Chapter 3
Thursday night at Callahan's meant Jameson and memories.
Wicked pushed through the door at seven, same as he had every Thursday for the past three years. The bar smelled like old wood and beer, Springsteen playing low on the jukebox, a handful of regulars scattered across stools and booths. Familiar. Comfortable.
Wrong.
He felt it the second he crossed the threshold—something off in the air, a tension that didn't belong in a place that had been pouring drinks since before his grandfather was born.
Then he saw Maeve.
She stood behind the bar, pulling a draft for old Tommy Flanagan, her red hair escaping its knot in the usual mess of curls. She looked the same as always—sharp-tongued, quick-handed, too stubborn for her own good.
Except for the bruises.
They ringed her throat like a collar, purple and black against her pale skin, visible even where her collar tried to hide them. Finger marks. Someone had wrapped their hand around Maeve Callahan's throat and squeezed hard enough to leave damage.
Something dark and violent uncoiled in Wicked's chest.
He crossed to the bar without thinking, claiming his usual stool at the far end where he could watch the room. Maeve's eyes flicked to him and away, not meeting his gaze, and that told him more than any words could.
She was scared. And she was hiding it.
"Wicked." She reached for the Jameson without asking, pouring two fingers neat and sliding it across the wood. "Didn't expect you tonight."
"Thursday."
"Right." A smile that didn't reach her eyes. "Creature of habit."
He wrapped his hand around the glass but didn't drink, watching her move through the motions of bar work with the ease of someone who'd been doing it her whole life. Her hands were steady. Her voice was light. And every few seconds, her gaze darted to the back booth.
Wicked looked.
Four men sat in the shadows, nursing beers they hadn't touched in the hour he'd been watching. They weren't drinking. They weren't talking. They were watching Maeve with the patient focus of wolves waiting for the shepherd to leave.
"Friends of yours?" he asked, keeping his voice casual.
Maeve's hands faltered on the glass she was polishing. Just for a second, but he caught it.
"Customers."
"They're not drinking."
"Some people like the atmosphere."
The front door opened, and Maeve flinched. Actually flinched, her whole body going tight before she registered the newcomer—just another regular, Joe Something from the construction crew down the street.
Wicked's grip tightened on his glass.
He'd known Maeve Callahan since he was sixteen years old, sneaking into this bar to hustle pool while her father pretended not to notice.
He'd watched her grow from a freckled kid stealing cherries to a woman who could pour drinks with one hand and break up fights with the other.
He'd seen her bury her old man and keep this place running through sheer stubborn will.
He'd never seen her scared.
"How's your uncle?" he asked, testing.
"Seamus is fine. Napping in the back like always." Some of the tension eased from her shoulders—genuine relief at a safe topic. "Doc says his knees are shot, but he won't stop working. Says he'll tend bar until they carry him out."
"Sounds like a Callahan."
That got a real smile, small but true. "Stubborn runs in the family."
"I've noticed."
Their eyes met, and something passed between them—recognition, maybe.
Understanding. They'd circled each other for years, never quite landing, always aware of the other's presence like heat from a nearby fire.
Different worlds, same neighborhood. Same stubborn refusal to let anyone take what was theirs.
The front door banged open.
Maeve flinched again, and this time Wicked saw the men in the back booth straighten. Just a drunk stumbling in, looking for the bathroom, but the reaction told him everything he needed to know.
Those men weren't customers.
They were a threat.
"Maeve." He pitched his voice low, meant only for her. "What happened to your throat?"
Her hand flew up to cover the bruises, a reflex she couldn't control. "Nothing. I—fell. Hit the edge of the bar."
"Bullshit."
"Wicked—"
"Someone put hands on you." He let the anger bleed into his voice, controlled but unmistakable. "Someone who's got men sitting in your back booth making sure you remember it."
She went pale. Then red. Then pale again.
"It's none of your business."
"The hell it isn't."
"I can handle it." She turned away, busying herself with bottles that didn't need organizing. "I've been handling things since you were playing Marine in the sandbox. I don't need—"
"Maeve."
She stopped. Turned. Met his eyes with the defiance he'd always admired, even when it made him want to shake some sense into her.
"Those men in the booth," he said quietly. "They belong to someone. Someone who thinks they can put hands on a Southie woman in a Southie bar and walk away breathing. You going to tell me who, or am I going to find out myself?"
For a long moment, she just stared at him. He could see the war playing out behind her eyes—pride versus fear, stubbornness versus survival. She wanted to tell him to go to hell. Wanted to handle this alone, the way Callahans had always handled their problems.
But she was also smart enough to know she was drowning.
"His name is Reece," she said finally, her voice barely above a whisper. "Damon Reece. He wants to buy my bar."
Wicked filed the name away. "And when you said no?"
"His enforcer—Parker—came by this afternoon." Her hand touched her throat again, unconscious. "He wanted to make sure I understood that no wasn't an option."
The violence in Wicked's chest coiled tighter, sharper. Parker. He'd remember that name.
"I'll take care of it."
"No." Maeve's chin came up, that stubborn Callahan fire blazing back to life. "This is my bar. My problem. I don't need you riding in like some kind of—"
"This stopped being just your problem when someone put hands on you in Southie." He leaned forward, close enough to smell the whiskey on her breath and the fear beneath her perfume. "You're one of ours, Maeve. Whether you like it or not."
Something flickered in her eyes—surprise, maybe. Or something warmer.
"I'm not one of anything," she said, but her voice had lost its edge.
"We'll see."
He finished his whiskey in one long swallow, dropped a twenty on the bar, and stood. The men in the back booth watched him go, tracking his movements with the focus of men who recognized danger when they saw it.
Wicked let them look.
Let them report back to their boss that Declan Murphy had been in Callahan's tonight. That he'd talked to the bartender. That he'd noticed the bruises.
Let Damon Reece wonder what that meant.
The compound chapel fell silent when Wicked finished talking.
Six men sat around the scarred wooden table—Southpaw, Pike, Hatchet, Bruiser, and Stitches. His officers. His brothers. The men who'd sworn to bleed for the club and each other.
"Damon Reece," Pike said, pulling up something on his phone. "Been running Roxbury for fifteen years. Drugs mostly, some protection rackets. Never caught a case because he's got a cop on his payroll who buries investigations."
"Expanding now?" Southpaw asked.
"Looks like. New condos going up in Southie, young professionals moving in." Pike scrolled through whatever intel he'd gathered. "Different clientele than his usual base. Higher margins, lower heat."
"And Callahan's?" Hatchet's voice was quiet, but his eyes had gone cold. The Sergeant at Arms was already thinking about bodies.
"Corner lot. Back entrance. Been operating since Prohibition." Wicked leaned forward, hands flat on the table. "Perfect front for distribution if you control it. And Maeve Callahan won't sell."
"So he's squeezing her," Bruiser rumbled. "Making her uncomfortable until she takes his money."
"His enforcer put hands on her throat this afternoon." Wicked let the words land, watching his brothers' faces harden. "Left marks."
The silence that followed was the dangerous kind. The kind that came before violence.
"This Parker," Hatchet said. "He touch her anywhere else?"
"Don't know. Didn't ask." Wicked's jaw clenched. "Does it matter?"
"It matters for how long he takes to die."
Nobody argued.
"What's the play?" Southpaw asked. "We hit Reece? Send a message?"
"Not yet." Wicked had been thinking about this since he walked out of Callahan's, the ride back to the compound giving him time to cool the rage into something useful. "We don't know his operation. Don't know his numbers. Don't know what he's willing to do when someone pushes back."
"So we find out," Pike said.
"We find out. Quietly." Wicked looked around the table, meeting each man's eyes in turn. "I want to know everything—his businesses, his crew, his supply chain. I want to know where he sleeps and who he trusts. And I want to know before he knows we're looking."
"And the girl?" Bruiser asked. "She stay at the bar while we're gathering intel?"
Wicked thought about Maeve's defiant eyes, her stubborn chin, the fear she couldn't quite hide beneath her Callahan pride. She'd refuse protection if he offered it. Tell him to go to hell and handle her own problems.
She didn't understand yet.
This wasn't about her anymore. This was about Southie. About what happened when outsiders thought they could take what belonged to the neighborhood. About the message that got sent when someone put hands on a woman under the Bastards' protection.
Because she was under their protection now. Had been since Wicked walked into that bar and saw the bruises on her throat.
"She's covered," he said. "I want eyes on Callahan's around the clock until we move. Reece's people want to watch her, they can watch us watching them."
"She know about this?" Hatchet asked.
"She will."
Pike snorted. "That's going to be a fun conversation. Woman's got a mouth on her."
"Woman's got a bar someone's trying to take," Wicked said flatly. "She can yell at me all she wants after we handle the people who put hands on her."
The chapel went quiet again, but this time it was the quiet of agreement. Of men who understood what needed to be done and were ready to do it.
"Assignments," Wicked said. "Pike, I want everything you can find on Reece's operation by tomorrow night. Hatchet, put together a list of known associates—anyone who works for him, anyone who owes him. Southpaw, you're on Maeve. Don't crowd her, but don't let her out of your sight either."
"She's going to love that," Southpaw muttered.
"She's going to be alive to complain about it." Wicked stood, and his brothers rose with him. "We good?"
Five voices answered as one: "Good."
The chapel emptied, leaving Wicked alone with the weight of what he'd just set in motion. Damon Reece had been operating in Boston for fifteen years without anyone pushing back. He had soldiers, connections, a cop in his pocket. He was used to people folding when he applied pressure.
He had no idea what he'd just stepped in.
Wicked thought about Maeve's bruised throat, about the fear in her eyes, about the stubborn set of her jaw when she'd told him to mind his own business.
She wasn't club. Wasn't his. Wasn't anything to him except a woman he'd known since they were both kids in a neighborhood that didn't exist anymore.
But someone had put hands on her in Southie.
And that made it club business.
Whether Maeve Callahan liked it or not.