Chapter 9
Cormac
We sit in the backseat of Darragh’s SUV while his driver crosses the bridge from Astoria to get us into Midtown Manhattan. Hamilton Medical College is a private elite school with dark academia vibes and an open campus that sprawls across two city blocks, joined by a footbridge.
“How is old Dr. Ford?” I ask. Old, indicating our past with him, and not old in age.
I warmly remember the rising star professor from our years at UCLA.
“He just made Dean at Hamilton, which is why you’ve got this job if you want it.” Darragh turns to me. “You want it right?”
“Definitely, yes,” I answer immediately. I need this job.
Gunning down villains after midnight might be my family’s specialty in Astoria, but they wouldn’t appreciate my side hustle of knocking off drug dealers.
And the risks I take that could get me killed.
Or worse, land me in the crosshairs of other mafia families in Manhattan.
My brothers don’t have the same influence there, and some crime boss could use me against them.
“What am I telling Brad about my…arrest and drug use?”
“Don’t call him Brad.” Darragh pulls at his collar. “Balor wiped away your Vegas arrest record and your remand to rehab. All of it. Gone, like it never happened.”
I thought my hacker brother would be angry at me for ruining his honeymoon in Ireland when I broke out of Dunbar and caused a major siege. Apparently not.
Shaking that away, I say, “So the only thing left is the suspension from Cascadia.”
I’m still bitter that I performed a miracle surgery that saved a child after a senior attending surgeon didn’t think the kid was operable. I proved him wrong, and I got reprimanded for making that dick look bad.
“The medical community agreed you did the right thing,” my brother says, glancing at me. “Any school will hire you because in the classroom, it’s about saving lives.”
“Bradley Ford will want me even though I don’t follow rules?”
My brother smirks. “And because you’re brilliant, you idiot.”
I don’t point out the contradiction in that sentence.
The Cascadia suspension was a settlement, so my medical license was never revoked.
It was issued in the state of Washington.
When I was arrested in Vegas and then remanded in California, it should have taken months for the Nevada court records to catch up to Washington State. Balor stepped in and took care of it.
Took care of me.
Darragh and I weren’t used to getting help from our brothers. But while my twin is now completely back in the fold, I still feel like an outsider. And still a rule breaker.
“I should tell Ford about the drugs. About rehab. I was an addict. Doesn’t matter that the record’s gone. Ethically, I should disclose it, no?”
Darragh’s face gets harsh. “You would disclose something like that only if you’re working with patients.
Or something that affects your ability to give sound medical advice.
You’re clean. You’re not hiding criminal charges.
There are none. You’re not hiding a suspension.
It’s public knowledge. You’re not lying. ”
I grit my teeth. “Still feels like I am.”
“Cormac,” my brother sighs. “Recovery isn’t a crime. You owe Dr. Ford competence. You owe your students the gift of knowledge. You owe yourself a bright future.” He leans in and lowers his voice. “And if anyone comes after you, we will handle it. But don’t sabotage yourself in the name of honesty.”
“You mean Lachlan will handle it.” I shudder at the visual of my scarred, six-foot-six mountain-of-an-enforcer brother appearing in the doorway of Bradley Ford’s office to teach him a lesson.
“You’re an O’Rourke. We protect each other,” Darragh adds.
It’s clear he’s finally drinking the Irish Mob Kool-Aid we poured down the sink for years.
I don’t blame him. He was miserable in Seattle, even if he never admitted it. His wife left him with Sophie. Then Ana came into the picture, and since then, there’s no dulling the shine in his eyes.
Is that possible for me? I think about that night with Scarlett, how being with her made me feel something I hadn’t in a long while. Next, some of the tension slips from my shoulders. That night, I felt something open. A hint that I can care about someone one day.
And Darragh is right. I’m not the man who did those horrible things anymore. I earned this chance at a new start.
“If something slips through, we’ll come clean to Ford,” Darragh says, rubbing his chin. “He’s a good man. He just remembers us as the geeky twenty-somethings from an absurdly big family.”
“Fine,” I say, giving in. “I won’t say anything.”
Back in Seattle, when I led a team of first-year residents in my final year, I always picked the scrappy kids. I looked for the ones with marks on their record and picked them first. It was a challenge to step up.
Most did. Not all.
Spending so many nights on the street hunting is pulling me back to the dark side. Filling me with adrenalin that takes the place of the high I used to get with drugs. I need this job to balance out my life. I want my family to see me back on the right path.
Especially Ana.
Because I made a decision a few months ago…
I want my son.
Not full custody, I would never do that to Ana. But I need to prove to them I can be a father. We can work out sleepovers and weekends. I’ve been out of that Irish prison for three months and living in a nice apartment in Manhattan with plenty of room.
It’s time. I’m ready.
Beginning my life over, reconnecting with my family, and now with this new job, I have to stop my extracurricular dealer-killing activities and focus on making the world a better place another way.
Darragh parks in the dedicated garage for Hamilton Medical College and pulls into a spot with a placard that reads: Professor Dr. Darragh O’Rourke
I’ve grown out my blond hair to the same length as his again. That shaved mess wasn’t something I could stomach looking at anymore. Darragh and I once again look identical except for the tats crawling up my neck.
“Hey, they can save money on a new sign. I’ll just get a Sharpie and cross out Darragh.”
“Very funny.” He puts a hand on my arm, stopping me from getting out. “One more thing. There’s another requirement to this position, Cormac.”
“Now you tell me?” I hiss in response. “What? I’ve been clean since I left the California rehab. You know that. I was with you for two days before Kieran sent me to Dunbar.”
“Not that. I trust you’re clean, Cormac.” Darragh seems uneasy for the first time. “I’ll let Bradley bring it up. Just… Don’t fly off the handle.”
“Great.” I push out of the car, unable to fathom what a medical school dean can throw at me that I can’t handle.
I was ordered to go to a prison camp for a year. What the hell can be worse than that?
“I’m just looking out for you.” Darragh marches around the car, stops me, and holds my face close to his. “Preparing you.”
With Darragh so close to me, the world falls away. It was my comfort zone for the longest time. It flares up the bond we once had like a flame meeting oxygen.
My twin is the air I breathe.
“I believe in you,” Darragh whispers. “You were a better doctor than me. And you know it.”
“Maybe then.” I push a hand through my hair as I fidget in the suit. Never cared for them. Loved scrubs. And I loved working in our hospital. “The pressure got to me. When you’re the best, there’s only one place to go. And look where it got me,” I add.
That fall from grace, hitting every damn rung on the way down, left scars I’m not sure will ever heal.
“It brought Ana into my life. It brought us both home to our family. No more hiding or waiting for the other shoe to drop, having mafia killers as brothers. We’re home, Cormac.
Where we belong,” he says, and I suspect he thinks I’ll run again.
“You could have stayed in the shadows. You knew punishment at Dunbar waited for you. You took the risk and saved my life.”
Last year in Seattle, I watched in horror as a hitman stood outside a glass door and pointed a gun at Darragh. My brother. My soul. I blew that fucker’s head off without even a nudge from my old oath.
“You would have done the same, Darragh,” I brush it off. “Your savage is showing through.”
“We’re O’Rourkes.”
Shoulder to shoulder, we strut to the entrance of the building from the garage, our gait and step length identical.
In the elevator, I ask the question that had escaped me until now. “How does one become a professor with no teaching experience?”
Darragh shrugs. “It’s all textbook at the freshman stage. All memorizations. You just need to show up and talk through the lesson. Answer questions. Hamilton hires doctors from Ivy League medical schools to boost enrollment and charge a fortune in tuition.”
“Got it.” I absorb that long-winded answer, thankful it’s just one class this coming semester to get my sea legs.
We reach Bradley’s office and stop at the closed door. Light and shadows past the opaque sidelight signal he’s in the office.
“Give him a minute, looks like he’s got a student in there,” Darragh says, taking a seat in one of several chairs along the hallway wall.
Classes don’t start for another two weeks. What the hell is a student doing here? Wicked thoughts of the dean taking advantage of a student enter my head.
The door flies open, and a woman turns to say a final word to Dean Ford. From behind, I see she’s wearing a denim mini-skirt.
Nice ass.
But she’s a student, and students are off limits. I turn to face the windows to clear my head. Keep focused. Ready to answer any tough questions with a hint of my old charm.
If I can find it.
“Ah, it’s the infamous O’Rourke doctors from Seattle,” Bradley Ford chimes in the doorway. “Come in, come in.”
The student who waltzed out comes to such a quick halt, her heels nearly setting the carpet on fire from the friction. I catch her looking at Darragh, her jaw dropping. I stir with irrational jealousy.
My movement catches her attention. But I look away as she gazes at me from the side. I can feel her devour me with her eyes.
Being single and mostly unemployed, I developed an intense and strict workout routine. Darragh’s in top shape, too, but he has the start of a Dad-bod.
The student’s stunned expression shakes me, even from the side, I can tell she’s undressing me and eye-fucking me. It should unsettle me, but something makes the hair on the back of my neck stand up.
I turn to see who this is and immediately focus on an entire right leg covered in tats. Tats that I recognize.
Jesus fucking Christ.
It’s Scarlett. Scarlett, who I haven’t been able to stop thinking about.
But wait, how, why? What is she doing here? Does she work here?
No, she’s too young. Oh Christ, I can’t seem to get my mouth to work, to ask or say something. As hard as I try, I can’t help staring at her.
“Oh, hi,” she says in a delicate voice that rips out my throat. “Excuse me.”
She pretends not to know me. I don’t like it, but I pretend right back.
Stroking her neck, she gives me one last look, then she starts down the hall, away from us.
I feel like I’ve been struck by lightning. The woman I haven’t been able to forget. She’s got to be a student. At the same school where I’ll be teaching.
I’m fucked.