Page 27 of Mob Saint

“Finish that word, and you will learn what kind of Dom I am.”

“Yes, sir.”

“Is that who you want me to be to you?”

“I—” She shakes her head, and the sadness returns. I hate this. I hate that she’s ever sad, and I hate that I keep causing it.

“Talk to me, Tiera. Explain what’s going on. I don’t understand. You know now, without a doubt that I want you. For this and for more. I’ve told you as much.”

“And to what avail? You know I can’t say yes to a date.”

“I do not know that.”

“You’re an O’Rourke. My uncle is Gareth’s best friend. My family has worked for the O’Briens for four generations. Gareth’s dad turned my husband.”

“Turned? You make it sound like they were vampires.”

“Blood-sucking leeches they both were. They may as well have been. No. I met my husband my senior year of college at the fire academy. He and I were doing some additional training. He was so charming and kind. He laughed a lot, and he treated me with respect and as an equal. When I moved to Chicago for grad school, he came with me and worked there. We dated for three years before we got married. The week we came back from our honeymoon—not even a month after the wedding—Darren knocked on our door. We’d just gotten home after twenty-four hours on every other day for five days. I went to shower and get changed. By the time I came back down, Aaron was totally different. I knew Darren recruited him. I thought I’d found a way out. Darren found a way to bring another man in.”

I didn’t expect her to start telling me about her husband, but I won’t stop her. I want to know everything about her, even if I have to listen to her tell me stories about being with the man she loved—loves—I don’t fucking know.

“Aaron was nearly as tall as you, but nowhere near as muscular. But he was strong, and he’d grown up hunting. We’d dated six months before I started hinting about my family. We were together a year before I finally admitted my family was in the mob. We were married three weeks when Darren made him a mobster. He fell right into the role. He became possessive and controlling. Demanding. He never hurt me, and he didn’t even say hurtful things. But he monopolized my time and all my energy when we weren’t at work. I wanted a divorce. Darren wouldn’t allow it. He didn’t make empty threats.”

Fuck. What am I doing? I shouldn’t have pushed her. I pull back, wanting to give her space, but she whimpers. I release her wrists, and she wraps her arms and legs around me. I lift her off the table and move to a bench along the wall that keeps anyone from walking into thin air.

“Seamus, seriously. I am not a little girl. I am fat. I know you’re strong, but I’m too heavy.”

“Let us be clear about this before you tell me whatever else you want to share. My brother weighs two pounds more or less than me on any given day. We are both close to two-fifty. I can carry his dead weight when he’s passed out. I’ve gone up and down stairs. I’ve done it for blocks. My cousins are lighter than us, but they still weigh more than you. I can carry all of them with ease. I’m not volunteering to, but I can. I will never tell you what to think or feel about your body. But you will not convince me anything about your body is less than the most desirable one I’ve ever touched. You could weigh fifty—a hundred—pounds more or less than you do now, and I’d still think you’re the most desirable woman I have ever seen. Do you know why? Because it’s you.”

I didn’t give her a chance to answer that question.

She inhales so deeply our chests press harder against each other. The tip of her index right finger traces a scar near my eyebrow before it glides down to my jaw. She runs the pads of her fingers over my stubble.

“You know firefighters have weight and fitness standards. I used to meet them with ease. I left the department three years ago. I hadn’t planned to be an actuary when I started grad school. I wanted to work for the New Jersey Bureau of Fire Department Services as an analyst and statistician. I wanted to use what I knew from investigations and my knowledge of numbers and stats to work on fire prevention. After the accident, I swore I wouldn’t step foot in another fire department. I wanted nothing that would remind me of Aaron. Not the people I worked with. Not the lingo. Not the smells, sounds, tastes. Nothing. It took me months to physically heal, too. My grief was over what I lost, but I spared none of it for Aaron. I ate my feelings because food was the only thing I felt I had control over. I couldn’t control other things about my body, like why it took me so long to recover from?—”

She can’t say whatever she was thinking. I ease her head against my shoulder.

“You don’t have to tell me more. I think I understand.”

“I haven’t talked about this with anyone but my psychiatrist and psychologist. I shut everyone else out. My mom’s tried, but I don’t want to rehash what we both already know since she wouldn’t leave my hospital room until they discharged me. My dad’s tried, but it would put him in a shitty position because he worked for Darren and now works for Gareth. I trust no one else.”

“I never want to break your trust, cailín. I won’t call you that anymore if you truly don’t like it. But to me, it’s a way to let you know how special you are to me. I’ve called no woman that. Ever.”

“I get it now. It’s sweet. You’re sweet. Seamus, I want to say yes to a date. But you know your family will hate that. It’ll trap my family in the middle, and Gareth will lose his fucking mind.”

“First of all, my family will not hate it. Thanks to my brother’s propensity to gossip, my cousins won’t leave me the hell alone about asking you out. My cousins are going to have plenty to say on the way home. I swear if one of them tells me what I already know—that until today, I was too chicken shite to ask—I will throat punch them. Cormac knew I was into you the moment we both saw you. Gareth can think whatever the feck he wants. If he says a goddamn thing or gives you or anyone in your family shite, he will never shite again. Darren and now Gareth exist because we let them. I mean the O’Briens as an organization. Darren fecked up one too many times.”

I won’t say anything more specific than that. If she’s as close to the O’Brien leaders as she says, then she knows what happened to Darren and how it happened. She knows I’m not doling out empty threats. That’s why she didn’t want me involved earlier.

She laughs, and it eases some of the tightness in my chest. I don’t expect her to cup my cheeks and kiss the tip of my nose.

“You won’t say fuck in front of me. At least, not in a non-sexual connotation. I heard that about your family. I didn’t believe it, but now I do. I told you, you’re a sweet man.”

“Sweet or not, my mom and aunts terrify me. I’d rather my dad and uncles didn’t send me to stand before any of them. God help me if it’s all three. Cor and I learned faster than the others to fly under their radar. I’m not fecking around because I already found out. My mom and aunts know we swear like sailors around each other, but if we swear at each other or in front of women and children—truly, I don’t know what they’d do to me at my age and size. I have no wish to spark their creativity.”

She grins. “I don’t think you’re exaggerating.”

“I’m not. Auntie Breda comes up with the ideas. Auntie Saoirse organizes everything. And Mom carries it out. You must have met Donovan at least once. My uncle was a piece of shite to everyone except them. If I didn’t know them myself, his fear of his sisters would have been enough to convince me to never meet them. At least, not in a dark alley.”

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