Chapter 2
2
brAIDEN
“ T his’ll help with the pain,” Doc Kelleher says, pouring a vat of sulfuric acid into my eyes, first the left, then the right.
I manage not to kick him in the bollocks, but the twin daggers of agony shove me into my thickest Irish accent. “Jaysus, man! What are ya doin’ t’ me?”
“Blink a few times.”
I’m blinking like he’s just blown the entire Sahara Desert into my face. Thank Mary, Jesus, and all the saints that Doc insisted on treating me in the private bedroom of the Rittenhouse’s Presidential Suite. The last thing my men need is to see their Captain crying like a little girl. If any of our enemies gets wind of how badly injured I am…
But Kelleher’s right, as always. The worst of the searing pain I’ve felt for the past twelve hours is eased by the drops he’s just given me. Now it only feels like I’ve scrubbed my eyes with bleach.
“You can take these every four hours,” he says, folding a bottle of eye drops into my hand. My vision is so cloudy I can’t make out our fingers between us. “I’m leaving another bottle on the night stand. Those go in every morning and every evening for a week. With corneal flash burns, you’re at high risk for infection.”
“Twice a day. Right.”
“Plenty of patients take oxy for the pain. Want me to leave some?”
“I’m good.” I’ve got access to all the opiates a man could ever need. But I won’t be taking them, not when the Fishtown Boys need me at my best.
“There’s no reason to suff?—”
“How long until I can see?” I cut him off. He should understand. In my line of business, weakness kills.
I get the vague impression that he’s shaking his head. “If you rest? And wear dark glasses? Seventy-two hours.”
“And when I do neither?”
He sighs. “An extra day or two. Corneas heal quickly.”
“So I’ll be better by week-end.” I cough a little as I say it. My throat feels like it did when ten-year-old Madden and I stole two packs of Da’s Marlboros and dared each other to see who could smoke them fastest.
Madden… Fucking shitehawk.
“Rest will help that cough too. Prop yourself on pillows if you have trouble breathing.” He closes his heavy bag with a grunt. “Call me if your eyes get worse. Or if you decide you want the pain meds.”
“Seamus will see you out,” I tell him, climbing to my feet. I can hear my quartermaster talking in the next room, his voice low and steady. “And could you send Samantha in?”
“As your doctor, I strongly advise you to avoid sexual relations for the next forty-eight hours.”
I grimace. “Send her in, please.”
I’d like nothing more than to give Samantha a ride, searing eye pain or not. But we have something more important to discuss.
She closes the door behind her. I can’t see her fingers on the knob, but I know precisely how she moves. I can picture her checking the latch with one quick tug, making sure we won’t be interrupted. “What did the doctor say?” she asks.
“I can only be saved by regular blowjobs, every hour on the hour.”
“Braiden—” She sighs in mock exasperation. At least, I hope it’s mock.
In any case, her sigh has told me exactly where she’s standing. I get a hand around the back of her neck, same as I did outside the burning Thornfield.
Despite doctor’s orders, I regret having given her the key to her collar. If she still wore her emerald, I could order her to her knees.
Instead, I tug her over to the side of the bed. We sit, chaste as missionaries, as I ask, “How’s Aiofe?”
“She’s sleeping in the other suite. Seamus’ wife is with her.”
“How much does she know?”
“She saw Birte fall.”
I wince as the old scar on my forearm begins to throb, the itching burn I’ve lived with for nearly thirty years. Before I can dig at it with my nails, Samantha says, “It’s not your fault.”
“I tried to get up to the third floor. The entire staircase was on fire. Half the steps had already burned away.”
“It’s not your fault,” she repeats. “You had no way of predicting Birte would do that.”
Seven years of guilt feels like a load of iron ore across my shoulders. “I wish I knew what set her off last night.”
“Oh my God…” Samantha breathes. “You didn’t see…”
“What?” And when she hesitates: “What didn’t I see, piscín ?”
My pet name for her— kitten —breaks down her defenses. “Your annulment. Birte put it under the bedroom door while we were sleeping.”
I left the document in my office. Birte must have crept out of her attic room during the night. She must have found the official paper on my desk.
I don’t know if the stabbing pain I feel is from my eyes or my smoke-ravaged throat or if it’s pure guilt. I made a mess of Birte’s life for years. I should have found a way to set her free sooner than I did. I should have brought in the doctors she needed, her and Aiofe both.
“It’s not your fault,” Samantha says a third time.
It’ll be donkey’s years before I believe her. But mourning my mistakes now won’t help those still living. I make a conscious effort to sound like I’m Captain of the Fishtown Boys. “Where’s Fairfax? We need some basic supplies if we’re going to be at the Rittenhouse for a while.”
“He’s being his usual efficient self. Clothes for you and Aiofe will be delivered by six o’clock this evening. He’s having my things sent over from the pool house, along with some of his own from his cottage.”
The pool house… After everything that happened last night—Samantha coming home to warn me about Madden, the confrontation in the safe room, Samantha consenting to wear my collar, the fire—after all of that, I’d somehow forgotten Samantha was still living in exile in the pool house. When she wasn’t hiding in Delaware. When we weren’t feuding.
She says, “Fairfax is having groceries delivered too. I reminded him we have nowhere to cook, but he insists on bringing in some of Aiofe’s favorites.”
I make a mental note to give him a bonus, the next time I can actually see the screen on my phone. I regret the thousands in cash I had in my office safe. I suspect all of it was incinerated last night.
Samantha leans forward and brushes a kiss against my cheek. “You need to rest.”
“I need to see my men. And they need to see me.”
“They can see you after you take a nap.”
“They need to know nothing’s changed, just because of a house fire.”
“You could have died in there.”
“I didn’t.”
“You could have—” A hiccup breaks whatever she’s trying to say.
Even with my shite vision and pain that grows sharper with every beat of my heart, I find the waterfall of her straight, black hair. I wrap my fist around it, using it as a lever to tilt her mouth to the perfect angle.
“I didn’t,” I whisper against her lips. She resists for a moment when I kiss her, as if there’s more of an argument to be had. But finally she sighs and lets me in. Eyes closed, so it doesn’t matter if I’m blind, I deepen the kiss.
Every inch of me aches. My eyes are stabbing knives directly into my brain. My lungs feel like they’re packed with sand. I don’t have the breath to hold the kiss as long as I want, and when I break off, I’m gasping.
But my cock doesn’t know any of that.
“ Mo chailín maith ,” I breathe into her mouth. My good girl.
She pulls away. “No,” she whispers, her forehead against mine. “You need to sleep.”
I catch her hand, intending to set her fingers against my trousers, to let her know I much I need this . But when she rejects me, slipping away again, I lower myself to asking, “Am I hideous, Samantha?”
She laughs. “You always were, you know.” She kisses the back of my hand. “Seriously,” she says. “Rest.”
I want to protest. I want to tell her if she won’t have me, I’ll go out to my men. They need me. Instead, I find myself yawning hard enough to dislocate my jaw.
Samantha slips away. “I’ll come back soon.”
I let her go, fairly certain I have no choice.
I’m almost asleep when my phone rings. I fumble for it on the nightstand, knocking over the bottle of eyedrops Kelleher left behind. When I finally get the damn thing in my hand, I can’t make out the letters on the screen. I answer just before the call goes to voicemail, snapping, “Kelly.”
“Boss.” It’s Patrick, my Warlord. It’s been less than twenty-four hours since I sent my chief enforcer to Fiona Ingram.
Because that’s the other crisis brewing. Fiona’s father died last night. Kieran Ingram was the head of the mob in Boston. But more than that, Ingram was the general of the whole Grand Irish Union, all of us captains throughout the United States.
The bastard wanted me to kill Samantha, supposedly because of a shite threat she made. Really, he wanted me to prove my loyalty to the Union. When I refused to follow orders, a raging Ingram coughed up a rotten lung and died. Now his followers want me to pay.
Last night, I knew Kieran was dead before Fiona did. She called to say she’d made the mistake of her life, thinking my brother was the kind of man she could build an empire with. She had the black eye and busted lip to prove it.
Madden was a feckin’ bully his entire life. But Fiona never deserved what he did to her.
I sent Patrick to break the news about her father when I couldn’t go myself. When I had Madden to manage.
Closing my eyes now, I hear Patrick say, “Condolences, Boss.”
I don’t know how much he’s heard—about Birte, about my eyes, about Thornfield. But I choose to believe he’s talking about stone and mortar, because that’s easier than the rest. “We’ll knock it down and start over,” I say. “For now we’re at the Rittenhouse, Presidential Suite. Liam’ll get you a key.”
“About that, Boss… Herself is… Madden did a lot of damage.”
My fist folds in the sheets. I don’t have any regrets about how my brother died. But I’m starting to wish I tortured him for longer before that final blow. “How bad is it?” I finally ask.
“She shouldn’t be alone right now. Not with her da gone and things gone arseways up in Boston.”
Fiona once told me her da meant for her to take his place when he died. But those Boston boyos are old school. They’ll never let a woman be in charge. Not without a fierce battle, one I’m not sure Fiona can win.
I’ve known Patrick Moran my entire life. He was my father’s Warlord before he was mine. So I hear all the things he isn’t saying, all the secrets hiding behind his spoken words.
“You’re taking her up to Boston, then,” I say.
“If you’ll let me, Boss.”
Jesus Christ. Another Fishtown Boy, fallen to Fiona Ingram’s feckin’ magic. If she could bottle what she has, she’d take over the world, one horndog eejit at a time.
Patrick’s my Warlord . I need him here more than ever.
But it’s not a bad idea for me to place a man in Boston. To find out how serious those jackeens are about revenge. To have someone on the ground if things go seriously pear-shaped with Ingram’s clan.
“Go ahead,” I tell him. “But don’t let me be surprised by anything going on up there.”
“You won’t be, Boss.”
I trust him. He’s my best man.
He even knows to wait a respectful moment before he says, “Speaking of surprises… I’ll be taking Fiona round to collect her things before we leave. Any idea if Madden’ll be there to give us trouble?”
Any chance you murdered your cunt of a brother last night?
That’s the question Patrick knows better than to ask out loud.
Before I carved Madden into dog food, the gobshite confessed to working with my archenemy, Philadelphia’s Mafia capo, Antonio Russo. The goombah prick has been squeezing my territory for the last two months—plus, he has a history of threatening Samantha.
It’s time to do some housecleaning, mob-war style, but I don’t have a lot of weapons I can leverage. Not with my operations in disarray, my income seriously down, and my home destroyed. But maybe—just possibly—I can use the fact that no one knows Madden is dead.
I might send a false report to Russo. I might…
Shite, I don’t know. My eyes hurt too much for me to think.
But I’m not admitting to anyone that I killed Madden. Not yet. Not while that fact might still be a tactical advantage. So I say: “He was at the house last night. Blew the garage to smithereens. But no one caught him on the grounds. The boys couldn’t find him.”
That’s the truth.
Just not all of it.
I picture Patrick’s dark eyes narrowed, the silver in his hair catching the light as he nods. “I’ll let you know if we see him then.”
“You do that,” I say, as if I believe it’s an honest possibility.
“If you need help while I’m gone, you could do worse than asking Rory O’Hare.”
Rory. Patrick’s second. “Thanks,” I tell him. And then with a reluctance I won’t admit out loud: “Save travels.”
I end the call and fumble the phone back to the nightstand. I should go out to the living room. I should tell Seamus to bring in Rory. I should check with Fairfax, see if the fire inspector has made a preliminary report yet, find out if the fire was hot enough to destroy my brother’s body.
But my eyes are still closed against the pain. And my lungs are still refusing to take a full breath. And the pillows on this bed are so soft…
I fall asleep holding on to Samantha’s promise that she’ll be back soon.