9. Elio #2
The Viking leads us downwards. The old wooden stairs creak under the weight of four big men clomping down them.
But, somewhat surprisingly, it isn’t all dank and dark down here.
Wrought-iron lanterns, the kind you’d expect to see outside a building, are nailed to the walls, casting warm light down the stairs.
At the bottom there’s nothing but a door.
I can’t quite tell what it’s made of. It looks like it could be highly polished wood, but it’s onyx-black.
When the big ginger guy opens it, I realize that whatever it’s made of, it must be soundproofed, because noise pours out like someone’s just switched on a very loud radio.
I know that Darragh runs several clubs and gambling halls, and if his office is also here then I wonder if this one is his main hangout.
By what’s going on inside this swanky space, you’d have no idea it was only mid-morning up above.
It looks like it should be midnight. Men in various forms of dress, all the way from three-piece suits to denim and T-shirts like our bearded escort, are scattered throughout the room, resting on leather chairs or leaning over cards tables, most of them with pints of beer at their elbows.
There are women, too, some of them perched in short dresses on the knees of the card-playing men, others weaving to and fro with trays of drinks and snacks balanced on manicured fingers.
The sounds are raucous, hearty laughter and insults lobbed back and forth like balls in both English and Irish.
But the men chatting and gambling aren’t the main source of the noise in the room.
That comes from the furthest corner, opposite from us, where a boxing ring has been set up.
There’s a bit of a crowd gathered around it, but it’s raised off the floor so that over the heads of the on-lookers it’s easy to see who’s fighting.
I don’t recognize one of the men, the one currently taking a pummeling. But I sure do recognize the one doling out punches so fast they almost look frenzied. Because that right there is the head of the Irish mob in Toronto and the current bane of my existence. Darragh fucking Gowan.
“Darragh.”
I don’t say it loudly, but there’s a dangerous hardness in my voice that makes it carry.
It slices through the room, silencing men as it goes as surely as if I’d slit their fucking throats.
Every speechless head in the room swivels our way until the only one not looking at me is Darragh himself.
Even his opponent has cranked his head towards us, which earns him a blow to the temple that topples him.
He crumples to the mat, and Darragh finally looks up. From across the room, our gazes lock.
And then the fucker grins at me, waving jauntily like I didn’t dump the bodies of three of his men on his doorstep this morning.
He leaps out of the ring with the grace of a cat, prowling through a silent crowd that parts easily for him. He’s shirtless, his scarred and tattooed skin shining with sweat. He runs a raw-knuckled hand through tousled hair, the damp locks a dark red colour somewhere between bronze and deep copper.
I’ve never actually been this close to Darragh. I know who he is, and what he looks like, but as he comes to a stop before me, this is the first time we’ve actually spoken face to face like this.
He’s about as tall as I am, though leaner, his muscles hard, veins and arteries all juiced up and popping along his long-limbed frame. The smooth, clean shave of his face lays bare the hard lines of his jaw and the high, angular cheekbones that jut out beneath a fucking weird pair of eyes.
It takes me a second to pinpoint what’s so unnerving about his gaze.
It isn’t just the relentless, calculating probe of it, because I’m used to that kind of thing.
I’ve been keeping my chin up under hard stares like that since before I entered fucking puberty.
No, there’s something else disorienting about Darragh’s gaze, something that makes me feel like I don’t know where I’m supposed to look to maintain eye contact, and I suddenly realize it’s because his eyes are two different colours.
His right eye is dark brown, his left hazel-green.
The lighter coloured greenish one has an inky splotch at the bottom of the iris that makes it look like his pupil is bleeding out into the rest of his eye.
“Greetings, gents,” Darragh says, still panting slightly from the exertion of the boxing match, his breath rasping around his slight Irish accent. “Welcome to my humble abode.”
And there’s that manic fucking grin again. It doesn’t reach his lopsided eyes.
I don’t return the smile. I don’t know what kind of games Darragh’s playing and I’m not interested in feigned pleasantries.
“Where’s your office? We have business to discuss,” I say.
“Straight to business. Don’t know why I expected any less from a Titone. Come on, then.”
He turns and leads us through the room, past the boxing ring, and through another door. The four of us enter an office, followed by the big bearded guy who closes the door behind us.
The office is a lot simpler and less luxurious than the big gambling room we’ve just come from.
The green leather of the armchairs looks comfortably worn, the wooden desk taking up the centre of the room old and kind of rickety.
There’s an antique-looking bar cart in the corner of the room, and even the bottles stacked there can’t exactly be called new, because most of them are aged whiskey, brandy, or port.
Considering how filthy rich Darragh is, all this old scratched-up shit throws me for a bit of a loop.
But I’m not here to analyze Darragh’s interest in moth-eaten furniture. I’m here to tell the bastard to back the fuck off my bride.
Darragh swivels to face us, leaning his hips back against his desk.
“Got your message this morning,” he drawls. “Bit dramatic, don’t you think?”
I can already tell this conversation is going to be infuriating.
“No more dramatic than sending your men after us with their fucking guns blazing,” I reply, keeping my voice even.
“They weren’t gonna kill her,” Darragh scoffs. “Can’t lure her daddy back here with nothing but a body now can I?”
I snort, because I truly didn’t think that Darragh was this dumb.
“You think kidnapping O’Malley’s kid is gonna bring him back here?
” I ask. “He’s the one who sold her out to me.
He put her up as collateral on his debt then turned tail and ran when I came to collect.
He doesn’t give a shit about her.” My head begins to pound the way it often does these days, a vicious ticking when I think about Deirdre’s papà.
“That’s because you’re too soft with her,” Darragh replies coolly.
“You’re draping her in diamonds and carting her around to galas like she’s your new favourite pet.
” A cold hunger enters his gaze, something mutely hostile and not quite human.
“You ever sent a father the severed fingers of his only child?”
The ticking grows, bomb-like and ominous. My blood heats and surges with rage when I remember how frantically I’d checked each and every one of Deirdre’s fingers, first at the cemetery and then back at home.
“You so much as try to trim her pinky fucking fingernail,” I seethe, “and I will rip your goddamn throat out.”
The big guy near the door shifts at the threat. Curse and Enzo both tense, ready for action.
But Darragh just barks a laugh and shakes his head, sending bits of dark copper hair flopping.
“Down, Rowan,” he says to the Viking-looking guy. “We’re all friends here.”
“Friends? That why you addressed that weird-ass fucking riddle the way you did? And just who exactly were you telling not to press their luck?” I ask him.
You know what? I don’t even care about the answer. With Darragh, maybe there is no real answer at all. He probably doesn’t even fucking know why he wrote that shit. Just trying to get a rise out of me.
“We are not friends,” I tell him, my voice cold with purpose. “And if you don’t want me as your enemy then you will immediately stop coming after my fiancée.”
I punctuate the sentence with a flourish of my hand, brandishing the sealed paper towards Darragh. He snatches it out of the air with animal quickness, pops the seal, and reads, his asymmetrical eyes flying over the words at a ferocious pace.
“You’re marrying her,” Darragh says, “and throwing the firepower of your family name behind her, solely to keep her from me?”
“I’m marrying her because she’s mine.”
Simple as fucking that.
Darragh looks like he doesn’t quite believe me, like he’s trying to figure out my true motive here, what I might stand to gain. His gaze is narrowed, calculating, before it suddenly widens in astonishment.
“Bugger, you actually love her. Elio Titone, the tyrant of Toronto, is in love .”
I stare him down in silence.
He chuckles. Then he pushes off from his desk, heading for the bar cart and pouring himself a small glass of whiskey, muttering in a slightly sing-song voice, “ Love . Makes bright the days and sweet the night. And turns men’s brains to utter shite.”
He holds his glass but doesn’t take a sip, staring at the wall for so long I wonder if he’s having a silent conversation with the faded wallpaper.
But then he suddenly whirls back around to face us, transitioning from eerie stillness to sharp movement so quick it’s jarringly unnatural, like the whole motion was some kind of glitch.
“Where is he, then? Your soon-to-be father-in-law?” Darragh asks.
“What makes you think I’d tell you if I knew?”
“Because I demand recompense,” he says, slamming down his glass, sloshing alcohol out the sides before he ever even had a drink out of it. “And if I’m not going to get it from the daughter then by the devil, I will get it from her Da!”
Any hint of his mirth from before is gone, like a switch inside him has flipped. The inane fripperies have been yanked aside, revealing the roiling rage beneath.
“Technically, you already got your recompense,” I remind him, staying calm where he so clearly isn’t.
“O’Malley stole from you, yes, but he also paid it all back with Camorra funds.
And then he paid the Camorra debt with my money.
Between you, Severu, and me, I’m the only one who actually lost any real money here. ”
“It’s not about the money,” Darragh says, and I’m actually inclined to agree with him there. It’s not about the money for me, either. Because you can’t put a price tag on my Songbird.
“It’s about the fucking principle of the thing,” he continues. “When a man betrays me, he’s no longer a man but a rat. And a rat has no right to life or liberty or the protection of whatever fucking hidey-hole he’s crawled into.”
Once again, I’m inclined to agree. And if it were any other man, in any other situation, I’d just shrug my good shoulder and tell Darragh what he wanted to know.
But this is Deirdre’s father. And that wasn’t the deal I made with her.
The deal was that she had to marry me or I would tell Darragh where her father was.
And since she is going to marry me (whether she’s accepted that fact or not) then I don’t plan on telling Darragh shit.
But I doubt Darragh’s going to accept that fact head-on.
And I can’t just pay him off like I did with Severu Serpico.
In many ways, dealing with Sev was smoother than Darragh.
Sev’s a dangerous man, but he’s more easily soothed by cold, hard cash.
There was very little emotion tied up in all this for him.
Darragh, on the other hand, is fuelled by rage that has become righteous to him and he won’t back down just because I wave a fat cheque in his face.
If I want him to accept my terms without simply blowing his head off and instantly getting two hundred and eighty pounds of Rowan stomping my Sicilian ass, I’m going to have to choose another strategy. A smarter one.
“You’re a gambling man,” I say jerking my chin towards the door we came through, indicating the cards and dice at play beyond. “Why don’t we make a little bet? If I win, you relinquish any claim you think you have on my fiancée, and you will not receive any information on her father’s whereabouts.”
“And if I win?”
“If you win, you will still stay away from Deirdre. But I will tell you where Jack O’Malley is hiding.”
“What if I lose, but then I track down O’Malley on my own at a later date? Does this agreement preclude me from doing what I want with him then?” he fires back.
Darragh might be crazy, but he’s fucking smart. I don’t like the man, but I do have a grudging sort of appreciation for the cunning way he’s carving up this offer, making sure it won’t fuck him in the ass later.
“The deal only has to do with Deirdre’s safety going forward and the information I will or will not give you,” I tell him.
“If you find O’Malley on your own then you can do whatever the fuck you want with him.
Torture him, kill him, I don’t give a shit.
He is not under my protection. Only Deirdre is. ”
Darragh picks up his glass, finally taking a swig of the bit of whiskey left in there that didn’t slosh out before. When he puts the glass back down, it’s empty.
I can see the thoughts whirring behind those mis-matched eyes of his.
He’s thinking about it, thinking about ways this might go wrong for him.
No doubt also thinking that if he doesn’t accept, things will likely be even less appealing.
At least with the bet he thinks he has a chance at getting info on O’Malley.
If he refuses me, then we’re back to where we started, except his position is even more tenuous.
He still won’t know where O’Malley is, and continuing to try to harm Deirdre becomes a hell of a lot dicier for him and his entire operation now that she’s going to be my wife.
“What’s your poison, then?” he asks, still assessing. “Dice? Cards? Toss of a coin?”
No fucking way. Nothing that can be rigged, nothing he can cheat at.
“I don’t leave shit to chance when I can take care of it with my own two hands,” I tell him.
I undo the top button of my shirt then work my way down until the garment is sagging off me.
I shrug out of it, ignoring the stiffness in my still-healing shoulder.
The shirt falls, but Enzo catches it before it hits the floor.
I roll my head from side to side, my neck cracking, then flex my fingers inside my gloves before curling them into fists.
Something flashes in Darragh’s eyes. Maybe interest, maybe surprise.
Maybe bloodlust.
“What? You’re going to fight?”
I nod, already heading for the door that will lead out to the ring, because fuck yes, I’m going to fight.
For her, every goddamn day of my life.