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

  He didn’t know what he’d been thinking. She didn’t love him. How much more clear could she be?

  But she’d been right there, mouth parted, cheeks flushed with anger, her green eyes filled with the fiery determination he’d fallen in love with all those years ago. His cock had sprung to life, clamoring for the completion he’d only ever found in her body.

  Kissing her had been as necessary as breathing.

  He drew in a breath and forced his mind back to the present as he scanned the bar until he spotted Christophe Marchand at the back in a tall wooden booth.

  It was late for a weeknight, and Foley’s was quiet, the bartender already wiping everything down for the night. They would be able to talk here, reasonably safe from being spotted by Seamus’s inner circle.

  He passed the bar without stopping for a drink. He’d had enough beer during the afternoon at the Cat to last him a lifetime, not to mention the cigarette smoke that had seeped into his clothes.

  When he reached the booth at the back of the room he was surprised to see that Marchand wasn’t alone. A large man with broad shoulders and giant arms sat across from him, his head barely hidden by the tall wooden back of the booth.

  Nolan had to work to keep his expression impassive when the man looked up at him. A long scar ran from his left eye to the bottom of his cheek. His eyes were vacant, a void not of intellectual emptiness, but something colder and deeper.

  “I take it you’re our newest rich kid?” His clipped British accent spoke of Oxford or Cambridge, while the man’s face and body screamed street thug.

  Nolan bristled inwardly at being called a kid by a guy no more than ten years his senior. He slid into the booth next to Marchand. “That would be me.”

  “Do you have a name, rich kid?”

  “I imagine if you’re here, you already know my name,” Nolan said.

  “Farrell Black, this is Nolan Burke.” Marchand’s voice was weary, as if he’d made similar introductions a thousand times before. “Farrell is one of the Syndicate’s partners.”

  Nolan leaned back in the booth. “I’m honored by all this attention.”

  “Don’t be,” Farrell said. “It’ll come back to bite you in the ass if you fuck this up.”

  Nolan studied him. “I think you’re confused.”

  “I don’t get confused, mate.”

  Nolan flipped his palms to the ceiling. “And yet here we are. I don’t work for the Syndicate. I’m in Seamus O’Brien’s good graces to look out for my friends. Like I told Marchand here, I’ll get you the information you need to neutralize Seamus. After that, I’m done.”

  “This sounds familiar,” Farrell said.

  “Then it shouldn’t be a difficult concept to grasp,” Nolan said.

  “Are you in?” Marchand was obviously ready to bypass their banter.

  “I’m in,” Nolan said. “On a trial basis.”

  “Did you have any trouble?” Christophe asked.

  “Not really. My work with the Syndicate helped, as did my friendship with Will. I’m not crazy about having him vouch for me—if this thing goes south it will hurt him—but I’m banking on your ability to get rid of Seamus so Will and Bridget will be in the clear.”

  Christophe nodded. “We’ll do our best.”

  “So what do you need?” Nolan asked. Marchand had refused to tell him anything until he was in with Seamus’s outfit.

  “O’Brien has a handful of Boston PD officers on his payroll,” Farrell said. “We need to find out who they are.”

  “How are you going to bring down Seamus with that information?”

  “That’s not your concern,” Farrell said.

  “The hell it’s not.”

  “Nolan is risking his life,” Christophe said.

  “And if he turns on us?” Farrell asked.

  “Then this plan is already doomed.”

  Farrell cursed under his breath and Marchand continued. “Word is that Seamus has been dabbling in bank robbery.”

  “I’ve heard the same thing.”

  “When?” Farrell prodded.

  “Recently.”

  “Can you be more specific?” Farrell asked.

  Nolan shrugged. “Nothing definitive. Just gossip that he might have pulled a couple small jobs and that he’s showing an interest in criminal statutes.”

  “We think he’s planning a bigger take now that he’s gotten his feet wet. If so, he’s bound to use his law enforcement contacts for cover,” Christophe said.

  “I’m still not clear,” Nolan said.

  “O’Brien has a history of running if things get hot,” Farrell said.

  “I’ve never seen Seamus run,” Nolan said.

  “He’s been well-protected, first by Donati and Rossi and lately by the lack of leadership in Boston,” Christophe said. “But Farrell is right: O’Brien’s history suggests a predisposition to flight.”

  “What history?”

  “He was connected to an IRA bombing in Dublin in 1989. He came to the States in 1990,” Farrell said.

  Nolan hid his surprise, trying to reconcile the man he knew, a larger than life figure in the neighborhood, both feared and beloved depending on who you talked to, as a former IRA operative who fled before he could be arrested.

  Farrell took a drink of his beer and grimaced. “We think he’ll run if he loses his cover for a high-profile target like a bank, especially if the officers in question decide sharing the details of his operation is preferable to spending time behind bars with all the criminals they put there.”

  “And if he doesn’t?”

  Marchand considered the question. “These situations are fluid. The plans we make don’t always come to fruition as expected. In that case, we must be flexible, willing to reconsider the situation in the context of new information.”

  Farrell looked at Will. “What Christophe here is trying to tell you is that we don’t know shit. We’re playing a game of chess with a terrorist who could either surrender or blow up the board and all of its pieces. There are no guarantees.”

  Nolan didn’t like the idea of no guarantees, not with Will and Bridget in the line of fire, but he didn’t have a better idea.

  “I’ll try to get the names,” he said. “But it’s not going to be easy. Seamus does most of his work at the Cat. There’s no office to raid, no computer whose hard drive we can duplicate when he’s not looking, not that I know of anyway.”

  “He has to have the names somewhere,” Farrell said. “Fewer possible spots should narrow the field.”

  “Easy for you to say.” Farrell Black didn’t know Seamus O’Brien. Seamus was old-school, distrustful of people and technology, characteristics that made a lot more sense in light of his background with the IRA. For all Nolan knew, the only record that existed of Seamus’s men at BPD was in Seamus’s head.

  “We understand it will be difficult, but we have faith in you.” Christophe set something on the table between them. “This may help.”

  Nolan looked down at it. “A flash drive?”

  “Just in case,” Christophe said. “Build trust with O’Brien. Keep your eyes and ears open. The answer will present itself.”

  Nolan slipped the flash drive into his wallet, but he couldn’t help thinking the words were bullshit. In his experience, answers didn’t just present themselves: they were either given or won.

  And winning them usually came at a price.

  Chapter Eleven

  Bridget filled the kettle, her reflection a ghost in the window above the sink, then set it on the stove. She removed two cups from the cupboard and put a spoonful of tea in each. Her mother had been in America since she was a kid, but she’d never relinquished her insistence that tea was meant to be loose, tea bags just another American shortcut that sacrificed quality for expediency.

  She sat at the table and flipped through the mail while she waited for the water to boil. Her mom was upstairs bathing Owen and helping him get settled for bed. Bridget would happily have helped, but
Owen had made it clear that in the absence of a nurse, their mother was the only one who would help him with his personal tasks.

  Bridget had fought tears when he’d made the declaration, his face red with embarrassment, the reality of his worsening condition forcing him to confront a problem no young, vital person should ever have to confront.

  She felt bad for her mother, who bore the brunt of taking care of Owen’s day-to-day needs, but she understood. Their mother had given birth to him, had cared for him when he’d been small and helpless. If anyone should see him return to helplessness, it should be her.

  Bridget did what she could to lighten the load around the house and to keep her mom company when she was home. It wasn’t a fair exchange for the heartbreaking, backbreaking work of bathing Owen and helping him in the bathroom, for the pain of watching him waste away, but it was all Bridget could do—that and bring in as much extra money as possible to ease the strain on their finances.

  She rested her chin in her hand, exhaustion threatening to catch up with her. She’d put in a full day at BRIC and had come straight home to help her mother with dinner, and she still needed to go downtown to post bail for Casey, who’d been arrested after he’d beaten up some guy at a strip club downtown.

  Seamus had been furious when Bridget went to the Cat to pick up the cash for Casey’s bail, although she had the feeling Seamus was as mad that Casey had been at a strip club besides the Playpen as he was about Casey getting pinched.

  In Seamus’s eyes, his organization was family, and family owed him the loyalty of patronizing family businesses, putting money back into the coffers that fed them all. He’d ordered Bridget to let Casey sit for a few hours to “give him something to think about.”

  She’d begun dreading and anticipating in equal measure her stops at the Cat. There were the trials of facing Mick and watching the other men stare her down, of walking on eggshells around Seamus, who’d been peppering her with legal questions about the research she’d given him on the legal statutes surrounding bank theft.

  But there was also Nolan.

  He wasn’t always there, but when he was, his presence made it hard for her to concentrate on anything but him. On her worry that he was hitching his star to her sinking ship, that she would pull him under even as she was screaming at him to leave and choking on the lie that she didn’t love him.

  She’d heard that Seamus had sent him out with Will to strong-arm those who owed the organization money and to send a message to the men in his operation who’d made the mistake of stealing or ratting. She should have expected it, both because Nolan’s background with the Syndicate had been violent and because proving you were willing to beat the shit out of people for Seamus was the doorway into an organization where you’d be expected to do a lot worse. But it still left her walking around with a mixture of fear and desire that threatened to smother her.

  Nolan had been with Seamus for nearly a month, weeks in which Bridget had held her breath walking into the Cat, desperate for a glimpse of him, half hoping he would follow her out onto the street again so she could feel his mouth on hers, have a second chance at crossing the barrier she’d erected between them when she told him she didn’t love him anymore.

  Would she cross it if given the chance? She wanted to. There wasn’t enough denial in the world for her to reject that fact. But she didn’t know what it would mean for them, didn’t know what it would change. The thing that was between them would always be between them, even if she came clean about taking Moira’s money in exchange for killing her and Nolan’s relationship.

  Some things were beyond repair.

  The whistle of the kettle shook her from her thoughts. She stood and crossed to the stove, put an oven mitt on her hand, and poured the water. She was setting the steaming cups on the table when her mother entered the room.

  Bridget sat down. “How is he?”

  “Settled for the night, I think.” Her mother smiled, but strands of her hair were stuck to the sweat on her forehead, and her eyes had the look of the perpetually weary.

  “Are you hungry?” Bridget asked. “Want a snack with the tea?”

  “I’d be lying if I said I was hungry,” her mother said, “but I wouldn’t object to some biscuits.”

  Bridget grinned. “I was hoping you’d say that.”

  She went to the cupboard and pulled out the box of cookies her mother kept in the back, behind the flour where her father—who could easily finish off a whole pack in one sitting—wouldn’t see them. She arranged them on a plate the way her mother liked them and set it on the table.

  Her mother picked one up and took a bite. She sighed, like she was letting out a million years of tension, and her shoulders dropped a couple inches.

  Bridget covered her mom’s hand with her own. “You okay?”

  Her mom reached under the table into the pocket of her jeans, then set a piece of paper on the table between them.

  “What’s this?” Bridget reached for it.

  “I found it in Owen’s room,” her mother said softly.

  Bridget picked it up and realized it was a pamphlet, a peaceful mountain scene spread above the title.

  Dignitas

  To live with dignity

  To die with dignity

  Bridget dropped it as if she’d been burned. “What is this?”

  But she knew what it was.

  Her mother swallowed so hard Bridget saw her throat ripple. “It’s understandable, isn’t it?”

  “No, it’s not.” Bridget hated the anger in her voice, but it was the only thing keeping her from screaming. “He’s doing so well. He can still eat and talk and laugh, and scientists are making strides every day. Plus there are those trials in St. Louis and a million more.”

  “Not a million,” her mother said.

  “All right, not a million, but a lot. He shouldn’t be thinking about giving up.” She knew it wasn’t fair even as she said it. Would she have Owen’s strength in his situation? His grace? What right did she have to preach about giving up when she had a healthy body and an expected lifespan of eighty years?

  “He’s in pain.” Tears leaked down her mother’s face. “So much pain.”

  Bridget knew her mother wasn’t just talking about physical pain. “I know. I’m sorry. I just… I can’t think about this. I just can’t.”

  Her mother nodded and wiped the tears from her face. Her hand shook as she brought the teacup to her mouth.

  Bridget felt sick, the cooling tea and biscuits on the table turning her stomach. “Tell me you don’t agree with this, Mom. That you won’t support it.”

  Her mother drew in a breath. “Do you know what the hardest part of being a parent is?”

  “No.” It all looked hard to Bridget.

  “Realizing that your children aren’t yours. That they don’t belong to you. It starts as soon you come into the world: my son, my daughter. But those are just words. One way or another, you’re only in our care for a little while. We don’t get to decide what you do for a living or who you marry or whether or not you have children.”

  “Or whether we choose to die?” Bridget asked bitterly.

  “That either.”

  “You can talk to him,” Bridget said. “Tell him we love him and need him to fight.”

  Her mother looked her in the eye. “Is that what you think is fair?”

  Fair wasn’t a word Bridget had allowed herself to consider. None of this was fair. Why did she have to be fair when they’d been dealt such a shitty hand—when Owen had been dealt such a shitty hand?

  “I don’t know.”

  Her mom nodded. “It’s worth considering, isn’t it?”

  The jingle of keys sounded in the kitchen door: her dad arriving home from work.

  Her mom reached for the brochure on the table and slid it back into the pocket of her jeans just as Bridget’s father walked into the room.

  “Hey, it’s my two best girls,” he said, setting his keys on the counter.

&n
bsp; He kissed her mother on the cheek, then did the same to Bridget, his hand resting momentarily on her head. “Having tea, are you?”

  Bridget was suddenly glad her mother had hidden the brochure. Her father looked exhausted, his eyes red-rimmed, his thinning silver hair in need of a wash.

  “Want me to make you some?” Bridget asked. “Or I could heat some leftovers for you if you’re hungry.”

  “You’re a good girl,” he said. “But I ate while I drove.”

  She hated it. Hated that he’d been out driving strangers around after working a full day at work. Hated that’d probably eaten a greasy hamburger in between fares. Hated that her brother was thinking about dying.

  She stood. “Get off your feet, Dad. Sit with Mom. I have to run out anyway.”

  “Run out?” her mother said. “At this hour?”

  “It’s for a client who got arrested tonight. I need to be there when he posts bail.” It wasn’t a lie, but it wasn’t exactly true either.

  “For God’s sake, Bridget. You’ll work yourself to the bone like your father,” her mom said.

  Bridget’s dad made a noise of protest at the claim as Bridget bent to kiss him on the cheek. She did the same for her mom, then headed for the front door to get her bag and coat.

  She was winding her scarf around her neck when her mother appeared in the narrow vestibule.

  Bridget smiled and bent to pick up her bag. “Be back soon.”

  “Bridget.” Just that: her name, spoken by her mother in a tone Bridget knew well, one that said she had something difficult to say and hadn’t quite figured out how to say it.

  “What?”

  Her mother looked her in the eye. “You don’t have to do this.”

  “Do what?” But she already knew her mother knew about her work with Seamus, suspected she’d known for a long time. The neighborhood was too small, the old Irish families still intimately connected through church and schools and the pubs despite the newcomers that were slowly transforming the neighborhood.

  “You know what,” her mother said sharply. She took a deep breath. “I know you’re worried about Owen, about all of us, but it’s not your job to save us.”