Page 8 of Mob Princess

He always acknowledged me as his, and he would visit whenever he came to Montreal. He’d make an effort to come up there at least once every three months. It was like I was a quarterly tax he had to pay to keep my grandfather from gutting him. I spent a few Christmases and Easters in Boston, too. I spent several weeks each summer. But I was a guest, not a family member. Ewan and I are so close in age that he says he doesn’t remember a time before me. He’s known his entire life that he has a sister. He just didn’t know why I didn’t live with him until he was ten and I was eight.

“Nikki?”

“Yeah. I’m here.” I slide my coat off as I close Ewan’s front door.

I’d taken my coat off in the car between the funeral and reception yesterday. I’m glad I did because it made it way easier to feel Sean touching me. I was wearing it now because it was one less thing to carry.

“Come out to the backyard.” Ewan’s grilling from the smell of it.

My brother and I overheard our dad talking to Uncle Riley that Christmas. He and I were building a model airplane together at the dining room table. Uncle Riley suggested I come back in four months for Easter. Dad said he was only obligated to have me for one family holiday a year. Since he had a trip to Montreal planned for February that would force him to see me, he said he saw no reason to have me visit any sooner than the next Christmas.

I know now my grandfather pissed him off, so it was more about them not getting along than me. But Ewan and I stood staring at each other in the dining room, a bottle of glue in my hand and tongue depressor looking things in his. That was the day I swore I would never cry in public again. If I could keep myself from crying when I was eight, I can keep myself from crying now. Ewan wasn’t a hot-head, but he had no qualms about standing up to Dad even back then. He dropped the wood pieces on the table and stormed into the kitchen.

“Welcome home, Nik.” Ewan shoots me a smile as he hands me a beer. He has the same expression as he did when we were kids.

Ewan told Dad and Uncle Riley that we heard everything while we worked on the model airplane. He told Dad he should be ashamed of himself and if he was the man he claimed to be, then he didn’t pick on little girls. That he wanted to be nothing like Dad if he couldn’t love both his children equally since neither of us asked to have him as our father.

I remember standing there like a fish flopping on a dock. Eyes popping out and mouth hanging open. I didn’t know what to expect, but I was ready to bolt. I was wholly unprepared for Dad to pick me up and carry me into his study. He sat me down on his lap and just hugged me for like ten minutes. Then he apologized. It was the only time in my entire life I heard the words “I’m sorry” put together in a sentence. I heard him say plenty of other people would be sorry.

That was the night I learned how I came to be. At least, in a way an eight-year-old could understand. After that, he was much nicer to me. I was welcome for all holidays and during the summer. I didn’t see him much during those visits as I got older, and Ewan wasn’t around that often, either. But my stepmom, Maureen, is kind, and that made up for a lot. Especially once I got to college, and Dad turned all those decent memories into guilt.

“Thanks. It was a short flight both ways, but those three days were long. It was fun seeing friends on Thursday. But Friday blew, helping Cynthia pack up her husband’s office of thirty years on campus. Yesterday just sucked.” Except for when I was with Sean.

I stare at Ewan and think about the argument my brother and I had before I left. He looks so much like Dad. Our father loved to tell me how I owed his side of the family allegiance. That I should support his side of the family since he’d welcomed me into his home and paid for college. That I’d walked away from my mom and her side of the family when I came to the U.S. for college. I didn’t walk; I flew. But I will always consider myself far more a Tremblay than an O’Malley.

“Do you need tomorrow off, or can you start the project?” Ewan barely glances at me as he flips burgers for the ass hats lounging around his pool.

How fucking generous. The “project” is what caused the argument with Ewan before I left.

And now Dad’s dead thanks to some guy named Finn O’Rourke, and Ewan’s the one laying the guilt trips on me. That if I’d done my part to help gather intel, then Dad and Uncle Riley would have been prepared and not ambushed. That if I cared about my brother, I would help him now. I didn’t go into intelligence analysis to help my mobster families off their rivals. I went into it because global security interests me. My maternal grandfather paid a fuck ton of money to the Canadian government to turn a blind eye to his involvement in organized crime. He made a convincing argument that I have no interest in domestic security, so I wasn’t a homeland danger. I only want to focus on other parts of the world.

A whole lot of good it did him or me.

Dad laid the guilt on as soon as I graduated from Georgetown. He deposited a hefty amount—three million dollars—into my bank account as a graduation gift. It was to make me indentured. He expected me to work that money off by slipping him information about what goes on in Montreal.

Ewan started guilting me the moment he told me Dad was dead. That was not one of the times I had to hold back tears. I would have been more upset if he told me one of my favorite TV shows got cancelled. But Dad and Uncle Riley fucked around and found out, leaving Ewan to clean up the disaster. And by that I mean, left him to recruit me to tidy up.

“Do we have to talk about this right now?” I take a swig of beer.

“I offered you tomorrow off.”

As though that’s supposed to give me time to grieve and get shit together since I moved down here two weeks ago. The project is gathering intel on the O’Rourkes for whatever Ewan’s going to do to get back at them. His face has healed from the beating he took from some guys they sent up here. But I know his shoulder still hurts whenever he moves the wrong way. His broken ribs are still keeping him from lifting and running. That’s the real reason he’s a fucking ogre. He gets cranky when he can’t work out. Like a kid who missed his fucking recess and has energy to burn off.

“I meant do we need to talk about this while everyone else is here. You promised you’d keep my involvement a secret. I thought you don’t want Jimmy pissed that you have me digging since you don’t think he can get it done. And I thought you were going to hide that you need me since I’m a girl.”

I cross my arms with my beer still in my left hand. Mob business is supposed to be for just the menfolk. We little women are supposed to stay home, tucked away and none the wiser. Except Rowan O’Malley had a daughter who runs circles around the knuckle draggers he put in charge of gathering intel. Beating the shit out of people to make them talk is not the way to get deep dark secrets. Hacking encrypted networks and clouds is the way to get what Ewan needs. If I learned how to hide nuclear secrets and discover enemy hideouts—in theory, not in practice since I no longer have my government intel job—then I can figure out what the fuck the O’Rourkes are up to.

“None of them are listening.”

I stare at him before shifting my gaze to sweep across the backyard. There are a dozen men here, some with wives or girlfriends. They all appear occupied eating and drinking. A few are in the pool. But they’re mobsters who’ve lived long enough to enjoy this barbeque. They didn’t do that by not being situationally aware.

“You’re a fool if you believe that. You aren’t naïve, so pull your head out of your ass, Ewan. I don’t want to die for this shit.”

“And who’s being melodramatic?”

“If Jimmy finds out you don’t trust him and you went behind his back to get your little sister’s help, he’s going to lose his shit. He can’t do a damn thing to you, but he can do plenty to me.”

Ewan puts the tongs down and fully turns toward me. “He will never touch you and live.”

---