Chapter 6
AOIFE
Iscrewed up. I’ve been distracted by Finn’s death, the incessant guilt I haven’t told my dad, and …
Grayson. The idea I need to call Luka, the leader of the Bratva and one of my dad’s best friends, to tell him I lost not only my shipment of ARs that was procured for me but also the rare artwork he imported for my dad—Real nice, Aoife.
Only another day, in another month, in another year, proving you aren’t cut out for this.
I should focus on how I’m going to replace the inventory, or how in the world the cartel was tipped off to our shipment pickup tonight, but all I can think about is hot chocolate. Hot chocolate with a certain detective.
Grayson drives one-handed as we cross the river to Cambridge, and he taps the wheel every so often to fill the quiet. Night melds into the streets of Boston, but the Christmas lights scattered over the businesses, park trees, and streetlights are festive and bright.
He pulls in front of the diner at the corner of an intersection, the neon OPEN sign blinking red and green for the holiday season. I look up at the traditional awning. The Midnight Booth. Classic.
He shuts the car off, turning to watch me. His gray eyes trace over my face, and I gesture toward the front door riddled with an overuse of window clings. “You’ve been here before, I take it?”
He nods. “Best hot chocolate around.”
I smile, my mouth salivating at the thought. “I’ll take your word for it.” I move to get out of the car, but his hands clamp down on my forearm, rough. It halts me, and for a split second, my fingers itch for my gun.
His eyes widen, and he releases my arm. “Sorry. Used to Reed as my passenger. Tonight … wasn’t your fault. One of the dockworkers, I noticed him glancing around toward the different stacks of containers, like he was waiting for something.”
My shoulders relax. “I figured something like that may have happened. I’ll have Ronan take care of him.”
He shakes his head. “How can you be so callous with a life?”
“I’m not. I’m protecting my family, and that man put mine in jeopardy.
Tonight, the cartel wanted our weapons, but who’s to say tomorrow they won’t want an Irish daughter to marry or decide they’d like to use those very weapons against us.
You don’t cross the Irish. That’s one thing my dad held firm to. Loyalty, family, protection.”
Grayson holds on to every word I say, and I can’t help but wonder what he’s thinking. Finally, he blows out a sigh and runs a hand through his hair. “Ready?”
“Always.”
Inside, it’s empty. A couple people sip coffee at the diner’s counter, including a man in a tattered wool coat stirring every sugar packet near him into his mug.
He fixates on the wall clock in front of him.
A pair of Harvard students, who look like they may have opted for a night out instead of studying, devour a plate of fries in the corner booth.
Grayson places his hand on the small of my back, the warmth sending a tingle up my spine.
He leads us toward a lone booth by the front windows, overlooking the park where every tree twinkles with strands of white lights.
Candy-cane stakes line the pathways, oversized reindeer pull a gaudy sleigh, and animatronic snowmen sway overhead in slow, jerky dances.
“You’d think they’d cut them off at night,” Grayson says, sliding into one side of the booth while I climb into the other.
“Why? Then we wouldn’t be able to see it.” I smile as memories trickle in.
“What?” he asks.
I shrug. “My mom, Summer, used to make my dad take us to look at lights every year. If we weren’t in Boston for Christmas, if we were in New York, we’d go. She loved the overdone setups, the loud displays. My dad and I appreciated the minimalist and cohesive ones.”
Grayson picks a piece of rogue tinsel off one of the menus left on the table. “It’s crazy to me, listening to you talk about your family. You seem so normal.”
I open my menu and sigh. “Might even be more normal than you. Why is it crazy?”
He lifts a shoulder. “You’re the mob. Don’t you live for money, power, and, oh yeah, more money?”
“Says the guy who came out to the terminal,” I whisper. The holiday specials insert pops out of the menu, and I study it. I don’t expect him to understand. Hell, I didn’t always understand it, and I grew up in it.
After I decide on the Christmas tree pancakes and hot chocolate, I look up to find him staring at me.
I flop the menu closed, then lean back in the booth and cross my arms over my chest, meeting his scrutiny.
“We value family, our heritage, tradition, honor, respect—yes, we like to make money, but for our children and their children. Power … true power is the kind that outlives you. It’s cemented in legacy and shaped by future bloodlines.
That only happens if you have family willing to serve and die for you. ”
Grayson dips his chin toward his menu. “Sounds like your father’s company line.”
“I could say the same about you.” I grind my jaw. “You join law enforcement for the power, maybe more like the power trip. Do you like people being afraid of you or that they listen to what you say just because you have a badge?”
“No.”
My lips curl into a smug smirk. “But you did join law enforcement for the power—a different kind. You wanted the power to do something about the crime in Boston, the power to help people, to protect and serve …
“Or … is that just the company line?”
His expression softens—not a smile, not quite a frown—a flash of something raw.
“What can I get you?” A waitress, who looks like she’s been awake for a whole week, steps up to the booth. Her pen falls off the side of her pad as I tell her my order, and Grayson does the same.
Bing Crosby’s “White Christmas” crackles from the jukebox, and the air smells like buttered pancakes and stale peppermint.
It’s different than O’Brien’s. Actually, the whole idea I’m here alone with a detective is different than O’Brien’s.
I’m surrounded by men loyal to the death who’d protect me, but besides Cormac and Lizzy, and of course, my dad and Summer, who actually wants to hang with me?
Most of the guys would rather be home with the women they can actually screw, and me … well, I’m off-limits.
Kieran O’Donnell would never tell me I had to marry, but the idea’s implied.
I mean, I gave Grayson a speech about how true power is carried on in your family’s name and lineage.
I’m the only one from the O’Donnell line who has the power to.
Summer isn’t going to have kids, and while I respect her decision …
Is it because of me? She’s always believed I could lead.
Always had faith I have what it takes, yet every day I wake up thinking she may be wrong.
The waitress returns with our hot chocolate—well, mine—and Grayson’s coffee. Cheater. I take a sip, the cozy liquid reminding me of all the times around the fire pit my dad and I would share. Him with his tea and me with my hot chocolate. I smile, and that baffles Grayson.
“What’s so funny?” he asks.
“Nothing. Haven’t had hot chocolate in years.”
His eyes flick over me, but the mention of my family again creates a crack, and he lets out a slow breath.
I clear my throat and reach for a weak attempt to steer the conversation. “I can’t believe you ordered a burger at one a.m.,” I say.
Grayson knots the straw wrapper he’s playing with. “I didn’t eat dinner.” Then he stares out the window, like he’s hung on the cathedral’s steeple piercing the night sky. A weathered iron cross tops the gothic spire, and it’s like he can’t look away.
He mentioned being from Cambridge.
My memories at Mass are quite different from the average person’s, I’m sure.
Where their pews held hymnals, ours held holstered guns.
Instead of Bibles slipped into the wooden slots behind the seats, made men slid folded contracts and paperwork of a different kind.
Confessional? That wasn’t for repentance; it’s where arrangements were made behind the drawn curtains.
Passed between organizations by none other than the priest, who knew better than to ask too many questions.
The Irish, the Italians, and God all under one roof.
I study Grayson. He’s quiet, but not the awkward, shy, introverted kind.
More like the kind that makes you realize he’s reading you, cataloging you, yet he gives nothing in return.
It’s maddening. In my position, I uncover secrets and leverage pressure points.
It’s an art, getting beneath their skin, finding out what they’d bleed for.
But Grayson has very few tells. He stares like he feels and sees too much.
It should make me wary, considering who he is and his profession.
Instead, it draws me in. Why is he alone in his picture on the tree?
“Did you use to come to church around here?” It’s a calculated guess from the way he’s scrutinizing the cathedral, like memories are playing in his head.
He nods, jaw locked.
“Do you spend a lot of time over here? Outside of work?”
He shakes his head, and I wince.
When I think my questions will remain unanswered, he speaks. “I chose something hard. Different. Not what they wanted, and I’m hated for it.”
I take another sip. “Hated is a strong word.” What parents could hate their own flesh and blood?
He mimics my position and leans back, tucking his hands down into his pockets and frowns.
“I experience the worst this city has to offer, but I show up. The power to protect and serve? Yeah, I want it. Wanted to stand between danger and the people who can’t stand up for themselves.
But my family … they don’t see that. They only see the ink, the long hours, the crime, the cigarettes—but what does that have to do with loving my niece?
What does that have to do with who I am at my core?
I’d take a bullet for that little girl, for my brother and family.
Even for my sister-in-law, who doesn’t want me around, but apparently that kind of dedication doesn’t look holy enough for them. ”
I swallow as the pain in his voice twists the liquid chocolate in my stomach. I can’t imagine being pushed out by my family, and for what? Because he doesn’t go to Mass? Because he works a job that hands him the shit end of the stick. I snort—they’d love me. I kind of want to meet them.
“I’ve accepted I’m not the ‘golden son.’ I don’t conform to what they deem a Holtz should, I’m cut off from my niece.
The last photo I got of her was … well, here.
” He reaches into his pocket and pulls out his phone.
He swipes a few times, then turns the screen toward me.
An adorable black-haired, blue-eyed little girl smiles at the camera, and I smile back.
I glance at Grayson, then to the photo. “She looks like you. The family traits in there must be the black hair and the nose.”
He brings the phone back to himself, staring down at it. “She has my brother’s hair, the same as my mother’s and mine, but she has her mother’s eyes.”
My mind flickers to the only photos I have of my mother. “I have Laura’s eyes. My bio mom. My dad worried people would think I wasn’t his. Think they figured it out from talking to me, though.” I gulp, eyeing his down-turned expression. “I’m sorry. It must be hard not to see her.”
He shrugs. “I stopped trying to be who they wanted a long time ago. Not seeing my niece, that’s a tough one for me. If they don’t want me around, how could anyone else?”
My mouth drops open, and I’m about to respond to that when our food arrives.
The waitress slides my Christmas pancakes in front of me, with round sprinkles acting as the ornaments decorating the tree.
I saturate my plate with syrup and wrinkle my nose at the sticky handle on the dispenser.
Glancing at my hot chocolate, then down at my pancakes, I grimace.
It’s like a five-year-old ordered the meal.
Grayson’s plate houses a sad-looking burger and an abundance of french fries.
“Anything else?” the waitress asks.
Grayson shakes his head.
“Ketchup. Don’t you want some for your burger and fries?”
“No,” he says.
The waitress steps away as I stare dumbfounded at him. “Mustard? Mayo? Is there even cheese on that thing?”
“No.”
“You’re boring.”
“Yes.”
“But—”
“Eat your pancakes, O’Donnell.”
My eyebrows lift along with the corner of my mouth, but my eyes stay on his while I cut into my Christmas trees. “Yes, Detective.”