Chapter Forty-Eight
I always maintained it’d be a cold day in hell when I left the Upper East Side for anything that didn’t include an airport.
Well, it appeared that the netherworld’s residents were in need of a warm coat today.
I found myself descending to the lowly sewers of New York, also known as Hunts Point, Callaghan’s measly territory.
The Ferrantes had no use for run-down neighborhoods full of drug users and particularly didn’t want to be linked to petty crime, prostitution, and violent burglaries, so they left the Irish the leftovers of the Big Apple.
More specifically, I was in front of Fermanagh’s, a pub kissing the edge of the Bronx River in a particularly underprivileged area.
Though the street left much to be desired—namely, a bathtub full of bleach—the place itself was oddly charming.
A medieval church converted into a pub. There was something inherently European about it.
Like it’d been plucked from a green Irish cliff and screwed right into the grit and filth of the Bronx.
It was a little after noon, and when I pushed the red wooden door open, the place was packed.
The Irish flag covered the majority of the shit-brown ceiling.
The gray walls were exposed brick. The wooden floor creaked under my wingtips.
The stench of stale stout beer, cigarettes, and sweat hung in the air like dirty laundry.
I headed directly to the bar, where I knew I’d find Fintan, the twins’ older brother. It wasn’t hard to recognize him. He had the same shade of flame-licked hair as his brother and sister. He was dressed in a sharp suit and looked considerably less unhinged than his siblings.
“Ay, mate. What can I get ya?” He turned toward me, drying the inside of a Guinness pint with a towel. He was a jack-of-all-trades, helping his father and brother run their various establishments around South Bronx.
“Your baby brother’s head on a platter.” I slid onto a stool at the bar, keeping my hands in my pockets. “But since the fucker is hard to track down—he’s been dodging the Ferrantes’ calls—I’ll settle for a word with him here.”
Fintan’s face was unreadable. Not unfriendly but far from alarmed. “Tiernan’s not here.”
“We both know that he is.” I peered around, taking in the old, scruffy crowd. A mix of retired alcoholics and transients. “And I’d absolutely hate to shut down this place too. You’d be strapped for cash in no time.”
“Liar. You’d love it.” A smoke-strained voice, highly entertained by the sound of it, chuckled from behind me.
I swiveled to find Tiernan sitting at a rickety wooden table, nursing a half-finished pint of Guinness.
Splayed in front of him were various old-school maps.
A joint hung from the side of his mouth.
“What brings a pretty, spoiled boy like you to this kip of mine?”
“You know damn well the answer to that question.” I slid off the stool and took the seat opposite him. A waitress rushed to place a freshly poured Guinness in front of me. I pushed it aside. “Thank you, but I’d rather lick the inside of a toilet at Penn Station than put my lips on anything here.”
She recoiled, tossing her hair back as she tromped away. Tiernan laughed quietly.
“The Ferrantes are pissed at you,” I said.
Tiernan’s eyes lit with amusement. “Fuck me, and I haven’t even given them a good reason yet.”
Yet . The man had a death wish. I’d be doing him a favor by finishing him off before those evil fuckers got their hands on him. The only thing stopping me was the knowledge he fully deserved to die at the hands of the Camorra.
“We need to end this feud.” I sat with my legs spread open, hands balled into the pockets of my peacoat. I did not tap my numbers. Dr. Patel had prescribed me antidepressants and an antipsychotic to help relieve my symptoms. He also referred me to a shrink I was to start seeing twice a week.
“Do we now?” Tiernan lit his joint, contemplating my words. “Bit convenient, wouldn’t you say? Ending this feud after you destroyed my six-figure-a-day fight club,” he said around the weed stick, dropping his lighter into his coat’s pocket.
“I’m willing to make concessions.”
“What’s changed?”
I finally pulled my head out of my ass and admitted to myself that I’m in love with my wife.
Of course, giving him this type of leverage would be the height of idiocy.
I shrugged. “Not a fan of having my place crawling with bodyguards. I prefer to leave my roommate days in college.”
“You lived in a seventeen-million-dollar mansion in Wellesley while attending Harvard.” Tiernan took a sip of his pint.
He did his homework. I wasn’t surprised.
He had more ambition in his fingernail than most businessmen I knew had in their entire bodies.
“Tired of bodyguards? That’s your excuse?
” His green eyes gleamed like a silver blade. “Don’t insult my intelligence.”
“Should I insult your personality instead?”
“Not helping your cause, lover boy.”
“Name your price.”
He tapped his chin, making a show of mulling it over. “Janey Mack, but I genuinely can’t think of anything I want more than seeing you on your knees, begging for mercy.”
I cracked a wry smile. “Lesson number one, boy. Don’t let your enemies get that deep under your skin. Feelings are a weakness in your line of work.”
“Just because you’re old doesn’t mean that you’re smart.” He downed the rest of his Guinness, wiping his mouth with the back of his hand. “Now, offer me something interesting.”
“The vessels your father was after,” I said. “They’re yours if the feud ends here.”
A hostile smile slashed his face. “Nice try. That was just my old man punching under his weight. Not me. I have standards, you see.” He put out his joint on a spot on the map that was circled. “And that was before you killed my main source of income.”
I knew the art of negotiation. Nothing I’d offer would please this motherfucker. His empire was built on the skeletons of his enemies. He wasn’t an arbitrary creature.
“However…” He rolled his tongue over his teeth. “I’m willing to let you retain your miserable life if …”
I arched an eyebrow.
“You convince your little friends to give me their territory north of the park.”
I simply stared.
He continued, mistaking my disbelief for attention. “I want Harlem, Spanish Harlem, and the Heights. Everything north of 110th Street.”
“That’s not mine to give.” I stared at him incredulously. He wanted the Ferrante territory? That was stunningly ambitious. Not to mention dumb. They owned everything from Philly to Boston on the East Coast, with the exception of a few shitholes like this one.
“Not yours, but you can bargain with them on those terrains. You have the capital and their ear.”
“A territory is not just about money. It’s about prestige,” I spat out.
“Precisely.” Tiernan flashed that canine, deranged smirk of his. “And currently I have very little of it. We need to establish ourselves.”
“You are established here,” I argued. “The Irish Mafia in New York is called the NYPD. Sometimes the FDNY.”
“You have a sense of humor, Tate. I appreciate that. The Ferrantes own Crimson Key, also known as billionaires’ Vegas. They can give me their New York City scraps.”
That wasn’t going to happen. But at least now I had an open channel to bring the Ferrantes and Callaghans back to the negotiating table and talk some sense into Tiernan.
Who knows? Maybe once Achilles and Luca found out what Tiernan was up to, they’d kill him for me.
“Let me run this by the brothers.” I rapped the table between us, standing up.
Tiernan remained seated, inhumanly still and completely unfazed. “You do that, old man.”
I leaned across the table to loom over him, knuckles digging into the rotten old wood. “In the meantime, you stop following my wife. You back the fuck off and let her live her life, you hear me?”
He cocked his head, tsking. “A wise man once told me not to let people get deep under your skin. It’s a weakness in your line of work, see.”
God-fucking-dammit with this asshole. “Your word , Tiernan.” I bared my teeth.
Tiernan’s eyes blazed with something I’d never seen before. Not even on Andrin. This unabashed, gleeful hunger for chaos.
“And they say romance is dead.” He put a hand to his heart. It was the first time I took inventory of his attire and realized he was armed to the teeth. His holster held two Glocks, and he had a knife strapped to his thigh.
“Don’t mess with me.” I bunched the collar of his shirt, yanking him so that our noses smashed together. A spray of blood erupted from his nostrils at the sudden, rough contact. “Give me your word.”
“I’m surprised it’d mean anything to you,” he mused, tongue darting to lick a trail of his own blood, a smirk on his face.
I’d almost broken his nose, and he didn’t give half a fuck. Between us, I felt the mouth of his gun digging into my sternum, warning me to back off.
“It does.”
“I give you my word then.”
I released him.
He sat back down unhurriedly, an amused smirk on his face.
“You can go on your merry way now, Blackthorn. Do my bidding for me.” He raised a fresh pint of Guinness the same waitress who approached me put in front of him, angling the drink to me in salute.
“You have forty-eight hours. Use them well.”