by Holly Hart
The wooden door to the beer cellar squeals open, and a tall, lean man ducks out. “Dickie, ye limey bastard,” I grin, grabbing my glass and saluting the bartender. “Join us, will ye?”
Dickie turns. His head misses the low frame of the door by half an inch. I wince.
“Yer a lucky boy, Dickie,” Ridley growls while reaching for another pint glass. The stack of glassware clinks.
Dickie holds his hand up in apology. “Sorry, boys. Promised me missus I’d be home for dinner.”
My forehead wrinkles. I glance at my watch. “Ye sure you’re going to make that, Dickie boy? It’s closing on eleven…”
The skinny bartender grins. “I never did say what time, though.” He grabs his coat from a hook, and his keys jangle. Dickie turns back to face my brother and me, shrugging his coat on. “Are you boys all good to lock the place up?” He starts walking for the exit without waiting for a reply.
I stand up, and notice that the floor isn’t as stable as I thought. I glance down at it, gesturing with dissatisfaction. Unfortunately, I do it with the hand holding my beer… Droplets of lager shower against the wooden floorboards.
Dickie grins, his eyebrows tenting. “You best clean up, too.” He shoulders the swinging doors to leave, but can’t resist turning for one last dig. “And they say the Irish can drink! S’all just good advertising, if you ask me. Take a trip down to Manchester – the real one, mind – and you’ll see you ain’t nothing special.”
Ridley stands up, cheeks puffed out. “English bastard,” he growls with mock-indignation. “Coming here, telling us how to act!”
I shrug, playing along. “Been doing it for hundreds of years, haven’t they? What makes you think they’re gonna stop now?”
I settle back into my seat. My phone rocks gently on the bar. The black glass rectangle is silent – like it has been all day. I nudge one of the buttons on the side, more out of blind hope than any real expectation that Sofia will have left a message. The Morello girl made her thoughts on the matter very clear – I shouldn’t expect a damn thing from her. But that doesn’t stop me from wanting one.
“What ye looking at that thing fer?” Ridley barks, slamming his pint glass down on the bar. “Ye’ve been checking it all night, like a lovesick schoolgirl. What, ye gonna be the next one taking a three-week honeymoon?”
I laugh – wondering if it’s slightly too loud, and slightly too long to be believable. “Like hell I am,” I fire back. “Can you really see me settlin’ down?”
“Then wha’ is it that’s got ye so excited?” Ridley asks, a cunning grin twisting his face. It gives me the half second warning I need to grab my phone and pull it away from Ridley’s reaching grasp. The last thing I need is for him to go through my texts.
“Keep your hands off of it, ye bastard!” I grouse . “I’m just checking to see if Declan’s flight landed, is all. It’s tough at the top,” I grin. “Not that ye’ll ever know a thing about that…”
Ridley raises his glass in the air. His biceps bulge underneath a red and blue check lumberjack shirt.
“Ye see, though Kieran, I t’ink yer lying to me.”
I freeze. The one problem with having four more brothers – four of us one half of a pair of twins – is that it’s hard to tell a lie. Especially when all of us have the same tells. All I have to do is glance at Declan to know when he’s feeding me a line of bull, and I guess it’s no different with me and Rid.
I take a gulp of lager to buy myself some time. “What makes ye think that,” I ask, with my eyebrow rising. My face is blank, but behind it I’m chewing the inside of my lip. I need to come up with a plausible story to hide the fact that I’m sleeping with the enemy. I just wish I hadn’t had three pints before the one cradled in my palm.
“See, I’ve never seen yer face light up when you’re speaking to Dec, is all…” Ridley grins.
God dammit, I think. Surely I’m not that easy to read? I curse the fact that I agreed to have a beer with my brother – especially this brother. Ridley’s always been the smart one, the one whose brain calculated every last angle before choosing a plan. And now, of course, he’s turning that brain of his on me.
“Three weeks, Rid,” I grunt. “I’m fed up. You would be, too.”
Ridley thumps his pint glass down onto the bar. He stands up, stretching. I don’t pay him any attention – figuring he’s off to drain the main vein: my mistake. “Yeah,” he drawls, “thing is, Kieran,” he says slowly, drawing out every word so that I don’t suspect he’s up to something. Even so, the back of my neck prickles.
But it’s too late.
Ridley hops behind my stool in a flash. He grabs both of my arms and twists them behind my back.
“The hell are ye up to?” I growl. Ridley doesn’t answer. I see the grin on his face reflecting back at me in the mirror behind the bar, in between a couple of half-empty bottles of bourbon. Then I realize what he’s up to.
Ridley’s palm pats me down, all the way down my right side. I twist, and struggle, but Ridley got the drop on me – and now he has the advantage. “Get off me, ye asshole,” I grunt. “Ye so much as touch it, I’ll knock ye seven ways to Sunday…”
“I’d like to see ye try,” Ridley laughs. I feel his body twist, and his hands begin searching the left-hand side of my body. Ridley’s shifting balance gives me a fraction of a second advantage – and I take it.
I let out a roar of pain as I twist my shoulders almost past their breaking point, spinning to face Ridley. But I’m too late. His face takes on a smirking glow of satisfaction, and I blink as I see my cell phone is within his clenched fingers.
I balance on the balls of my feet, taking a second to scout the situation. “Give it back,” I say. My tone leaves Ridley under no illusions of what will happen if he refuses my – perfectly reasonable – request.
“Ah, come now,” Rid chuckles, thumbing the button on the side of my phone. The screen flashes to life. “Just a l’il look. Can’t do no harm, can I?”
“Yer walking on thin ice, brother,” I warn. “Give it back, now, or ye won’t like where I take this…”
Ridley glances up at me. It doesn’t take a genius to figure that he has no plans of handing the cell phone back to me.
“Ye know, Kieran, in this line o’ work it’s a brave – or foolish – man who doesn’t lock his phone.”
I lurch towards my brother. Ridley is clearly prepared for what I’m about to do. He pivots his body away from me, holding the phone as far out as his long arms will stretch. I groan. Ridley is a big, strong lad. It’s not like we haven’t fought before, either. We wrestled enough as kids for me to know that he’s going to put up one hell of a fight.
Ridley whistles. I see his eyebrow dart upwards. “What’s this now, brother?” He wonders out loud. “Unknown number, so it is. Pretty mysterious…”
“Ridley,” I growl. A piece of my mind takes a step back and realizes how damn ridiculous this is. We’re fighting like kids over a toy. Besides, it’s not like I saved Sofia’s name into my phone book. I’m not that naïve. Most Ridley will see is a few confusing texts. Still, it’ll raise more questions than I want to answer.
I see Ridley’s thumb tap against the screen…
… And then I drag my brother backwards. It was an instinct, not planned. A look of surprise is painted on Ridley’s face as I pull him, but I ignore it. I don’t know where this strength is coming from. A part of me wishes that I’d had it a few seconds earlier. The saner part of me is just grateful that it’s here now.
“Get down!” I yell, as whatever object that just crashed through the window – prompting me to speed into action – collides with the wooden floor. It sounds light – tinkling, not smashing. It can’t be a brick.
I glance at it, my eye drawn like a moth to a flame. In this case, the action’s more than justified - because that’s exactly what it is: fire. There’s a fire burning in the middle of my family’s pub. Adrenaline floods into my system. In seconds, I’m no longer
tipsy. I’m stone cold sober.
“Fuck, Ridley,” I yell, “out back – grab the sand. Now!” I add the last bit for emphasis, but it wasn’t necessary.
My brother takes off like he’s got a pack of wild dogs chasing him. He doesn’t take a second to look over his shoulder; he just does as I tell him. That’s trust. That’s what makes us true brothers.
I rush towards the fire. In the dim light of the bar, it’s hard to see what the hell it’s coming from. As I get closer, my stomach sinks. It’s a Molotov cocktail – a glass jar filled with gasoline, and topped with a burning rag.
My brain urges me back. Nerve endings cry out a warning as the heat from the flame licks against my face. This isn’t good. “Shit!” I mutter.
It doesn’t feel like it – but we got lucky. Somehow, the glass casing didn’t shatter. If it had, then this old pub would have erupted in flames. It would have been charred to a cinder before Ridley and I had a chance to do a damn thing about it.
I scrape my fingernails through my hair. My mind spins as I try to figure out how the hell to deal with it. I get hit with a flash of inspiration. I spin on the ball of one foot, lurching towards the counter of the bar. I grab Ridley’s pint glass, and miraculously make it to the burning Molotov without spilling a drop.
“Here goes nothing,” I mutter, falling to my knees and spinning the glass in my hands. The golden liquid pours out, hissing and spitting where it comes into contact with the burning rag. I close my eyes and ram the pint glass down the neck of the glass bottle. Visions of the beer coming into contact with the reservoir of gasoline flood into my mind.
I know where that leads - a burning ball of fire. I might be a Byrne, but that doesn’t mean I want to put my name to the test.
“Get out the way,” Ridley yells, rushing back with a red-painted bucket filled with sand. He chucks it on, and the last embers of flame are choked out. We stand next to each other – or at least Ridley stands, and I just collapse back onto my heels. Both our chests are heaving madly.
“Jaysus, that was close,” Ridley mutters, the metal bucket swaying from its handle. “Who the fuck do you think –?”
I’m already leaping to my feet before Ridley has a chance to finish his question. I rush to the window, and hide behind a thick wooden pillar which separates the wall into two pieces for safety.
I hear a clink as Ridley drops the bucket to the floor. “Anyone out there?” Ridley asks gruffly. Every trace of the levity we shared a few minutes ago is gone. We both know what an attack like this means – it might as well be an act of war.
The only question is: who is responsible?
I look into the blackness of Dorchester Street. It’s lit by a few streetlights, and a few cars flash by, the headlights costing long trails of illumination. Other than that, the street is empty.
I fall backwards onto my heels. “Coward’s already gone,” I growl.
Ridley tosses my phone back at me. He makes no attempt to search through the phone book – not now. None of that matters anymore. “Ye gonna call Dec, or shall I?”
I offer my younger brother a tired grin. “I hope he got plenty o’ rest these last weeks. ‘Cos wit’ the way things are looking…” I tail off.
Ridley shrugs. “Never rains but it pours,” he growls.
I run my blackened fingers through my hair. At least that’s dark enough that the soot won’t make any difference. “He ain’t landed yet. What a way t’ come home.”
We both fall silent. Ridley starts clearing up the spilled sand – but I’m lost in my own thoughts. It’s Sofia’s cold face that’s on my mind. I think back to her assuring me she had nothing to do with the attack on Danny. I can’t believe Sofia would be able to lie to my face so brazenly. But I can’t be sure.
I need to find out.
9
Kieran
I pace, back and forth, in the room at the Ritz-Carlton. I’ve been here so many times, now, it’s beginning to feel like home. At least … it was. Now, I’m not so sure.
The second I hear Sofia’s knuckles rapping at the door, I launch myself towards it.
“Get in,” I growl the second I see Sofia’s long, russet brown hair. Mickey Morello’s sister manages a look of surprise, excitement, and annoyance. All three emotions flit across her face at one time. The second she realizes I’m watching, though, Sofia molds her face into blank nothingness.
“What the hell am I doing here, Kieran?” Sofia hisses, prodding – or trying to prod – my chest with one outstretched finger. I catch her wrist in midair. I do not, will not let go.
Sofia tries to drag her arm back. I hold on tight. “What do you think you are doing?” She says, sounding outraged. I might be blinded by anger, but I get the sense that Sofia has no idea why I dragged her here. “I told you – this is not how we work. You do not set the rules. You do not get to call me anywhere.”
“You came here, though. Did ye not?” I fire back, tight-lipped.
“This time only,” Sofia replies, her dark brown eyes glinting like precious gemstones set into her soft, delicate face. “But I won’t do so again. What is this, Kieran; some kind of domination thing? Because, I am telling you, this is not the way to go about it.”
I make a mental note of the way Sofia phrased that. Even as angry as she is, my little Italian firebrand didn’t close the lid on that particular sexual fantasy…
Down, cowboy. I bite back on the desire that is already beginning to surge inside me like wind-whipped waves cresting the edge of a hurricane. I can’t let myself be ruled by my cock: at least, not right now.
“Tell me ye had nothing to do wit’ it, Sofia,” I say, speaking low so that Sofia has to lean in to catch every last word. “Tell me: because I cannot believe ye would. But if ye did…” I leave the warning hanging.
Sofia’s face wrinkles with confusion, but I noticed that her posture softens. She stops trying to pull her arm away from me. I loosen my grasp in return, giving Sofia her wrist back. She strokes it.
“Did what, Kieran?” Sofia asks. Her voice is softer now, as well. We are both leveling each other out. “Stop speaking in riddles … and let me in.” Her voice tails away almost into nothingness.
I run my fingers through my hair. I was sure – so sure that Sofia had betrayed me. I let the anger course through me. I barely slept last night as I tried to figure out how Sofia Morello could have hidden her intentions from me so easily. I was sure she had played me; but now? I’m not.
“Someone firebombed the pub last night,” I finally relent, collapsing onto the bed as the tension drains out of me. “Or at least, they tried. Rid and I, we stopped it in time.”
“Kieran!” Sofia exclaims, clapping a hand over her mouth. She seems genuinely shocked. Unless she’s a world-class actress, I just can’t believe that she could fake a reaction like that. “Are you –?”
She takes half a step towards me, and reaches out a trembling hand to stroke my cheek. I close my eyes as Sofia caresses me. I know – at least, part of me does – that this is the last thing I should be doing right now. I should be cutting every tie I have to this girl, and forgetting any of this ever happened.
But I can’t.
I chew my lip. A wave of guilt attacks me, about the way I accused Sofia without so much as a lick of proof. “We’re fine,” I mutter. My mind whirls to find a way of apologizing to the beautiful girl in front of me. “I’m fine. Listen, Sofia –.”
Sofia takes a step back, pulling her hand from my face. I feel empty without it there, and my eyes flicker open. My lips move as I think of something – anything – to say to make this better. I come up empty.
“No, Kieran,” Sofia whispers, “you listen. I get that you’re all shaken up. But listen to me when I tell you – I had nothing to do with this. If someone in the family did – believe me – I’ll hunt them down. But don’t you dare accuse me of something like that – not ever again.”
I look up at Sofia. She’s biting her lip – and not a cute, gentle nibbl
e either. This looks hard. Biblical. There is a river of emotions coursing across her face. It’s a raging flood: anger fighting with –if I didn’t know better – I think concern: for me.
But that can’t be right.
Sofia Morello doesn’t do emotions. At least she doesn’t around me.
At least, she didn’t.
I stand up. “I’m sorry,” I say, my voice hoarse. My throat feels all choked up. I’m well aware that if I make one more misstep, if I put my foot in my mouth one more time, then this thing between us – whatever it is – it’s done for good. “I shouldn’t have accused ye. Yer right.”
I fall silent. Sofia studies me for a long time. She lets the silence stretch out between us until it’s beating down on my skin.
“You’re right,” she says. The slightest hint of a smile breaks out on her face. It reminds me of the first kiss of dawn atop the peaks of a mountain range. “for once.”
I smile with relief. “You’re not mad?” I ask. I feel like a little boy asking for forgiveness. This isn’t me – I’m supposed to be a hardened gangster. Around Sofia, though, I feel like putty in her hands.
Sofia looks around the hotel room. “How did you get this place?” She asks, changing the topic. It’s a welcome break from the tension that had built up between us.
I grin. “Yer not the only one wit’ connections, ye know. But a gentleman never reveals his secrets…”
A mischievous grin tweaks Sofia’s lips. Her face lights up. She never looks more beautiful than when she smiling. Her face is suited to it. “So what’s stopping you, then?”
I take a step towards Sofia. I get an urge to push or prod her – almost as though she’s my girlfriend, and we’re having a play fight. For a second, the thought of kissing her enters my mind…
And by the time I’ve decided that that is a bad idea, my lips are already pressed against Sofia’s. Something about this girl has me acting before I think, and that’s not good. But it’s also perfect.