Mafia Romance

by Aleatha Romig, Skye Warren, Annika Martin, Natasha Knight, Kaye Blue, Michelle St. James, Renee Rose, Parker S. Huntington, Alexis Abbott, Willow Winters

  Add to that the rift that would widen between him and his mother—a relationship that had never been good to begin with—and they were consequences she couldn’t live with. She was almost to the walkway leading to the porch when she heard a voice behind her.

  “Bridge.” She froze, wondering if she was imagining it. “Bridget.”

  She turned to find Nolan standing near a silver car parked in front of hers. She wondered if she’d conjured him, if her thoughts of him had carried his image to her on the wind, a holograph from the past.

  “I’m sorry,” he said. “I hope I didn’t startle you.”

  He was real. Real and as beautiful as ever, his sandy hair cut short on the sides, the top still long and threatening to fall over his forehead. He was staring at her with the same hazel eyes she’d fallen into the first time they met, the same eyes that had studied her over the table at Southside Diner, that had taken her breath away and made it hard to remember that he was just a spoiled rich kid slumming it in Southie.

  “What are you doing here?” It’s not what she meant to say, not what she wanted to say.

  “I need to talk to you,” he said. His hands were stuffed into a navy peacoat, his legs clad in gray trousers that couldn’t hide their muscled perfection. He still wore good shoes, something stylish in black leather. She’d always loved that about him.

  “Is everything all right?” she asked.

  “I don’t know, Bridge. I just…” He sighed and looked down at the concrete under his feet. “I just need to talk to you. Do you have a minute?”

  She glanced at the door of the house, aware that it was her escape hatch, the only chance she had to put distance between her and the one man she didn’t trust herself around.

  But there was something dark in his eyes, something beyond worry, something that looked a lot like fear. He needed to talk. Didn’t she owe him that much?

  “All right.” She walked toward him, forcing herself to breathe as she got closer, forcing herself not to keep walking until she could put her arms around his waist, rest her head against his chest.

  He opened the passenger door of the car. She slid into the seat and he closed the door, cocooning her in the plush interior. It smelled new, like expensive leather and plastic fresh off the factory floor.

  He got into the driver’s seat and looked down at the steering wheel. It took him a minute to speak, the tension stretching into a vibration she could almost hear.

  “You look good, Bridge.” He didn’t look at her as he said it.

  “You too,” she said.

  Good didn’t do him justice. Surrounded by his scent, his big arms close enough to touch, she wanted nothing more than to climb into his lap and press her lips to his, forget everything that had happened between them, everything that was still between them.

  “How’s Owen?” he asked.

  She wasn’t surprised he knew. Everyone in the neighborhood knew. Nolan probably knew five minutes after Will found out. She could only assume he hadn’t put together the end of their relationship and Owen’s illness. If he had, she would have heard about it by now.

  “He’s… deteriorating,” Bridget said. “It’s inevitable.”

  “I’m so sorry, Bridge. So fucking sorry.”

  The anguish in his voice was like a vise around her heart. Of all the people in the world who should feel bad about Owen, she couldn’t bear it that Nolan did, not after she’d taken his mother’s money and broken his heart.

  “Thanks,” she said.

  “What’s the prognosis?” he asked quietly.

  “Death, eventually,” she said. “I wish I could put a positive spin on it, but that’s the truth.”

  He reached across the console and closed his hand around hers. A rush of heat traveled from the tips of her fingers to her chest. She had to remind herself to breathe.

  “You don’t have to put a positive spin on anything,” he said. “Not for me.”

  She looked down at their joined hands. No one had said they expected her to keep up a happy face about Owen, but the pressure was there just the same. Owen suffered every day, watching his youthful body contort before his eyes. Her parents bore witness to it—to the slow death of the little boy they’d brought into the world. They needed her to stay positive. Or pretend to stay positive anyway.

  “Do they know how long he has?” Nolan asked.

  “It’s hard to say. Some patients with ALS die quickly, others live for years, decades even, although they continue to lose motor function.”

  “Maybe he’ll be one of the lucky ones,” Nolan suggested.

  “Maybe.” It was hard to feel like Owen would ever be lucky when the most he could hope for was a longer life in a ruined body.

  Nolan withdrew his hand and drew in a breath. “I heard you’re working for Seamus.”

  She blinked. It wasn’t what she’d expected him to say next. “Did Will tell you that?”

  She couldn’t keep the bitterness out of her voice, the moment they’d just shared forgotten under her shame.

  “He’s not the only one,” Nolan said.

  Great. Everyone in the neighborhood was talking about how she was working for the Irish mob, putting that hard-won law degree to good use.

  “Why are you here, Nolan?” She wasn’t going to justify her actions to anyone. Not even Nolan. She knew why she was doing what she was doing. That’s all that mattered.

  He turned his eyes on her and she almost fell into them all over again. “Something’s going down, Bridge. Something big. You need to get out.”

  She thought about her meeting earlier that week with Seamus at the Cat, about the tension in the air and the feeling that something was coming.

  “What are you talking about?”

  He hesitated. “I don’t know much, but what’s coming is going to be bad for the neighborhood, bad for Seamus and anyone working for him.”

  She shook her head. “I don’t know what you want me to do with this, Nolan.”

  “I want you to think about it,” he said. “To consider getting out before it’s too late.”

  “It’s not that simple. I don’t expect you to understand.” She reached for the door. “Thanks for the warning. I appreciate it. I really do.”

  “Bridge, wait.” He put a hand on her arm as she opened the door. “You know you can come to me if you need anything, don’t you?”

  She couldn’t move, the question sitting between them like a stick of dynamite. She could tell him everything, come clean, ask him for help paying her debt to Seamus and taking care of Owen. She could promise to pay him back with interest even if it took the rest of her life.

  But nothing had changed. Nolan would never forgive his mother for offering Bridget the money, would never forget Bridget had taken it, even if he said he understood why. The cold hard truth was that the end of their story had been written on the day she’d cashed Moira Adams’s check.

  “I have to go.” She stepped out of the car.

  “I’m here for you, Bridge. That will never not be true.”

  She shut the door on his voice. On the past. On the hope that anything would ever be other than what it was.

  Chapter Eight

  Nolan sat in the car for a long time after Bridget left, their conversation replaying in his mind. It had been hard to breathe with her so close, the scent of her filling every dead corner of his body, her eyes flashing like green fire even in the dark interior of the car.

  He’d seen the pain on her face, the defeat, but she wouldn’t have wanted him to acknowledge it. He knew Bridget, knew she wore her pride like armor. It was bad enough that he’d had to confront her about her work with Seamus. She’d almost flinched when he’d said it, and it had taken all of his discipline not to pull her into his arms, to tell her he understood why she was doing it, that he didn’t judge her, that he didn’t care, that there was nothing she could ever do that would change how much he loved her.

  She hadn’t mentioned Owen as the reason she was
working for Seamus, but Will had been right: Bridget was doing it for him. Nolan had seen it on her face, heard it in her voice.

  I don’t expect you to understand.

  It wasn’t fair. No one deserved what was happening less than Bridget, less than sweet, funny Owen and his kind, generous parents.

  Nolan hit the steering wheel with his fist. “Fuck!”

  The sound of his voice reverberated through the car and he was surprised to find that he was breathing hard, gulping in great gasps of air to fight the sob rising in his chest. The loss of Bridget was like an old wound freshly excavated, but it was more than that—it was the tilt of her chin and her unwavering voice, the strength she was determined to show even when all he wanted was to protect her from anything that caused her pain, take care of her parents and make Owen happy and comfortable while he lived with the disease ravaging his body.

  It was Bridget’s losses that hit him the hardest, losses she didn’t deserve to bear, losses he would gladly have taken on himself. He hated that she’d had to resort to working for Seamus O’Brien, hated that she was so close to so dangerous a man.

  He drew in a deep breath and thought through his conversation with Christophe Marchand, weighed his options with the Syndicate, with Seamus, with Bridget and Will.

  Reaching for his phone, he texted Will. You busy?

  Will’s answer came a few seconds later. Define busy.

  Meet me at the Ramsey playground.

  Now? Nolan could almost hear Will’s annoyance.

  Now.

  Feck. Give me twenty minutes.

  Nolan set his phone in the car’s console and leaned down for one last look at the Monaghan house. The lights were on in the living room, shadows moving behind the sheer curtains Eileen had hung for privacy on the street. Kyle Monaghan’s car wasn’t in the driveway, and Nolan remembered Will saying Bridget’s father was working two jobs to offset Owen’s medical expenses.

  Nolan wanted to walk into the house, kiss Eileen on the cheek, ruffle Owen’s hair, put his arm around Bridget and tell her everything was going to be okay.

  He started the car and pulled away from the curb.

  It was Friday night, the neighborhood busy with bar crawlers not wanting to drive and packs of teenagers too young to lie their way into The Chipp with a bad fake I.D.

  Nolan was immediately transported back to the days when he’d worked with Will for the Syndicate, the two of them putting the fear of god into guys who owed Carlo Rossi money, meeting up with Bridget after hours to smoke weed in the park. He didn’t remember what they talked about, only that there had been enough fodder to keep them up until Bridget looked at her phone and realized she had multiple unanswered texts from her mother asking where in God’s name Bridget was at that hour.

  They’d raced home through the quite streets, laughing and breathing heavy, high on life and friendship and the kind of love Nolan hadn’t thought existed until he’d met Bridget Monaghan.

  He looked up to find that he’d arrived at the park. He was early, but he needed to get out of the car, away from the smell of Bridget embedding itself in the upholstery, the memory of her in the passenger seat next to him.

  He locked the car and headed down the path toward the old playground. It didn’t make him nervous that the park was deserted. It was more than the weapon strapped to his side, more even than the knowledge that he used to beat people up for Carlo Rossi.

  This was his neighborhood. He might have been brought up on Beacon Hill, but Southie was home. His paternal grandparents had died within months of each other two years earlier, but he still knew every turn of the park, every lonely tree and bench.

  He came to the playground and crossed the patch of grass that separated it from the walkway. The rusted metal swings were ghostly figures moving in the breeze. Beyond them the jungle gym rose like a wooden beast, the merry-go-round crouched nearby.

  He made his way to the merry-go-round and sat on its edge, rocking himself back and forth, remembering the nights he, Bridget, and Will took turns spinning, jumping on at the last minute and laying on their backs as it turned, watching the sky spin until they had to close their eyes, surrender to the workings of the creaky metal.

  He saw movement out of the corner of his eye and looked up to see Will approaching on the sidewalk, his hands stuffed into his old track jacket. Nolan wondered how many times they’d replayed the scene with minor variations, one of them waiting, the other arriving, the conversation that followed funny or meaningful or biting depending on the topic.

  “If you’d wanted to ride the merry-go-round we could have set up a playdate,” Will said when he got close enough for Nolan to hear him.

  “I already have plans for a playdate—with your mom,” Nolan said. Dancing around difficult subjects with humor was part and parcel of their history, the way they navigated subjects neither of them really wanted to navigate.

  Will laughed and shook his head. “Jesus you’re as big an eejit as ever.”

  “What can I say?” Nolan said. “You bring out the best in me.”

  “Fuck you.”

  “Back at you,” Nolan said.

  Will sat on the merry-go-round. “Feet up.”

  Nolan lifted his feet and Will used his legs to give them a spin. Nolan closed his eyes, trying to conjure the old feeling of freedom, of possibility, trying to transport himself to a time when he was young and the woman of his dreams was still his.

  They slowed to a stop and he put his feet back on the ground.

  Will rubbed his hands together and stuffed them back in his jacket. “You going to tell me why you called me out here on a Friday night? It doesn’t even look like you brought booze.”

  Nolan thought about everything Marchand had told him, sifting for the bits he could get away with revealing without compromising Will.

  “Have you heard anything about Seamus’s operation?” Will asked. “Anything that makes you think there’s trouble?”

  Will looked sharply at him. “What do you mean?”

  Nolan shrugged. “Are the other men talking? Have you seen or heard anything that makes you think something unusual’s going on?”

  Will hesitated. “Nothing specific.”

  “What does that mean?”

  Will shrugged. “Some rumors that he pulled a couple bank jobs earlier this year, small time stuff, just gossip.”

  “Think it’s true?”

  “Wouldn’t know,” Will said. “I’m not high enough on the food chain to be in on something like that. Not yet anyway.”

  Nolan took a minute to process the information, trying to piece it together with what Marchand had told him. It didn’t help. All he had were pieces of the same puzzle that didn’t seem to fit.

  “Anything else?” Nolan asked.

  “Is that why you called me out here?” Will asked. “So we could talk about work?”

  “Seemed the best place to talk without eyes and ears on us,” Nolan said.

  Will cursed. “Stop talking in fecking riddles and tell me what’s going on.”

  “What if I told you I was in possession of information that Seamus is going to be the subject of an outside attack? One that will level his organization and result in a lot of casualties?”

  “I’d tell you to get clear before I belt the shite out of you.”

  Nolan shook his head. “I’m trying to look out for you here. You and Bridget.”

  “Bridget? What does she have to do with anything?” Will asked.

  “She works for Seamus too, and anyone who works for Seamus is going to be a target,” Nolan said.

  Will stood and paced a few feet away from the merry-go-round before turning to face Nolan. “Why are you telling me this if you can’t give me enough information to protect myself or help Bridget?”

  “I’m giving you what I can. You need to get out. So does Bridget.”

  Will laughed. “That’s rich. Really. Typical.”

  “What are you talking about?” Nolan said. “I�
�m trying to help you.”

  “Right.” Will nodded. “You’re trying to help me just like you always try to help—from afar, without getting your hands dirty.”

  Anger bloomed in Nolan’s chest. “I was part of the Syndicate too. I got my hands dirty plenty.”

  “That was then, mate.”

  “What’s that supposed to mean?” Nolan asked.

  “It means that was back when you still bled red like the rest of us, before you went all downtown.”

  Nolan stood and blew out his anger. “What was I supposed to do? Go to work for Seamus and see Bridget around the neighborhood every day to prove I still care?”

  “Don’t be dim,” Will said. “You know what I’m talking about. You left us behind. Sure, you still slum it once a week, long enough to go a few rounds at Ryan’s or toss back a couple at The Chipp. But you’re gone, man. You’ve been gone a long time. So sorry if I’m not prostrating in gratitude for your little warning to get out.”

  “I don’t expect gratitude. You’re my best friend. Bridget is… well, Bridget is Bridget. I don’t want anything to happen to either of you.”

  “And you think we can run? That we can just drop everything and our lives will magically sort themselves out?” Will shook his head. “We’re not all Nolan Burke.”

  “I’ll help.” Nolan was stung by the anger in Will’s voice, by the knowledge that resentment had been unspoken between them for years. “I can bankroll you until you find something else.”

  Will sighed, returned to the merry-go-round, and sat down so heavily the old metal groaned. “I don’t want your fecking money, Nolan.”

  Nolan thought about what Marchand had said about needing someone on the inside, someone who could get the information the Syndicate needed to bring down Seamus. He couldn’t ask Will to do it, and not because of what Marchand had said about not being able to trust him. Nolan trusted Will with his life.

  He couldn’t compromise Will because he couldn’t live with himself if Seamus found out, if Will ended up in the harbor because he was discovered to be a rat.