by Shen, L. J.
“And by her hiccups and hysterical crying, she said the truth, too,” Hunter added from the corner of the room.
“I’ll bet! I never would’ve given her the time of the day otherwise! I’ve been careful. I swear.” Athair shook his fist in the air, his chin wobbling in unison. “This is a setup. You know I’d never do you wrong, Jane my dear.”
My mother took another step back from my father, staring at him like he was a complete stranger. Her striking beauty highlighted how tragically lacking he was in the looks department.
Gerald Fitzpatrick’s skin was pasty, splotchy, and marred pink. He was a heavy man with beady black eyes and thinning white hair.
All of us siblings looked like variations of our mother, despite having different coloring, with Hunter being the most aesthetically pleasing out of us.
“Shut up,” Cillian barked at Da, scanning the room impatiently. “Any idea who could have done this?”
“If we start counting our enemies, we won’t leave here until next year, and we have a vacation booked in the Maldives next summer.” Hunter checked his Rolex, cocking a sarcastic brow.
“I’ll take care of this.” Sam stepped forward to the center of the room.
He clapped a hand over my father’s shoulder. “Come on, Gerry. Let’s get to the bottom of this mess. Privacy, please.” He snapped his fingers in our general direction, signaling all of us to go out. “Jane, you too.”
Everyone trickled out of the room slowly. Everyone other than Mother. I had to take her hand and yank her out while she protested with huffs and puffs.
“It’s not fair! I want to know what they are saying.” She clutched my arm a bit too tightly as I steered her toward the kitchen, where the servants could watch her. “Oh, Aisling, be a darling and go eavesdrop on them. You know I’m no good at not being seen. You can slip in undetected, I am sure.”
“Mother,” I groaned, feeling a looming headache blossoming behind my eyes. “Brennan wanted them to have privacy.”
“Brennan is a brute and a beast. Who cares what he wants?”
She had a point, and I was feeling especially inclined to ignore any instructions Sam had given me after the past week.
I took the bait.
After wrapping Mother’s bony fingers around a steaming cup of tea in the kitchen and asking one of the housekeepers to keep an eye on her, I discreetly slipped into the adjoined sunroom to investigate what Sam and Da were talking about.
The voices from the dining room could carry to the sunroom easily; years of listening to my brothers and father drinking port and discussing business and women crassly had taught me that.
I pressed my ear to the wall, listening intently.
“Let’s take it a step back. Tell me about your former lovers, any potential bastard children who might be lurking around looking for a nice check.” Sam’s voice was smooth and hard as marble behind the oak doors.
“Jesus Christ, Brennan, talk about a loaded question. Well, in the last decade, I had Bonnie, Sheila, Christie, Ulrika, Ruthie—”
“Start with the first year of your marriage and move your way up,” Sam cut him off briskly. “We need to be thorough.”
“That could take days!” my father protested.
There was a black hole in the pit of my stomach, and it was full of dark feelings. The extent of the betrayal robbed me off my breath. He was so careless. So selfish …
I heard something snap, and when I looked down, I realized I dug my fingernail so deep into my palm, it broke.
I always knew both of my parents enjoyed the odd affair—but this was too much. I felt dirty sharing my DNA with the man.
“Days,” Sam mumbled impatiently, just as disgusted as I was. As if he had a right. As if he wasn’t known for his conquests between the sheets. “Fucking charming. Let’s try to narrow it down. Think of someone with the potential to seek revenge. Anyone you knocked up? Someone you might have hurt personally? Those would be the people most likely to dig through the dirt and harm you. No one wants to come out as the mistress, but people will have no qualms compromising someone else to take you down. It’s possible one of your other mistresses hacked into your latest one’s cloud to shed light as to what she considers foul play on your end.”
“I don’t do foul play,” Da roared, his face rattling the leaves on the plants in the sunroom. “I take care of my mistresses and provide them with money and jewelry and expensive cars.”
I felt lightheaded. No wonder my mother was so messed up. This man was inhumane. He treated women like prized horses. And growing up he was the person I looked to for compassion.
“I’m sure you make them feel like fucking rock stars, Gerry. But accidents happen, and you’re a virile man. Any chance you have any bastards lying around? Maybe women who had to get hush-hush abortions?”
Sam always called my dad Gerry. He was the only person to do so. Despite and especially because it drove Da mad.
“No. No bastard children. And I’m not that virile. As you are well aware, not all of my children are biologically mine.”
I winced, knowing exactly who he was referring to and blocking this piece of information from my consciousness. To me that person was still my beloved brother. But it was an important reminder Mother, too, dabbled in romancing people outside her marriage—and was less than discreet about it.
“You’re not really giving me much to work with here,” Sam growled. Something about the way he said that, with a tang of obvious frustration, made the fine hairs on the back of my neck stand on end.
True, Sam was hotheaded, but he was also pragmatic. Detached and cold when it came to business. He was only explosive and unpredictable when it came to his personal life. Like when Sparrow or Sailor was in trouble or he and Troy had disagreements.
“Make me a fucking list, Gerry. Of every single woman you stuck your dick into. If I can’t be thorough, I can’t be helpful. No use in paying me a small fortune for sitting around and babysitting your two fully grown sons.”
“I’m also paying you to keep away from my daughter,” my father reminded him. I winced, pressing my ear harder against the door.
“Yeah.” Sam chuckled. “Some challenge that is. Make the list.” He rapped his knuckles against the dining table.
I knew the conversation was over, so I scurried out of the sunroom as quietly as possible, hurrying toward the kitchen to Mother to fill her in on their conversation.
I crashed headfirst into a wall.
No, not a wall. Worse. Sam’s granite chest.
“Ow.” I scowled, stumbling back as I rubbed at my forehead.
Turning around to make a beeline in the other direction and avoid Sam, I got snatched right back to his side. Sam, with his killer instincts, caught me by the hem of my blue scrubs and pulled me into an alcove between the dining room and the sunroom, his smoky, minty breath colliding with my face. Hot and fresh and intoxicatingly sexy.
“If it isn’t my favorite tight hole. Been eavesdropping, Nix?”
His casual sexism would have fazed me had I not known it was a front. I’d seen Sam handling his sister and adoptive mother and knew that for all his crass words, he was capable of adoring women.
There was little point in denying the allegation, especially since we got out of the adjoining rooms at the same time. I tilted my nose up and squeezed my shoulder blades together, like she had taught me, her French accent reminding me inwardly, Better die on your feet than live on your knees. Show courage, mon cheri!
“It’s my house, Brennan. I can do whatever I want, including, but not limited to, spending time in my sunroom.”
“You are many things, Aisling, including the daughter of two of the most pathetic creatures I’ve ever encountered and a champagne socialist, but you are no idiot. So don’t act like one. What were you doing in there?”
If he wanted me to bring up the fact he stood me up, tell him how much it hurt me, he had another thing coming.
I was in love, not a doormat. There w
as still a slight distinction between the two.
“Admiring the plants.” I smiled sweetly.
“Bullshit.”
“Prove it.”
He scowled at me. We both knew he couldn’t.
“Well, then. Nice talk, Brennan. Are you done now?” I brushed his touch off, sneering at him like my mother would at the help.
“Not quite,” he answered, mimicking my upper-class drawl, the one my mother had taught me to use whenever we were in well-bred company. “I’m glad I caught you here. I have an update about our situation.”
“Our situation?” I arched an eyebrow.
“Our fucking arrangement,” he spat out, exposing his white fangs with an unpleasant chilling smile. “It’s canceled. I’m not interested anymore. You were a great sport. Five out of five stars. Would highly recommend. Unfortunately, I have some pressing issues right now and no time for complicated pussy.”
The crassness of his words almost robbed me of my breath. How dare he? How dare he try to hurt and belittle me every step of the way, when I hadn’t done anything remotely unfair to him the entire decade we’d known each other?
All I did was seek his company, be nice to him, and give him myself on his terms. And each time, he found new and creative ways to show me that he wasn’t interested, and the one time that he was interested, he deemed it a lapse in judgment.
I smiled a chilly, unfriendly smile that made my bones go cold.
“We had plans together? Sorry, I don’t recall. Either way, thanks for giving me an update about a date I had no plan attending. Now, don’t you have to go do some work for my father?” I tapped my chin. Behind his hard gaze, I could tell he was mildly confused by the brand-new backbone I’d decided to exhibit.
“Chop chop now!” I clapped my hands, my tone a cheery singsong. “As you pointed out earlier, my father pays you a small fortune, and not for your intellectual skills—which, by the way, I find lacking. Let us know when you have more information for us about the leaker.” I turned around and walked briskly, leaving him in the foyer without as much as a second glance.
I went to the kitchen, scooped my mother up like she was no more than a child, and took her to her room, where a hot bath had been waiting for her. I washed her hair, telling her all the things she wanted to hear.
That she was pretty, and loved, and powerful. That my father would crawl back with jewelry, vintage bags, and vacations. That if she wanted to, she could push him around with some legal papers that would scare the bejesus out of him.
“Oh, Aisling, I won’t be able to sleep at all tonight. Mind stroking my hair until I do?” Mother moaned, when after hours of tending to her, I’d said I needed to hop into the shower.
I smiled tightly, sitting myself back on the edge of her bed. “Yes. Of course.”
I stroked her hair for hours. When she finally fell asleep—by that time, my fingers were numb—I retired to my own room, took a quick shower, slipped into my bed, and started crying.
Crying for Mom, for all the suffering she had to endure in her marriage.
Crying for Mrs. Martinez, whom I’d left in the middle of an important meeting to try to extinguish another Fitzpatrick fire created by my selfish, self-centered parents.
And crying for myself, because I wasn’t like my brothers or their wives.
I didn’t have my happily-ever-after. My destiny was to fall in love with the monster in my story, the character most likely to be slain.
But most of all, I cried because of Sam.
Because he was the only man who could break my heart.
And because he chose to do it. Often.
The first bullet I shot pierced straight through the man’s chest. A clear shot into his heart.
The second bullet flew to his friend’s forehead, making the man snap back like a bowling pin and land on top of his fellow soldier with a cry.
There were very few people who were as good marksmen as I was.
A retired veteran once told me I’d have made a great sniper. Joining the army was never in my cards. I was a selfish man who liked to wage his own wars and didn’t have the time or patience for anyone else’s.
Silence hung in the air, the echoes of the gunshots still buzzing in my ears. The faint scent of gunpowder and blood hung heavy in my nostrils.
I didn’t get into gang fights often, but when I did, I relished the hell out of them. Violence calmed me. Made my blood run cold rather than stir hot and restless.
Calmly, I tugged a cigarette out, lighting it as I sauntered toward the place where the two men were lying. We were in a Brookline attic, just above the deli where a massive drug deal had taken place just a few weeks earlier. Vasily Mikailov’s territory, which I’d conquered in recent months.
Back when Troy Brennan ruled the streets of Boston, the gang crime rate was low to nonexistent. Everyone had their own corner of the world to rule, to reign, and to hold. Troy was a fair underboss. He didn’t have a severe case of megalomania—something you couldn’t say about his predecessors—and had no trouble sticking to Southie, an area which he ruled with an iron fist.
I, however, had different rules, different aspirations, and an entirely different approach to life. You either bent or snapped for me. There was no middle ground, and I wanted it all—every nook and corner of the city and everything inside it.
From the moment I took over, there had been bloodshed. I didn’t settle for a finger. I took the whole fucking hand and built an empire on the ruins of bones and blood.
The Italians had been the first to bow down. They did so immediately. The majority of them ran to New York and Chicago after my first round of massacring their top bosses. The event was marked in the local newspapers as Night of The Long Knives, where I killed no less than ten mobsters in their beds.
The latinx had followed suit, scurrying to the edges of illegal betting and drug-dealing after I struck them.
The Russians, however, put up a fight. Brookline belonged to the Bratva, and I had to pry it out of their hands, using a lot of force and raising the body count on the streets. It had been an ongoing, uphill battle with many casualties, many assassination attempts—on both sides—and a hell of a lot of headache.
Bending down on one knee, I drew a black plastic glove from my back pocket, slapped it on, and pried the first bullet from the man’s chest. Next, I moved to my other casualty. Thankfully, the bullet wasn’t smeared in too much brain matter, which would have been a bitch to clean.
I wiped both bullets with the men’s shirts and pocketed them, sighing as I straightened back up and proceeded to deal with the rest of the situation.
“How bad is it?” I clipped, my annoyance loud and apparent.
“Bad,” Becker, one of my soldiers, wheezed behind me like a fan, shifting on the floor of the dusty attic. “I think they got my lungs.”
“Pretty sure I broke my arm,” Angus, beside him, added.
Both assholes didn’t even have a high school diploma yet somehow managed to medically assess themselves. I walked over to the two useless oxygen wasters I’d hired to do my dirty work, surveying them coldly.
Unbelievable. Not only had I ended up doing the job myself and wiping the floor with the two Bratva idiots who stole money from me—fine, didn’t pay me the cut I deserved for the deal—before putting bullets in them, but now I had to usher these two pussies to get medical help.
And don’t get me started on falling off the fucking rails and acting like a jealous girlfriend in need of a bloodbath, because I had a long-ass fucking month.
“Get up.” I rolled Becker over with the tip of my loafer, taking a long drag from my cigarette, releasing plumes of smoke through my nostrils like I was a dragon. “I ain’t carrying your ass to the car honeymoon-style. You too, Fucker Junior,” I spat in Angus’ direction.
They limped behind me, leaning against each other for support, and stuffed themselves into the back of the van I’d driven to Brookline. Behind the wheel, I made a call to Dr. Holmberg,
the man I’d hired on retainer to tend to my soldiers and myself.
For obvious reasons, walking willy-nilly into the hospital with gunshot wounds wasn’t exactly an option.
Dr. Holmberg picked up on the third ring, the acoustics surrounding his voice implying he was talking from deep inside someone’s asshole.
“’Ello?” He sounded groggy.
“Enjoying an afternoon nap, fucker?” I inquired politely, taking a turn toward the South End, where he was located. “Make yourself a cup of coffee. I have a job for you.”
“Sam?” He sobered up instantly, clearing his throat. “Oh, Sam, I’m sorry. I thought your secretary left you the message. I’m not home. I’m in Greece until next week.”
That explained why he was asleep when I called him. There was a time difference. It also explained why the reception was so bad. The fact his message hadn’t been received did not surprise me. I went through secretaries like I went through one-night stands: fast and leaving a pile of angry, mistreated women in my wake. I was currently in between assistants—and also in between fucks, seeing as having sex with Aisling wasn’t a possibility anymore. My shit with the Fitzpatricks was complicated enough.
“What the fuck makes you think I talk to my assistants regularly?” I lashed out. “Next time, have the stones to tell me directly when you take an unauthorized vacation. Now give me your cousin’s address. I’ve got two injured soldiers I would very much like to keep alive because they owe me three weeks’ pay of work.”
Whenever Dr. Holmberg wasn’t available, he referred me to his cousin, Raul, who was technically a registered nurse but was still discreet and got the job done. At this point, with Becker and Angus’ lackluster performances in the field, they were lucky I didn’t let the local mailman tend to their wounds.
A nurse was more than they deserved.
“Raul’s out of town, Sam. Visiting his son in college,” Dr. Holmberg murmured sheepishly.
“Is anyone in your family familiar with the concept of work?” I muttered.