Cathal Chapter 1
Walking into the building that housed my family’s business, Kin of éireann Inc.
, never got old for me. I was proud of what my seanathair, my grandfather, Conall, had started.
Then my athair, father, Cormac, and his brothers, Patrick and Sean, grew it.
Patrick had been the head of the family after Seanathair stepped down.
And when Patrick decided it was time to hand over the reins, he gave that control to my cousin, Darragh, Patrick’s oldest son.
Darragh was the oldest among us children.
None of us, the other children of the three brothers, were jealous that Darragh took on that mantle of responsibility.
We were grateful that he wanted it. That’s not to say we weren’t included in decisions or that our voices didn’t count.
All it meant was that Darragh had ultimate decision-making power.
He wasn’t an absolute dictator, so it wasn’t as if he ran amok making decisions and telling the rest of us to live with them.
He was a hardass when it was warranted. Those who messed with us, whether in business or personally, didn’t fare well against him or the rest of us.
Even if our family was technically no longer involved in illegal business dealings, the world still saw us as corrupt.
They just thought we hid it better these days.
And that well-earned reputation, starting with Conall, protected our family, so we didn’t quibble when people assumed the worst. We did still get our hands dirty, just not in the way people presumed.
Although I loved the main offices and had a private one of my own here, I worked most of the time from my on-site office at Wicked Desires.
How else could I know what was happening if I managed from afar?
We each received direct oversight of a different family business when we were old enough to do the jobs justice.
Other than Darragh, we all spent more time on location or traveling between locations for those with several.
I had dabbled in the other businesses, helping where I could until ten years ago. Then, I had been the one who came up with the idea to open a sex, kink, or BDSM club, whatever term a person would rather use.
Prostitution was illegal, yet profitable, but we didn’t have anything to do with it anymore.
A sex club, however, wasn’t about selling sex.
It was about providing a safe place where consenting adults could openly explore their desires with other like-minded adults.
And for providing them with such a place, which we ensured was top-tier in terms of amenities, service, and security, people were willing to pay handsomely for it.
At first, the family was hesitant until I presented them with the research I had done, showing the return on investment. It had snagged their interest, and I was given free rein to do more work. Six months later, the first Wicked Desires location opened in Palm Coast.
I hadn’t put it in Jacksonville, like many of our businesses’ first locations were.
I chose to go south of St. Augustine, Florida, where our homes were, to Palm Coast. It was only thirty miles away, making the commute under an hour.
What made it even better was that moving our headquarters from Jacksonville to St. Augustine reduced the commute for other family members. I was even closer.
Palm Coast had a unique vibe that mixed everyday life with outdoor adventure and coastal charm.
It provided golf courses, lively neighborhoods, trails, and cinnamon-colored sand beaches.
I had picked the right location, and now Palm Coast was one of the fastest-growing cities on Florida’s northeast coast.
In those ten years, I expanded and opened four more Wicked Desire clubs. I placed them along Florida's East Coast, running south from Palm Coast to Daytona Beach, Melbourne, West Palm Beach, and Hollywood.
All locations were successful, but the original in Palm Coast remained the top earner.
My family was proud of what I built, even if they didn’t fully understand the attraction.
While none of them were unimaginative when it came to sex, they didn’t quite need what I did.
They played, but it was a want for them. For me, it was a need.
I wasn’t sure why I was different from the rest of my four siblings and ten cousins, but ever since I could recall, becoming enamored with women and sex as a teenager, I had these thoughts and desires that, as I aged, grew.
For several years, I had no idea what those desires meant.
And then, when I was in my early twenties, I went on vacation with a few college friends, and they’d wanted to visit a sex club.
I went along to see what the fuss was about.
The one we visited wasn’t the best, I later discovered, but it did open my eyes to what it was I’d been craving for so long.
From there, I researched the kink and BDSM lifestyle, visited other clubs, and eventually joined one.
The day I opened the first Wicked was one of the best days of my life.
And I made sure it was far above the level of most clubs I’d been to.
For the ones that were excellent, I took pieces of their models and, in some areas, improved on them, creating Wicked Desires.
It was held up as the elite model other clubs wanted to emulate, but so far, no one had replicated it exactly.
Being greeted by several employees and having to respond pulled me out of my thoughts.
I wasn’t sure why I was dwelling on the past and Wicked.
Well, that wasn’t true, but this wasn’t the time or place for it.
I was here because Darragh had called a family meeting.
He made it for the end of the workday for most of us, so we’d be able to go home afterward.
It had to pertain to work. Otherwise, he would’ve done it at the commune.
All personal matters were discussed there.
The term “commune” referred to what we now call the family compound. It came from Kynedi, my cousin Tiernan’s wife. She’d coined the term jokingly, and Tiernan told us. She wanted to brain him for telling us, thinking we’d be upset. We loved it and started calling home that, too.
I entered the large conference room on the executive floor where Darragh and the rest of us had our offices.
It was already half-full. I returned the hellos from my family as I poured myself a cup of coffee and grabbed a pastry from the setup along the wall.
No one ever went without refreshments around here.
I dropped into my usual seat. All three sets of parents were here, along with half my siblings and cousins, plus some of the spouses.
Six of the fifteen had settled down over the past two years.
I ate my éclair and drank my coffee as I listened to the buzz of conversations. I was content to let them talk.
Over the next fifteen minutes, the rest came wandering in.
Darragh was the last. Undoubtedly, he’d been in another meeting or on the phone.
He worked like a machine during work hours.
Before he met and married his wife, Ashlynn, he’d worked well into the evenings and on weekends.
However, with her and their son, Ronan, in his life, Darragh respected the balance between family and work time.
He pushed for the rest of us to do the same.
“Alright, it looks like everyone is here. Thanks for giving me your last hour of the day. For those who came in specifically for this, a double thank you. Since this pertains primarily to business, I wanted to speak of it here rather than at home. Hopefully, it shouldn’t take long,” Darragh said, bringing everyone to attention.
All eyes were on him, waiting patiently to hear what had required him to speak to all of us. He appeared relaxed and not overly concerned, so I assumed it wasn’t something terrible impacting us.
“I got a call a couple of days ago from Faolán Bragan.”
That was how he started. He let that sit with us, waiting for our reactions.
“What did Faolán want, mac, son?” Patrick asked.
“He called because he’s struggling with the conversion of illegal businesses to legitimate money-making ones.
He said he knew it would be slow and take time.
He knew he would get pushback from the family and competitors.
The other families—the Kilkennys, the Connallys, and what’s left of the Brynes—would be threatened by it, though they should see it as a way for them to have less competition.
All of that is occurring as expected. And they had been handling it, but it’s gotten out of hand.
“They’re being seen as weak and ripe to be overtaken.
Opportunists from the other three families and outsiders are circling their territory.
Even if the Bragans aren’t selling drugs or doing other illegal endeavors within their territories, they’re not willing to allow others to do them. They’re modeling it after what we did.”
When Darragh paused this time, Cian popped in.
“So what’s the problem? If he figured on that happening, why the call?”
“It’s not that he didn’t plan for them. He did, and they had a solid plan, but there’s been a development.
An outside force has been hitting them hard.
They can’t figure out who it is. And the perpetrators are eating away at the edges of the Bragan territory.
They’re taking it away. Faolán is worried that if it continues, his family will be eliminated,” Dar added.
I was a young man when we fully transitioned, and it had been hard. Things got bloodier than they’d been in years. If we hadn’t had the resources we did and the added secret help from the Hounds of Justice, our secret organization of vigilante enforcers, we would’ve likely failed.
“What does Faolán need from us? The Hounds can help to a degree, but they have several things they’re working on,” Alistair, my sister Aisling’s husband, the leader of the Hounds, remarked.