stop having perverted thoughts of Cole lying with Mary.
Chapter 8
Two weeks had passed, and they’d been a whirlwind of tension, lies, and hard work. In this stormy sea Ned had found himself, Cole was the unexpected anchor who barely left his side. Perhaps Ned should worry whether his new friend wasn’t Tom’s spy, but the connection they were forging felt as real as the sun above them and the grass under their feet.
They spent hours chatting and teasing one another while they completed their chores, ate together, and more often than not spent time off in each other’s company too. This meant Ned didn’t get to have the few hours of freedom needed to reach someplace where he could telegraph from, but the Pinkerton agents would have to understand his situation. After all, he was among dangerous men and couldn’t risk making them question his intentions.