I watched as Michael swirled the amber liquid around the crystal tumbler. “We should be taking advantage of what’s to come, planning accordingly, but he’s more interested in seeing how the politicians will fuck things up.”
“And you’re not interested in letting the lawmen pave the future for the country?” I guessed.
He sneered at me. “Are you? With O’Leary in power?”
I wanted a unified Ireland as much as the next man, but I wasn’t as zealous as these ECD bastards.
I’d never regret making Lena my own, but I sure as fuck wished her father hadn’t been the leader of these nutcases.
Wifing her had drawn me into this mess, and betraying her had only deepened it. Maybe that was exactly what I deserved.
No sin should go unpunished.
“Brexit’s going to stir the Troubles to life again,” he predicted, his mouth forming a sneer. “Hard borders, soft borders, whatever the fuck it is—it’s our land and the British want to control if we can access the North.
“Do I want to wait on the politicians? No. I don’t. But with the right people in power in the US, maybe they can help steer those assholes into siding with us.”
Though I knew what he was talking about, I shook my head. “Davidson’s the only future president in our pocket, and it’s not likely he’ll fall on his sword for this cause.”
“Leave that to me.”
I narrowed my eyes at him. “What do you want from me?”
“It’s time for someone else to take charge of the Éire le chéile go deo. Someone working on the ground. Someone who’s been a second-in-command for too fucking long.”
I wanted to sneer at him, but I couldn’t.
My hands were goddamn tied.
“Mutiny’ll get you killed if you fail,” I informed him as I took a deep sip of whiskey.
“I won’t fail.”
“Eamonn’s kept the cheiles together since the late eighties when Cormac lost it, Michael. If you think you’ll get them on your side without a struggle, you’re stupid.”
“That’s where you come in. Not only are you going to back me up, not only are you going to help me, but if you’re right and I can’t turn them, you’re going to make sure that Eamonn doesn’t kill me.”
“That’s a lot of requests from a man skating on thin ice.”
Michael smirked at me. “The only person skating on thin ice, Aidan, is Lena.”
Thirty-Six
Brennan
Present
“Do you think Aoife and Finn will come today?”
I stared at Camille in bewilderment. “It’s Sunday dinner.”
She arched a brow. “So? She wasn’t here last week.”
“She was in the hospital. That’s different. This is tradition we’re talking about.”
“She just had a miscarriage, Brennan.”
“It’s Sunday dinner,” I repeated. “You don’t miss Sunday dinner.”
“You don’t understand women,” she groused.
“I understand you.”
“Barely.”
My lips curved. “You didn’t say that last night.”
She grumbled something in Russian under her breath then asked, “Why do you even call it Sunday dinner when it’s two PM?”
“I don’t know.” I shrugged. “We’ve just always called it that. She’ll be here,” I predicted.
“She’s grieving. She’s bound to be in pain.”
“Roasted chicken, gravy, and potatoes fix all wounds.”
“You’re being obtuse on purpose,” she complained.
Laughing, I hauled her against me, letting her feel my boner as I grabbed her ass. “I do most things with a purpose.”
Waspishly, she informed me, “I will have sex with you in most places, Brennan, but not in your mother’s living room.”
“Do I look as if I have a death wish?”
She squinted at me. “What does that look like? The same as constipation?”
“Funny, very funny,” I teased, smirking at her and giving her ass a final tap before I positioned her under my arm. “Why do you like this room so much?” I asked after a second.
To me, this was the same as having a bunch of mugshots on the walls.
Ma had hundreds upon goddamn hundreds of photos here, so many that you couldn’t see if it was wallpaper or paint beneath the frames.
We were all there in various stages of childhood and adulthood, sometimes cleaned up, sometimes looking like we’d been dragged through a dirt pile in the backyard.
Finn’s cold stare peered back at me from beneath the brim of a graduation cap as he held up his diploma, looking about as cheerful as the sun during a blizzard.
Conor’s cocky smirk beamed at me too, but he held about a million diplomas in his hands.
Around them, there were also shots of my uncles and my grandparents on both sides.
“This is your family,” Camille explained.
“I know it is,” I retorted.
“Well, I like seeing them. They’re my family too.”
“Poor you,” I joked even as I squeezed her. “They’re pains in the ass, but they’ll kill for you so that’s better than that piece of shit father of yours, I guess.”
She tilted into me so she could rest her hand on my stomach. “They are my pains in the ass too.”
“They are.” I bopped the tip of her nose with a kiss. “You ready to eat?”
“Ten thousand different vegetables and potatoes four ways?” she mocked. “Sure.”
Grinning, I started to make my way out of the room, and it was quite by chance that I saw it.
Hovering in front of one of the picture frames, this one in a spotty black and white, I squinted as I took in my grandfather on Ma’s side.
“What is it? He’s your grandfather, right?”
Humming under my breath in confirmation, I pointed at his arm. “You see that?”
“It’s a tattoo.”
“It is.”
“Wasn’t Lena’s grandfather a wealthy man?”
I peered down at her. “How do you know that?”
She sniffed. “I was Russian Bratva—”
“Past tense is right, baby,” I slotted in with a growl.
“—they do their homework on the enemy. I know plenty of things about our family that I learned before they were mine,” she tacked on dryly.
I grunted, “Nice save.”
“Yeah, I’m pleased with it too.” She squinted at the picture. “Wealthy men didn’t have tattoos back then, did they?”
I moved us closer, trying to make out what was happening in the picture, saying, “I guess they could do whatever they wanted.”
Grandfather had his shirt off and was wearing a wifebeater beneath it. He was laughing as he ducked his face into a barrel of apples as he bobbed for them.
All around him, there were boys—Ma came from a bigger family than ours—and they were laughing too. Some had wet hair that had nothing to do with Brylcreem and everything to do with a turn in the barrel.