When a Rat Can’t Take a Hint
Chapter sixteen
When a Rat Can't Take a Hint
áINE
My breath seizes in my chest when the unwelcome voice comes from behind me. Even more unwelcome is his nearness as Kenneth Shaughnessy steps right up to our table.
Could my luck get any worse? We chose the restaurant that my ex-employer must have picked for his own lunch.
A chain restaurant at a mall, it's not his kind of place at all. Only today, of all days, he decides eating at a restaurant with a fixed menu isn't beneath him.
Kenneth glares down at me and then turns the nasty look on Sadie. "Haven't you and your daughter caused enough trouble?"
Shrinking back in her chair, Sadie looks at me imploringly.
I couldn't protect her yesterday, but this? I can protect her from.
"My daughter didn't cause a damn thing." Shoving my chair back, I surge to my feet and place my body between his line of sight and Sadie. "That was all on your miscreant of a son."
"And my daughter isn't at work right now, Kenneth." Mom never uses his first name, always referring to him as Mr. Shaughnessy. The slight is intentional. "Whatever you think you need to say to her can wait until she returns to work."
Everything's happened so fast, I haven't told mom that I quit. She's going to be thrilled.
"Come with me." Kenneth reaches for my arm.
I angle my body away from him to evade his grasp but refuse to move from my position in front of Sadie. "No. You have nothing to say that I want to hear."
Surprised that my bestie hasn't jumped into the fray, I see out of the corner of my eye that she's got her phone out and she's tapping on the screen. Is she texting someone?
Kieran. Of course. But what can he do? By the time he gets here, whatever is about to go down will have happened.
Suddenly, a much younger man with dark hair and a tan complexion, maneuvers his way between my ex-employer and me, forcing Kenneth to move back. "You need to step away, Mr. Shaughnessy."
He's the same six-foot height as Kenneth but has a more muscular build and hopefully even my ex-boss isn't arrogant enough to challenge him. But how does he know Kenneth's last name?
"That woman works for me and didn't show up today," Kenneth snarls back. "My wife is distraught because our son has a broken arm. Our domestic staff need to pick up the slack."
I am never picking up the slack for Allison Shaughnessy again. And the only reason she's distraught is that she doesn't want to have to vacuum her own floors.
I lean to the side so I can see Kenneth past the man vibrating with intense energy between us. "I don’t work for you anymore. I quit this morning!"
"Finally!" Mom says as happy about the news as I expected her to be.
"You stop working for me when I say you do," Kenneth says menacingly, trying to sidestep the other man.
"Wraith says he's not to speak to áine, the girls, or Mamma Mo," Ellie pipes up. "Get him out of here, Torch."
She was texting Kieran. And apparently both she and Kieran know the man creating a barrier between Kenneth and my family.
Torch. Another mob nickname? I don't see someone naming their kid that, but then there are stranger names out there.
"You need to leave," Torch says, his own quiet tone a lot more menacing than Kenneth's. "Boss's orders."
"I don't know who your boss is, but I outrank him and you need to get the fuck out of my way." Kenneth's voice is loud, his tone bullish, but the look in his eyes?
Not nearly so confident. In fact, if I'm not mistaken, there's some desperation there he's trying really hard to hide. But I've worked in this man's home for more than half a decade.
I know his tells.
"You don't need to know my boss, only that he has Mick's sanction for his relationship with áine." Unlike Kenneth, Torch keeps his tone low, so his words don't drift to the nearby tables.
"Only one man outranks Mick," Ellie taunts. "And you aren't him."
The way Kenneth's eyes narrow and spit fire at my friend, those words hit home. If there was any doubt in my mind before about the underboss's interpretation of Kenneth's actions, there isn't any more.
He resents the heck out of being outranked by Mick Fitzgerald.
"áine! Is this true? Are you dating Wraith?" Kenneth demands, giving lie to his claim he doesn't know who Torch's boss is. "Allison thought he was too forward yesterday for a soldier just delivering a message."
Ellie makes a sound of disgust. "Our boss left the Army years ago. He's the Security Director at Harborline Security, but you know that," she says pointedly.
Yeah, blathering on about soldiers in a crowded restaurant isn't exactly subtle. How much of the oversharing Kenneth did with me about the mob was strategy and how much was his natural arrogance in assuming he would never get in trouble.
"I do know that," Kenneth spits at Ellie. "But does áine?"
I'm still watching him because you don't take your eyes off a venomous snake until it slithers away, do you? So, he's able to lock gazes with me again. "Do you know what that means, áine? You're making the same mistake with Wraith as you did with Troy."
At least he's being more circumspect and not announcing to the whole restaurant that Kieran is mobbed up like Troy was. He expects me to get the distinction though.
That's clear enough.
Too bad for him, I know a lot more than that.
"Kieran is a good man," I say firmly for the sake of my mom, who is too savvy not to have picked up on the undercurrents in this situation and my daughters, who don't need to have their sense of security undermined. "He will never bring trouble to my door."
Not like Troy. Not like Kenneth.
Kenneth shakes his head, like he's sad. "You're trusting the wrong man again, and I may not be able to save you the next time."
As if he ever tried to save me.
"I do trust Kieran." With my life, but more importantly with the lives of my family.
"Dating him doesn't give you a free pass in regard to working for me." Kenneth gives me a significant look. "I expect you back at the house tomorrow morning," he finishes expectantly.
Does he expect me to thank him for his understanding? Is he that delusional?
"Read my lips, or better yet, read the texts I sent Allison. I quit. I'm not coming back. Ever." Turning away because Kenneth is no longer my biggest worry right now, I sit back down.
The gig is up and somehow I have to convince my mom that this forced marriage is what's best for me and the rest of us.
Glancing around the table, I check to see how my girls are taking what just happened.
Sadie's watching behind me as I presume Torch escorts Kenneth out of the restaurant, her expression pleased and no longer worried.
Joy's bright gaze is filled with curiosity, but Neeve's expression is the biggest surprise.
She looks satisfied. "He said he'd watch out for us," she says to me like I asked a question.
I nod. He did and he kept his promise too.
My preteen sees so much more than most people would realize. She watched that interaction and interpreted it correctly. Kieran isn't with us, but he made sure we were protected regardless.
Unfortunately, there's nothing unexpected in my mom's expression when I look at her. She knows. Okay, maybe what isn't there is a little unexpected.
There's no condemnation, or anger.
Ellie stands up and claps her hands to get the girls' attention. "Change in plans. I ordered delivery from…" She names our favorite Korean restaurant. "If we hurry, we'll get to the apartment before the food does. Whoever plays the quiet game the best gets to pick out dessert."
She insists on confiscating all our phones and devices so nobody loses because their phone or tablet chimed. She puts all the devices into a black bag with a heavy duty Velcro closure, and stows them in the trunk with our shopping bags.
No one talks on the way home. Not even me or mom. I'm trying to figure out how to explain everything without making it all worse, but I don't know why mom goes along with the silence edict.
Maybe she's digesting the knowledge that not only is my boyfriend in the mob, but her daughter-by-another-mother works for him.
The only thing that breaks the silence between here and the apartment are sporadic muffled giggles from the backseat. I devised the "quiet game" when Neeve was little, more for Sadie, who could talk a subway train off the rails than my already quiet younger daughter.
The trick was never to make it last too long and always give a clear marker for what ended it.
Like now, when we walk into the apartment and noise erupts the second we cross the threshold.
The girls' excited chatter about the things they bought for our upcoming trip bombards Torch, who was apparently following us the whole morning and is now carting bags and luggage from our shopping trip into the girls' room.
Ellie and I set their soup bowls around the coffee table and mom puts a Disney movie on for them to watch while they eat lunch.
Torch comes out of the bedroom, something that looks like a walkie-talkie in his hand. I blink as he goes into mom's room instead of the living room like I expect.
"What's he doing?" I ask Ellie.
"Scanning for bugs," she says in a low tone mom won't hear over the music for the opening credits of the movie. "I don't think there are any, or your rat ex-boss would have known you were under Kieran's protection."
Okay. "But then why is he scanning?"
"To make sure."
"Is that why you took our phones?"
Ellie nods. "Either K.S. was having you followed, or he's got some kind of tracker on you or your phone."
"I'll set our food up in the kitchen, so we can talk over lunch," mom says with a look that says there won't be any fobbing her off and disappears with the last bag of takeout.
As soon as she's out of earshot, I ask, "Me? You think I've got a tracker in me?"
"It's more likely on your phone, but it's possible."
Torch is finished scanning all the rooms but the kitchen when the girls come looking for their lunch, still talking excitedly.
"Who won the quiet game?" Joy demands, bouncing in front of Ellie.