Chapter 15
AOIFE
Ipush my boot off the wood of Ace’s desk, and the chair pivots, spinning until I come back around and finally kick the drawer I was poking around in shut. The leather groans as I turn again, letting the sick twist in my stomach evolve into full-blown nausea while the room blurs around me.
The light in the room falters as the saturated clouds mute most of it.
His office always reminded me of my dad’s at O’Brien’s.
Empty, with the sour tang of leather lingering, and the dying plants.
Ace’s fern is on its last leg. It’s the stupid details my brain pulls out while I avoid my thoughts of Ronan.
The pair of battered gloves that hang on a hook by his office door, the crooked blinds, like he shut them in a hurry, and the squeak of the leather chair big enough for two grown bodies.
But I think the biggest reason it reminds me of my dad is the smell of the daily grind and the work ethic that’s not masked by fancy furniture. It’s got a lived-in, humble feeling despite the imposing positions they’re in.
It isn’t long before I’ve torn through all his paperwork: incident reports, arrest logs, budgets, briefing notes.
The man needs a filing cabinet next to his desk instead of this disorder and chaos.
Now, I sit in silence, listening to the wail of sirens and the murmur of city life, trying to find answers.
Why Ronan? Was he convenient? I was otherwise occupied this weekend with Grayson, so Ronan had more free time to himself.
Was it a case of the right made man at the right time?
Did the killer go after him specifically?
I wipe at my leaking tears and crush the nearest piece of paper into a crumpled ball, then slump back into the chair.
Damn it, Ronan.
The door shoves open, slamming back against the wall with a violent crack. A weak gust tosses a few of the loose papers on the desk, and I dive to slap them back down, only to then look up into Grayson’s stormy eyes.
Those eyes that were full of so much awe and adoration this weekend are now turbulent and threatening. I glance behind him. Where’s Ace?
Grayson forces himself into the room and swings the door shut, allowing it to smash with a loud crack. He stares at me, and the ire radiates off him as he takes in where I’m slouched in Ace’s chair.
“Helping yourself?” he fumes.
I could play stupid. Pretend I don’t understand why he’s mad, but I saw the way he looked at me when I pulled my gun on his chief and when I called him Ace. So, I go with the truth. “Ace doesn’t mind when I come into his office.”
The top corner of his lip twitches. “Ace.” He puts both his hands on his hips, flipping his jacket open.
Then he turns, moving toward the bookshelves on the far side of the room.
“I guess I should ask how you know Ace”—he spits the name—“but seeing how you handled the mayor this past weekend, I’m not sure I need to. ”
“It’s not like that,” I say, standing. Tucking my arms around my chest, I move toward him.
He holds up a hand. “Don’t. I won’t be handled like you handle them. Is that what this past weekend was? You’ve got the mayor and the chief of police in your pocket, why not add a detective to the mix?” He hisses out a long sigh and drags a hand through his hair.
I study him. The way his hands shake on his hips, the way his body shuffles from ridged to deflated every few movements, like he’s wrestling with how to feel.
His fists clench, and I remember the ghosting of his fingers over my body this weekend, like it was sacred to him.
He made me feel like more than a feared leader.
He’d hollowed out the resignation that love would never come for me—I was treasured, loved.
With Finn and Ronan’s deaths, I don’t want this anymore. I can’t do this anymore. Not alone. I need someone who can adore me but also revere the position I hold. Grayson is that man. I don’t want anyone else.
Approaching him, I keep his gaze fixed on mine, and when my boots bump his, the tears well in my eyes.
“I’ll explain it to you. I will. It’s just Ronan …
I’m having trouble sorting through my thoughts, but I know I can’t let another second pass in this moment without telling you I love you.
This weekend wasn’t for the Irish; it was for me.
” I laugh, sniffing away stuffiness in my nose.
“Probably to the detriment of my heart, I love you, Grayson. I know it’s not what you want to hear.
The damn Irish Mob leader is in love with the detective, but shit, I do. ”
The muscular columns in his neck twitch, and he looks away.
No, no, no. “Please, don’t look away.”
He shakes his head, and the lump in my throat grows.
Grayson steps back, but I reach for him, threading my fingers through his.
The hardness in his expression quells, his eyes softening as he brings a hand to cup my face.
His thumb traces over my cheekbone, and my eyes flutter shut.
“Aoife, I don’t know how I feel right now. ”
My eyes pop open as he drops his touch. “Grayson.”
“I’ve got to go,” he says.
“Grayson!”
The door opens again, and Ace freezes when he sees Grayson and me.
“Chief, I was just leaving,” Grayson says, turning from me. His gaze snags on a photo nestled in the middle of Ace’s bookshelves. He pauses, lingering. Then he spins on his heels, pulling out his carton of cigarettes, and moves toward the door.
“No. Don’t leave. Please. Or—wait, please. Grayson!”
He doesn’t say anything as he moves past Ace’s broad shoulders in the doorway.
I snarl. “Grayson!” I jog after him, but Ace steps in front of me.
“Let him go.”
I don’t want to. This notion I have to be a strong, stabby, badass mob leader—it’s so one-dimensional.
Grayson is my soft place to lean into, and his presence unravels the tightness in my chest. Whether he knows it or not, he gives me permission to let the weight slip from my shoulders, to stop pretending I’m not tired.
Ace moves me back into his office and shuts the door. He looks around as I stare at the wooden door like I can see Grayson striding away from me through it.
“What’d Kieran say?” Ace says from behind me.
Straight to business then. I roll my shoulders and turn. Ace holds up the crumpled ball of paper and smooths it out between his palms.
“I haven’t told him.”
He pauses, his one good eye pinning me with a stare. “What?”
“I haven’t told him.”
He plops down in his chair, sinking all the way down because I was messing with it. He sighs and readjusts. “You should, Aoife. I owe your father everything. It doesn’t sit right with me that he doesn’t know.”
I stiffen. “I get to decide when to tell my dad. Not you. Regardless of your position.”
Ace was a fighter, long ago. He came in off the streets, and my dad gave him a place to train, to fight, and to be safe away from the war on drugs and away from his abusive family.
Cormac told me he and some of my dad’s other men wanted him to bring Ace into the fold, into the Irish business, and give him a place.
My dad saw something in Ace—something more than another body to fuel the Irish machine growing in Boston.
He had promise, tenacity, and the grit to make something of himself. He didn’t want this life for him.
What do you know? Ace went to the police academy straight out of high school.
He stopped his underground fighting, but he never forgot my dad.
He never ignored him when he needed something.
Eventually, he worked his way up to be appointed police commissioner.
He’s never erased the O’Donnells. Always kept us apprised and in the loop.
His loyalty is to his wife, his city, and to the Irish. He’s a good man. Always will be.
“Ronan … I can’t believe it. Finn and Ronan, do you think the Irish are being targeted on purpose?”
He shakes his head and digs through a stack of folders on his desk.
“Reed and Grayson don’t think the killer is going after one group more than the other, but I guess the discovery of Ronan today might call that into question.
I’m sorry, Aoife. I put my best guys on it.
Reed wanted the case, and Grayson … Well, you know.
He doesn’t like to back down from a challenge. ”
“Yeah, until I become the challenge,” I mumble.
Clearing my throat, I lean over his desk, looking him square in the eye.
“The Irish are taking over. I will not allow my men to be picked off one by one, and I can guarantee the other organizations won’t either.
The Yakuza, the Albanians—it’ll be an all-out war if this isn’t solved. ”
“Aoife …”
I turn toward the bookshelves, looking at the photo of Ace with me as a kid in the ring. “You’re like an uncle to me, Ace, but I’m done waiting for the detectives in your department to do something.” And with that, I stride to the door and open it. “I’ll text you when I have something.”
I run out of the station and to my bike. The sky is low and gray, and when I take off toward the harbor, sleet stings like needled pellets shattering against my body.
I take it. Welcome it.
My fingers throb when I tighten them over the handle grips. The tires slide once, twice, skating over the slick pavement, and when my stomach drops with each skid, I think, good. Maybe I’ll save work for the killer if I die on my bike instead. But then I think about my family, and I hold steady.
The harbor waits ahead. Masts of docked boats wear strings of lights for Christmas, the reflections rippling off the choppy, dark water.
By the time I park my bike, I’m numb, in more than one way.
I can’t feel the tips of my fingers despite my leather gloves.
I hike past the pine wreaths that hang on the railings of the yacht clubs and wonder if Ronan has his Christmas decorations up at his apartment.
I’ll need to send people over there. I need to tell people.
Sucking in a breath, I blow out, watching the fog crystalize in the dropping temperatures. Why did I think I could do this?
Carols play somewhere far away, punctuated by the church’s bell toll, and I step onto the dock that used to house my dad’s yacht, walking all the way to the end. Hell, I miss him and Summer.
It’s icy, the boards slick, but I fold into a sit, back toward the marina, and focus on the glow of boats anchored out. Grayson could never love me, could he? It was a long shot, fueled by recent events, that’s all. I’ll get over it. Doomed from the start, I think as I pull out my phone.
The reality is, Christmas doesn’t feel like a celebration anymore. Not with my family gone, not with Grayson mad at me, and not when we’re being hunted. I need help, and I need to set aside my pride for the sake of my people.
The wind whips the water into tiny whitecaps, and I look down at the photo of my dad and me on my wallpaper. Then I dial his number.
Tears fall down my cheeks and stick as the cold steals the sob rattling in my chest.
“Aye?”
“Dad?” I sniffle.
“What is it, little love?”
“Finn and Ronan are dead.”
It’s night before I finally stand to leave the end of the dock.
By the time I hung up with an irate Kieran O’Donnell—he’s Kieran because my dad was nowhere to be found on that call—he and Summer were already at the private airstrip before I ended the hour-long argument.
I explained it all. The killer, Finn, the Albanians, my screwup with Luka’s shipment, Grayson, and then Ronan.
I cried, and he yelled. Summer cried, which made him yell some more.
I failed him.
And I’m frozen.
I mindlessly wander back down the dock, ignoring the multiple calls from Mark and my other guards. My bike sits covered by the dusting of snow we got in the few short hours, but behind it—I blow out a breath and rush forward. “Grayson,” I whisper into the wind.
His dark sedan sits parked behind my bike, and smoke tangles with the snow in the air, seeping from the cracked driver’s side window.
It’s too dark to see inside, so I move around the front toward the driver’s side, waving into the void for him to roll his window down all the way.
The faint orange glow flares in the dark, then dims. The window whirs down, and when I catch who’s inside, I take a step forward.
There’s a sharp hiss from a spray, and a warm mist blasts across my face before I can turn away.
It’s too late. The smell is sickly sweet, and it burns my tongue and nose.
I stumble back clawing at my eyes. My phone tumbles from my grip as I choke and the world tilts.
The eerie light from the harbor lampposts bubbles into a bokeh haze.
I blink, the slow, syrupy shift making me tumble to the ground.
I look for my bike as panic claws at my chest.
The car door opens, and the cigarette fisted at his side flickers its last ember. It’s the last thing I see before everything dissolves into nothing.