by Maura Rose
PATRICK
An Irish Mob Romance Novella
By
Maura Rose
TNA Publishing
Patrick © 2019 by Maura Rose
All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, or by any information storage and retrieval system, without permission in writing from the publisher.
This is a work of fiction. Names, places, characters and incidents are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously; any resemblance to any actual persons, living or dead, organizations, events or locales is entirely coincidental.
Cover design © Ran Designs
First Edition August 2020
Chapter One
Patrick grinned as he pulled up in front of the brownstone. Some things really never changed, and the house looked the same as ever.
It would be weird, going in without Mother there. That had been the big reason why he’d left. Mother had been… everything. Not everything as in their whole world, but she had been the one to call Father out when he’d been too damn strict. She’d been the one to calm him down when he’d been in a mood—and boy, could Father ever get into a goddamn mood—and the one to smooth over arguments.
There’d been a hell of a lot of arguments.
Seamus Donaghue was a man who held his sons, and everyone else around him, to a high standards. Being his heirs didn’t exempt you. In fact, it just made him work the boys harder. They had to be perfect, always on top of their classes, always responsible, respectful, on time, ready to run the family business at a moment’s notice.
Where the hell was the fun in that? Hadn’t the whole reason Father had come to America been so that he could give his sons the kind of leisurely good life that he hadn’t been able to have? The kind of relaxing life, the better life, the high life? They had money to spare. It wasn’t like they had to fight for what they had. They were comfortable.
There hadn’t even been a war in ages, despite the McCourts still posturing. Patrick thought he was well within his rights to run around sowing his wild oats.
But everyone had seen it differently after Mother had died. Sean had felt that someone had to stick by Father, support him as Father lost the love of his life. Patrick had seen the writing on the wall—there went their mediator, the person who’d kept them all from killing each other. He didn’t want to be around when their stubborn Irish pride finally had them at each other’s throats for good, thanks.
It wasn’t like he’d dropped off the face of the map. He’d sent postcards. He’d sent Christmas cards, even, on top of that. He’d bought Father a new belt one birthday and a new tie the next and had them sent over. He’d remembered Sean’s birthday and had always arranged for his favorite whiskey to be delivered.
And okay, so maybe he’d caused some problems while at home as a teenager. He’d gotten into a few schoolyard fights. And totaled Father’s Mustang, the one he wasn’t supposed to be touching and definitely the one he wasn’t supposed to be using in a street race at two in the morning. And maybe he’d stolen Sean’s high school girlfriend, and maybe he’d taken a thousand bucks out of Father’s wallet once or twice.
But that was all ages ago. And they couldn’t think he wouldn’t show up now that he’d gotten the news.
Sean was married, and Father was retiring.
The idea of Sean being married was almost laughable. His older brother was great at picking up women at a bar or a club for a one night stand, but he inevitably pissed off any girlfriend he tried to have by being a brooding, cranky son of a bitch. It had to be one hell of a woman to stick by him long enough for him to put a ring on her finger.
Patrick had assumed that it was an alliance marriage, that Sean was hitching up with some mafioso’s daughter, but this Bridget he’d been hearing about had absolutely no connections. She was from Ireland, not mob related as far as anyone knew, and somehow Father supposedly liked her.
A fucking miracle, truly.
What was even crazier to him was that Father was retiring. He’d have thought Father would sooner die than retire, but if his sources were correct, then Father was willingly giving up the family throne to Sean so that Sean could run things instead.
What the hell?
Patrick got out of the car and walked up to the brownstone, waving cheerily at the hidden security camera. From the front, the house looked perfectly normal, but he knew there were a few bodyguards lurking around. One in the parked car down the street, one who was pretending to just be a normal jogger, and one manning the security cameras on the inside with a buddy.
Then he knocked on the front door.
The last person he expected to answer it was a gorgeous redhead. Shorter than he was, slim, with minimal but firm curves and thick curling hair and blue-green eyes that surveyed him critically, she was the opposite of the older lieutenant or security guy that Patrick had thought he’d see.
“Hey, sugar.” He grinned, leaning against the doorframe. “You the new housekeeper? Mind showing me up to the old man’s room?”
The woman looked at him for another moment, then said, “Right this way.”
She led him inside, where Patrick saw that very little had, in fact, changed. All the designs and furniture were the same as when Mother had put them in place.
He swallowed, nostalgia and a tinge of sadness, like a sepia tone on a picture, settled in his chest. He missed Mother. She’d always loved him, no matter how much he’d screwed up.
The woman led him up the stairs, into Father’s bedroom. That was odd. He’d have thought Father would be in his office, his base of operations. That was always where he’d been when Patrick was around.
He got another shock when he entered and saw Father in bed.
Seamus Donaghue was sitting up and looked bright eyed and bushy tailed, but the equipment in the room suggested that he was… that he was actually…
“Are you sick?” Patrick blurted out.
The woman rolled her eyes, then nodded at the nurse in the corner of the room. “Thank you, Rosa, you can leave. I’ll take things from here.”
“Rosa?” Patrick watched the woman gather her things and leave. “Where’s William?”
“You really have been out of the loop,” the redhead told him. “Why don’t you sit down and I’ll have someone bring you something?”
A suspicion started to form in Patrick mind and he narrowed his eyes. “Who are you?”
One of Father’s grunts entered with some papers. “Boss says you need to sign these, ma’am, so your name’s on the property and you can take over if anything happens to him.”
“Ah, yes, he told me about that.” The redhead signed the papers, thanking the man, then turned back to him.
It belatedly occurred to Patrick that the woman had an Irish brogue. “…you’re Bridget.”
“And you’re my brother-in-law,” Bridget replied. “Oddly enough, I was told you were smarter.”
On the bed, Seamus Donaghue laughed. Father was rarely silent, and Patrick glared at him. He couldn’t have said something?
“I was wondering how he’d take you,” Seamus said, addressing Bridget. “You’ll want to fetch Sean so I can talk to them both. No use in sayin’ it twice.”
“Of course.” Bridget leveled Patrick with such a glare that he almost felt like his clothes had been set on fire. He had little doubt Sean would be learning that Patrick had called his new wife ‘sugar’ and had assumed she was a housekeeper.
Fuck.
“What are you doing in bed?” he asked, approaching his father carefully.
“I�
�ve been sick, boy,” Seamus replied. “Which you’d’ve known if you’d been around. Nearly died, if that girl hadn’t saved my life. The McCourts turned William, and he nearly killed me.”
“What?” William Marcus had been the family doctor for years. Rage filled Patrick at the knowledge of such a betrayal and he had to struggle to keep his temper. “Where is he, where’s the little shit?”
“Rotting in the ground where he belongs,” Seamus replied.
Footsteps sounded and Patrick turned in time to see Sean enter, Bridget right behind him. His brother’s glare spoke volumes. “It seems you’ve already met my wife.”
“And a lovely girl she is too,” Patrick replied.
Sean rolled his eyes. “Spare us the damn charm, Pat. Why are you here?”
“I heard Father was retiring and that you were married. I thought I should… stop by.” Now that he was faced with them, all of Patrick’s bravado fell away.
He’d messed up. A lot. He’d broken his father’s trust and his brother’s. He could explain it away as a youthful indiscretion when someone else asked about it, filled with righteous indignation over his plight. But when he actually was in the room with his father and brother and he could see the rage in their eyes…
Look, there was a reason he’d delayed coming home for so long.
“And you didn’t hear anything else?” Sean demanded. Bridget grabbed his hand, restraining him from stepping forward and getting into Patrick’s face.
To Patrick’s surprise, Sean let Bridget restrain him like that. She wasn’t even tugging, just holding on lightly.
He never thought he’d see the day a woman could do that with his brother, the way Mother had with Father. He wanted to congratulate Bridget but he had a feeling she wasn’t too fond of him at the moment. God knew what all Sean had been telling her—and none of it lies or exaggerations, either.
“Father almost died,” Sean growled. “He was being poisoned and none of us knew. He’s still sick, with his liver, and you didn’t know. You weren’t here. I got married and you’re only just now hearing about it. We needed another Donaghue here to help out and where’ve you been, huh? Where’ve you been the past five years?”
“Sean,” Seamus said, his voice quiet but stern.
Sean subsided, holding on tightly to his wife’s hand.
Patrick stood still as his father looked at him, gazing up and down, taking him in. His eyes still burned with bright blue fire and Patrick just knew that Father was looking at him and finding him wanting. “So, you’re just here for a visit?” he asked. “Is that it? Wanted to swing by and make sure your old man wasn’t croaking his last?”
“No.” Patrick tried to remember all the things he’d rehearsed, all that he’d planned on saying, but it was hard when he had his father’s gaze boring into him the way it always had, when he was five or ten or fifteen or twenty and had screwed up yet again.
“I’m here because—” He cleared his throat and squared his shoulders. He was on a mission, damn it. “I’m here because I want to stay. I want to be here for you two.”
“That’s a new one,” Sean said.
“Look, I know I messed up, okay?” Patrick shot back. “I know I did a lot of shit and then I just up and ran when Mother died and I know that was shitty of me. But I want to be better. I want to… to make up for it.”
“How are we—” Sean started, his voice raised, but Father held up a hand.
Sean quieted, although not happily judging by his facial expression.
“Pat.” Seamus’s voice was stern but quieter than Patrick had expected. Perhaps his father’s illness had managed to do what even Mother couldn’t, and had smoothed out the hard edges of him. “You have to understand it’s not that we don’t want to trust you—”
“Oh, yes it is,” Sean cut it.
“—it’s that we don’t know if we can,” Father finished, ignoring his other son’s outburst completely.
“I get that.” Patrick had been expecting that. He’d been expecting a lot more anger from his father, actually, more throwing things around and yelling. Sean, he’d thought, would be the one on his side. After all, Sean had gotten in trouble with Father, too, from time to time. “I’m willing to do what it takes to prove that you can depend on me.”
“Can you make Hell freeze over?” Sean muttered.
“Watch your tongue,” Seamus snapped.
Looked like Father still had some fire in him, after all. Patrick had to hold in his grin. Then his father looked at him again and Patrick’s smile slid off his face.
“As for you,” he said, “I don’t know what you could do to prove that we can trust you. You’ve been an irresponsible rascal from the moment you were born, and there’s nothing wrong with a little spirit in a boy but you’ve given me no reason to trust you with my damn car, never mind anything involving the family business.”
It was… a blow, Patrick had to admit. The family business was everything Seamus Donaghue was, everything he had. And Patrick had no intention of running the damn thing, he never had, but… to not be included was almost as bad as being out of the family altogether.
You earned this, he reminded himself.
“Who said anything about the family business?” he said. “I’m here to be—to be a son and a brother again. That doesn’t necessarily mean that you have to trust me with the business end of things.”
That was a lie, of course. In the Irish mob, family was business and business was family. To not be included and trusted with the business was to not be fully included in the family. But Patrick would take some over none.
Seamus looked at his younger son, and Patrick tried not to let any of his discomfort show. He’d pep-talked himself a number of times about this. It would take time and effort to work his way back in with the family. He had to accept any anger that came with it.
Didn’t mean it felt great.
“I’ll think about it,” Seamus said. “And now I have a business meeting. Scat.”
Feeling like a five-year-old again, Patrick brushed past Sean and Bridget to head out.
It was fine. His father needed time, that was understandable.
In the meantime, he had someone else to check up on.
Chapter Two
Sinead massaged the bread with the heel of her hand, kneading it. She’d been raised by rather traditional parents, so even though she’d been born in the United States her mother still had her making bread like they were in a country farm in Middle Ages Ireland.
Not that she minded all that much. It gave her something to do, something to concentrate on.
And something to punch.
Sue her for being a bit traditional, but she’d never really wanted to do much with her life. She wanted to run a home and have kids and be a mother. Her younger sisters, they had ambitions. Kate wanted to be a dancer and Siobhan wanted to be a speech therapist.
But Sinead only wanted to raise some children and pursue her hobbies while they were in school. She liked dancing, but as a class she took once a week. She had a passion for baking, but she wasn’t going to make a profession out of it. She loved nothing more than settling down for the afternoon with a cup of tea and a good book.
That wasn’t enough for her parents, apparently. Just because they’d raised her strictly didn’t mean that they were okay with her not having any bigger plans.
“You have to have something,” Mom would say. “You can’t just sit around and wait for someone to sweep you off your feet.”
It didn’t help that she’d had someone, that she’d had a plan… once upon a time.
Siobhan sat at the table, doing some homework for her classes, her brow furrowed. “You know,” she said, as if the thought had just occurred to her, “you could be a single mom.”
Sinead rolled her eyes. Siobhan never said anything just off the top of her head, so her nonchalant attitude wasn’t fooling anyone. “But I wouldn’t be able to spend as much time with the kid because I’d be working.”
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br /> “You could find a job that lets you work from home,” Siobhan replied. “Something online, or some kind of business—plenty of people on Etsy run their businesses right out of their homes and make plenty of money.”
“What would I do?”
Siobhan shrugged. “I don’t have all the answers. I’m just saying. You can still have kids without a guy.”
“I know but—but I want a partner to help me do it.” She wanted someone to raise her children with her, and not Mom and Dad. Although they would be happy to assist in raising a grandchild, and had wanted grandchildren for some time, it just wasn’t the same thing.
“Well, I’m sure you’ll find someone,” Siobhan said.
Silence fell for a few moments, and then Siobhan said, again with that attempt at casualness, “Did you hear that Patrick’s back in town?”
Sinead punched the loaf of bread with a lot more force than she’d intended. “Is he?”
“Yup. I guess he’s over there right now. I heard Mom talking on the phone to Dad about it. I guess he just showed up, nobody was expecting it. Dad’s not happy.”
“Well, why should he be?” Sinead snapped. “Disappearing for years and then showing up out of the blue. His dad’s been sick and everything, nearly died, and was Patrick there? Sean’s not perfect, but he was always there, and a little partying never hurt anybody.”
“So…” Siobhan drew out the word slowly. “You’re not going to want to see him?”
“Why the fuck would I want to see him?” Sinead replied. “Bastard hurt everyone in his family with his antics.”
“He hurt you, too,” Siobhan commented.
“Not the point.”
“I think the poor bread you’re about to over-knead would disagree.”
Sinead left the bread alone, going to wash her hands in the sink. “Patrick… Patrick and I were a long time ago. It’s not the same thing, what he did to me.”
“He left you same as he left his family.”