Chapter 2
2
PATRICK
J esus Christ. That’s not the way I meant to tell her.
But the Bell rang inside my head when Ingram’s girl reached for her phone. Loud and clear, like the start of a boxing round, the clang broke all my resolve. I lashed out like I always do, giving in to impulse when I most need control.
Fuck.
My captain sent me here because he trusts me. Because somewhere in my forty-six years on this planet, I supposedly learned how to behave like a civilized human being. Because I know how to shove my temper onto an ice floe and do what needs to be done.
And probably because I lived in Boston half a lifetime ago. My boss thought I’d have something in common with Ingram’s girl. That I’d find some way to break the news, soft and gentle as the springtime rain.
But Madden Kelly has pushed me to the feckin’ brink. His handiwork here makes me want to rip off his bollocks and shove them down his throat. If I can’t do that, then I want to beat his face to a bloody pulp and use his ribs like a fucking punching bag.
Because the dry shite sure worked over Fiona Ingram. And the whole time he was doing it, he thought her da was still breathing. Still able to take revenge against my boss.
I shouldn’t fucking be here. I should be at my captain’s side. Working for the Fishtown Boys. Keeping my adopted clan safe.
I fight the urge to put my fist through the nearest wall. Instead, I take a deep breath, inhaling on a count of four. Holding for four. Exhaling, slow and steady and even, counting four again.
Fiona Ingram played games with a sick fecker who has the morals of a great white shark, and she got served up for dinner. That’s not my fault. I just have to manage the clean-up.
Which would be a hell of a lot easier if I hadn’t just delivered another blow.
It means your da is dead.
Really, Moran? That’s the best you could do?
Christ, I’m an eejit.
I take another boxed breath—in for four, hold for four, out for four, hold for four—and I’m focused again. Braced to handle the girl’s grief. Ready to manage her tears. Prepared to do the job my boss sent me here to do.
Something shifts inside her, as if her bones are settling under the weight of what I said. I expect her to start shivering again. To wail. To sob.
Instead, she blinks hard, like she’s a downed robot coming back online. “How’d he go?” she finally asks.
The old man died reading the Riot Act to my boss. He choked on seventy years of bile, on thinking he was always the smartest man in the room. He coughed up whatever tattered excuse for lungs he still had after smoking three packs a day for sixty years.
“I don’t know,” I lie .
She looks at her phone, out of reach where I tossed it on the couch. “No one’s called me.”
Of course they haven’t. Her father’s men are plotting war against my boss. They’re gathered somewhere in Boston—in the old Ingram house in Southie, if I had to take a guess. They’re figuring out how to get back at Braiden Kelly, how to turn disaster into triumph.
I’ve been at my share of tables like that. I watched Braiden settle the Boys after his father died, taking charge and putting dogs like Madden in their place. I watched Braiden’s father before him, red-eyed and mourning the Old Man, but making sure every last soldier in the clan knew he was in charge.
No one’s called Fiona because she doesn’t matter. The men are pulling all the wagons ’round without her. They’re fighting for the reins, bulling after the crown. She’s been left behind. Forgotten.
“That’s not right,” she says, as if I lectured her out loud. And then, “I need to get home.”
She’s all elbows and knees as she tries to stand, but her legs don’t cooperate. Something about slumping back to the couch hurts her side, and she closes her grass-green eyes, her apple cheeks stretching in a wince. She thinks I don’t see her arm tuck close to her ribs, but I do. I see everything.
“You’re not going anywhere,” I say.
She starts to bite her lip but changes her mind when her teeth graze the nasty split that’s still oozing blood down her chin. Gingerly, she touches the back of her hand to her mouth and hisses when it comes away red.
It takes her a moment, but then she fetches her phone without my help.
“Who the fuck are you calling?” I’m annoyed by her persistence. And touched with a bit of admiration too.
“My father’s pilot.”
Fucking princess. “He won’t?—”
She shakes her head to cut me off. I’m pretty sure she doesn’t realize she’s smearing blood on her cell. And somehow, that only feeds my anger.
She has the volume set high enough that I hear each ring, crystal clear, and then the pilot’s recorded message, telling her how important her call is and asking her to leave a voicemail. The gobshite’s probably staring at his own feckin’ screen, pissing his pants and wondering who will win the war of bloody succession.
“Fucker,” Fiona mutters, ending the call without leaving a message. And then, as if I’ve challenged her out loud: “I’ll go commercial.”
Christ. She won’t let it rest.
She wipes the screen clear on a sofa cushion, leaving a stain Madden Kelly deserves. Then her fingers flash over the glass, paging through information faster than I can follow. Her scarlet-tipped fingernails don’t stop her from making plans, but my taking the phone out of her hands leaves her stranded. I toss it halfway across the room, onto a leather recliner with cupholders built into the feckin’ arms.
“They’ll never let you board, looking like that,” I say.
“They don’t care?—”
“Commercial airlines don’t want customers dropping dead in the middle of a flight.”
“I won’t?—”
“You’ve got a broken nose and a busted lip. You’ll be lucky if you can see out of that eye in a week, and I’ll bet you a thousand dollars you’ve got at least one broken rib.”
“But none of that?—”
“You’re a bad risk. You look like shite. Forget it.”
Little Miss Know-It-All looks directly in my eyes. “Then take me to the emergency room. They’ll patch me up, and I can still be in Boston by morning.”
“You won’t be through talking to the cops by morning.”
That surprises her. “Cops? ”
“Doctors are mandatory reporters. You look like the textbook example of domestic abuse.”
This time she’s thrown for all of thirty seconds. “Then take me to Thornfield.”
Jesus, she won’t back down. And there’s no way in hell I’m taking Ingram’s girl to Braiden Kelly’s mansion right now. The place is crawling with Fishtown Boys, every one of them doing his best to keep her father’s army from destroying us.
“No,” I tell her.
“I know Braiden keeps a doctor on call.”
“Braiden is busy.”
“What the hell is he—” But she’s smart enough to figure it out on her own. And when she does, her voice gets very small. “Oh.”
With the fight gone out of her, she looks exactly like what she is: A frightened, bloodied kid. As she sinks back onto the couch, her face turns very, very white.
“I don’t feel so good,” she whispers.
“That’s the blood you’ve swallowed. Lean forward. Don’t let it run down your throat.”
I wait until she’s followed orders before I stalk to the kitchen. Every room in this place looks like it was cut out of a goddamn catalog. I’m willing to bet a year’s salary that Madden bought the model condo unit, then paid extra for them to leave it staged.
Glasses are in the third cupboard I try. I fill one with tap water and snag both cotton towels hanging from the oven door.
Fiona’s whimpering by the time I get back. Her hand shakes so hard when I pass her the glass that I leave my fingers on it, keeping it steady while she sips.
“Make it stop,” she moans.
“It will, once your nose is set.”
“Then set it.”
“It’ll hurt,” I warn her.
Her laugh sounds like a shattered window. “Do it. ”
The couch is too low, so I settle my palm beneath her elbow and walk her over to the dining room table. I can feel her trembling through my fingertips.
“Sit on the edge of the table,” I tell her. Her legs dangle, like she’s a doll at a tea party.
“Hold on,” I say, curling her fingers around the edge of the table. “Tight.” And again, trying to warn her: “This’ll hurt.”
“Hurry up,” she says.
“Blow,” I tell her, holding the dish towel up to her nose. “As hard as you can.” There’s more blood and snot than any Kleenex could manage. “Again,” I say, like she’s a toddler with a head cold. “One more time.” I try to ignore how that must feel.
When I put the towel on the table, I take care to fold over the cloth so she can’t see what came out of her. Flexing my fingers, I remind myself I’ve done this for plenty of my soldiers. I know exactly what I’m doing.
Her left eye is swollen closed. But the right one stares at me—bloodshot and watering from who knows which pain, but a steady, unblinking green.
I resist the sudden urge to smooth her straight black hair off her face. I want to cup her cheek in my palm. I want to tell her she didn’t deserve this, any of it.
Instead, I make a triangle with both my hands, setting my matched index fingers in the center of her forehead. Without giving her a chance to flinch, I slide my fingers down either side of her nose, pressing hard enough to realign the bones beneath.
A scream vibrates against the back of her throat, but she doesn’t let a sound escape her lips. She holds onto the table for a full count of ten after I finish.
For the first time since I walked into this hellhole, I remember the rumors about Fiona Ingram: She’s a killer. She’s executed four men on her da’s command. Taken out another three on her own accord, if the stories are right. Watching this slip of a girl manage her pain, I believe it .
“N— Now,” she says, and it takes her a moment to stop her teeth from chattering. “Drive me up to Boston.”
“I’m not?—”
“Braiden sent you here for a reason. It wasn’t just to tell me Da is dead. He could have done that over the phone.”
“He wouldn’t?—”
“Drive me up to Boston, the way Braiden Kelly thinks you should.”
“He doesn’t?—”
“Moran.”
I don’t remember the last time I let a woman cut me off while I was speaking—much less three times in a minute.
Then again, I interrupted her, earlier.
She’s strong. And she’s brave. But no matter how many men she’s put in the ground, she doesn’t have a clue how men will fight for the type of power her father took for granted.
I keep things simple. “No.”
“Don’t make me?—”
My turn to interrupt again. “Fine,” I say. “Walk across this room and pick up your phone.”
She glares at me out of her one good eye. I watch her brace her arm against her side, cushioning her ribs as she slides off the table. She raises her chin, still streaked with dried blood from her lip.
She takes five steps before her knees buckle. That’s four more than I thought she’d manage.
I catch her before she falls. She smells like sweat and blood and something sharp that might be despair. But I catch a whiff of something else, something clean. It’s mint, maybe, or the chamomile tea my mother used to make when I had a dodgy stomach.
Holding her close, I collect her phone from the recliner. It’s in one of those wallet cases—a Massachusetts driver’s license pokes out between two credit cards. I jam it into my back pocket and drag her toward the door. “Let’s go. ”
She’s out of adrenaline. But she manages to slur, “Boston?”
“No. My place.”
“F— fuck you.”
I laugh, which almost gives her the strength to stand on her own. “Not everyone wants to get in your pants, sweetheart.”
Since walking into this hellhole, I’ve been doing my best to ignore the fact that she’s not wearing pants beneath that black leather skirt. The one that’s small enough to double as a napkin. For a doll.
Her wordless snarl almost makes me laugh again. But I say, “You’re in no shape to wait for Madden on your own. And if I’m here when he gets back, I’ll have to kill him. My boss hasn’t said I can do that yet. So do us both a favor, and let’s get out of this feckin’ dump.”
She finally sees logic and nods. We move like we’re fighting for last place in a three-legged race, but I get her out the door.
She manages to stay upright in the elevator, but the cold marble floor in the lobby makes her hobble. Enough. It’s too late to go back for shoes now. I sweep her off her feet like she’s a dress on a hanger.
“Fuck you,” she tries again, but she curls against my chest.
She’s too light. Too fragile. And I try to ignore that she’s biting back sobs as I wrestle her into my Land Rover.