Chapter 13
Cormac
The cab swings into the blocked-off space in front of the Lancaster. I tilt my head back and take in this new luxury building my brother-in-law Trace snagged when his cousin Griffin assumed control of the Irish Mob in Lower Manhattan.
I’ve been here before, but the all-glass facade, steel trusses, and a lobby that smells like an expensive hotel never fail to impress me.
I live ten minutes north in a three-bedroom condo that my sister Shea found for me. It’s luxury and low-key, which is perfect for me right now. I needed my own place after leaving my mother’s condo in Queens.
After my father had been poisoning her for months, and she had almost died, she needed round-the-clock medical care. I didn’t have a job, so I made that my job. Her MS is still a factor, and she’s in a wheelchair, but thanks to Kieran, she has nurses, two assistants, several guards, and drivers.
We don’t talk about our father. He slowly destroyed his relationship with every single one of our siblings.
Then he violated his oath to protect Shea-Lynne, his only daughter, by ordering her to marry a Dunbar prison warden in exchange for my release.
When Kieran got a call from Lachlan, he ordered our father’s death within seconds.
Lachlan carried out the order in even less time.
Each of my brothers, who are fathers now, could not be any different from the man who raised us. Thank God for that.
The Lancaster doorman nods with recognition and lets me pass to the elevators. Trace made sure I always have access.
I share the elevator with an obscenely beautiful woman and two dogs that are so small, I can’t even tell what they are. While I’m staring at them, I feel she’s looking at me. My eyes stray to her hand. No ring.
I’m about to ask her about the dogs, a conversation starter since I need to meet and quickly marry someone—anyone, but thoughts of my dark-haired hookup flash through my mind.
Damn, this is going to be a problem. Forgetting about her is going to be a problem.
When the elevator door slides open to Shea and Trace’s floor, I give the dog mom a polite smile and get out. Each level in the Lancaster has only two apartments, an east-facing and a west-facing unit. I hook a left toward the east side. I’m steps away when the door swings open.
“Hey, you,” Shea-Lynne says and follows it up with a solid hug. “You missed last week. I actually felt your absence, you brat.”
I was tracking a dealer, but I didn’t tell them that. Just made up some excuse.
Inside, I pass a narrow hallway to the open kitchen.
Shea and Trace don’t have children. My sister couldn’t have them, and Trace got a vasectomy.
He didn’t want kids if they weren’t going to be hers.
A selfless sacrifice. Makes me feel even more guilty.
My poor sister couldn’t have a kid, and I had one without even trying.
Shea isn’t running those calculations in her head as she looks at me with warm, loving eyes. She didn’t want to work for the family business either. Escaped it for nearly a decade, building something of her own out in East Hampton.
Then Vegas happened.
One reckless weekend, one drunken mistake, and she woke up married to my best friend with no memory of how it happened.
It should have been a disaster. Trace’s blood on the floor, and Lachlan’s gun still smoking. Instead, they fought to be together. I was already gone by then. Heard most of it secondhand. But I was there for the wedding. Ma was my date. How sad is that?
The aroma of garlic and basil hits me, knocking me from my thoughts.
“Something smells good,” I say, feeling stupid for showing up empty-handed.
“It’s takeout.” Shea breezes past me. “You know I don’t cook.”
“You working later?” I ask her because she’s in one of her signature black suits.
“Yeah. Fundraiser,” she says, oven mitts in hand. “The Langston Foundation.”
The hair on the back of my neck stands up hearing that name. Medical Royalty, but under the coronation robe, they’re power mongers and very corrupt.
“Do they book a lot of parties with you?” I ask.
Shea brings a tray out of the oven and pulls the foil cover away. “I just signed an exclusive contract with them.”
“Nice.” My mouth waters at the chicken breasts in savory sauce with spinach and bowtie pasta.
“You made it.” Trace’s deep voice enters the room before he does.
He speaks with a thick brogue like his cousins, like my older brothers. My first year at undergrad, I trained myself to talk without the accent. Darragh did, too. It was already faint and not hard to shake off. Most people don’t know we were born in Waterford, Ireland.
“Where do you want to eat?” Shea asks, making plates. “Table, island, living room in front of the television?” She doesn’t speak with an accent anymore, either.
“Here is fine.” I take a plate and sit on one of several stools at the island.
“Wine, love?” Trace asks, reaching into the wine cabinet.
Shea’s eyes lift to mine, and then she looks away. “No thanks.”
“You can drink. I can handle it,” I say.
“Heineken NA, Cormac?” Trace asks.
I look up. “You bought non-alcoholic beer?”
Shea nods. “I ordered it from our service.”
“There is alcohol in it, you know.” I sprinkle grated cheese and fresh pepper on my dish.
“Really?” She looks at Trace, who shrugs.
“Try these energy spritzers. No alcohol and only ten calories.” Shea puts a slim can in front of me. “The caffeine gives it a kick.”
“Sure.” I open it and take a sip. A burst of raspberry and peach hits my tongue. “Tasty.”
Trace makes a plate and sits next to me.
“I have some news to share,” I say, and plan to dive right into the Hamilton interview, but two sets of eyes fly up at me.
If those stares were knives, I’d be sliced like an onion.
“What?” Shea asks in a panic. “Are you…moving back to Seattle?”
Darragh came back to New York specifically so Ana could take her place with the Bratva. By then, all my brothers were having kids, and he wanted Sophie to grow up close to her cousins.
“No,” I answer. “In fact, darling Darragh gave up his teaching position at Hamilton and recommended me to replace him.” I don’t bore them with the logistics of the class switch.
“You’ll be a professor? At a medical college?” Shea asks with a hint of skepticism.
“Yeah.” I put down my fork and use a napkin to wipe my mouth. “I don’t need the pressure of surgery anymore.”
A therapist at the California rehab suggested my compulsion for control and perfection led to too much self-soothing.
“I think that’s great,” Trace says, and fist bumps me. “When do you start?”
“Soon.” I pick up my fork and push the food around. “There’s orientation. Onboarding. Lesson planning.”
A student to stop thinking about.
“Full-time?” Shea asks, stabbing at the pasta.
“Just one class the first semester.”
“A probation period,” Trace says, sounding like he understands.
“Exactly.”
“I think that’s great,” Shea says. “And Kieran is good with it?”
I resist an eyeroll that I need the king’s blessing. “I assume.”
My brothers and I were never close. With them being the oldest of eight and Darragh and me, the youngest, there are many years between us.
Darragh always felt distant from them, too.
But when we were surrounded by killers in Seattle right after J.P.
was born, the O’Rourke jet was wheels up immediately.
With not just Lachlan and the Quinlans, who were their seconds at the time, but Kieran as well.
“There’s an unusual caveat to the teaching position,” I say, anticipating these Quinlans will side with me in thinking that Ford’s demands are unreasonable. “The dean requires all full-time professors to be married. If I want a permanent spot there, I have to find a wife.”
Shea chokes on her wine and coughs out, “What?”
“He said he has to get married,” Trace says, even and controlled.
“I think it’s ridiculous,” I say. “Plenty of doctors are single.”
“And they’re hounds,” Shea hisses. “The more handsome, the more successful, the more they want to hook up. Most of them are serial daters. It’s a Manhattan thing.”
Toto, we are NOT in Seattle anymore.
“I have no intention of being a hound.” My voice cracks. “Do you think I’m ready to be someone’s husband? I’m barely a year out of recovery.”
“What did Darragh say?” Shea asks, forking through a salad.
No matter what anyone thinks, I will always trust Darragh. But this time, I have to break with that tradition. “He wants me settled, too.”
Shea’s voice softens. “And you’re going to spend more time with J.P., right?”
The blow lands between my ribs, crippling my breath. It will always come down to that. For the rest of my life. Because kids are forever.
“Yeah.” I look out the large kitchen window toward the East River, past the bridges.
Once again, a body of water separates me from my son sleeping miles away without knowing the man who gave him his impossible green eyes. Or how fucking sorry I am for how I acted when I found out he existed.
Trace grips my shoulder. “You don’t need to be in love. Just find someone you can build a life with. A good, kind woman. Someone who steadies you.”
“Sure, everyone gets to have love, but not me,” I bristle.
My sister tilts her head. “Kieran married Isabella for duty, but they fell in love. Riordan originally married Priscilla because she was a Russian spy, and he wanted to piss them off. Lachlan was playing knight in shining armor by stealing Katya at the altar.” Her eyes narrow.
“Now they’re all in love. Every one of them. ”
My throat closes, aching to taste the perfume I need in my lungs again. The face I can’t get out of my head. Scarlett.
“Oh, I gotta go,” Shea says, checking her phone. “Larke is waiting for me.”
I smile and remember how Larke flirted with me at their wedding a few months ago.
Shea attempts to clean up, but her husband stops her. “I got it, love.”
Trace makes a call to someone named Blade and tells him to drive his wife to her party and orders that he and his partner Jett stay with her.