“Ladies and gentlemen of the jury, it’s been a heated case.” I grin and turn on the charm as some laugh at my stupid pun. “We’ve heard evidence from both sides, but not all of it withstood the line of fire.”
A few more chuckles as I sweep my gaze over the twelve men and women. Even though Cor and I aren’t the youngest in our massive family—Shane and Sean—in that order—are—my brother and I have the baby faces. We’re built like a brick shit house—don’t know where the comparison to the crapper comes from, but we hear it often—so our size and our youthful faces disconcert people. We like it that way.
We have the lightest hair, closer to our dad’s strawberry blond than our mom’s russet, so our beards grow in the fairest. We both shave daily, but from a distance you can’t tell. It lends us a youthful innocence, so they say. I flex that strength when I need to—like now. I’m likeable.
Even I can’t say that with a straight face.
I continue with my oratory I started practicing the night we heard the prosecution’s opening statement. I’ve been fine tuning it every evening, but I do this to make sure I forget nothing from the beginning of the trial when it could be weeks or months before the case concludes. I remind them of evidence entered for both sides and how it proves my client’s innocence. What it really proves is the shite job the NYPD does since we tampered the fuck out of almost every piece. I move through my refutation of each witness the prosecution called, including Tiera’s.
Tiera. I’ve been calling her that in my head since we met. I fucked up, calling her cailín. I was more careful not to say that pet name out loud the last time I saw her.
I hate ripping her apart, but she was a key witness the prosecution recalled four days after her initial testimony. I’d feared it would be the morning after the soccer game. That’s why I’d dreaded the next day. It didn’t get better with time.
My recross of her wasn’t any lighter than my first cross examination. I know she’s in the gallery. I sensed when she came in. Don’t ask me how, but it’s the instinct that keeps me alive. I turned my head to whisper something to Cormac so I could check. She’s sitting in the middle on the prosecution’s side. I’m grateful because she isn’t in my peripheral vision as I make her out to be unreliable and easily swayed by less qualified people.
I comb through everything said and shown as I weave a tale that neither RK Capital is guilty of insurance fraud, nor is our client guilty of arson. He’s one of our guys we planted as a custodian months ago and is guilty as fuck. I want the part about RK on the record for when Cormac goes next and has to defend them against insurance fraud. It’s Donny Mahon I’m responsible for getting off the hook here. He’s been sitting like a statue throughout the trial. You’d almost forget he was there if not for the tats his dumb arse has on both sides of his neck.
No one outside my immediate family—since we run the NY Irish mob—needs to know Donny Mahon was once Albert Hannigan, a fire fighter supposedly killed in the line of duty in some bumfuck town outside of Montgomery, Alabama. Genius that he was when he was twenty years younger, he got into a turf fight with a gang in their territory. His dad was friends with my uncle, so Uncle Donovan got him a new name and a new life. He repays that debt by going wherever the hell we send him. Here, it was to use his experience as a firefighter to burn down the RK Capital building by causing an electrical fire after tampering with an office stove.
We made sure a witness—the NYFD guy we flipped—suggested that, but in a way that sounded too obvious for anyone to take seriously. We ruled out the genuine cause—the stove. Then we tightened the reins around the one my opponent pursued—the supposedly tampered with heating and cooling system—knocking his arguments sideways. We planted evidence near the coils to make them look like someone tampered with them, but no one could ever prove they caused the fire because it was the stove all along.
I go through each of the charges, the judge’s instructions to the jury, and my explanations for why the prosecution’s burden of proof failed. It takes sixty minutes, and I’m ready for some whiskey with my water. I’m parched.
Numb nuts tries to get one last dig in during his rebuttal, but it’s too little too late. The jury’s already decided. Cor and I write notes on a shared pad of paper. He’s a leftie like Finn and Sean—there’s one way he differs from his twin—and I’m right-handed like everyone else. He went to a school for criminal justice even though we knew he wanted to practice corporate law. He wanted it for the courses that helped him learn how criminals tick and a juror’s psychology. He wasn’t stingy with that knowledge, so I learned alongside him. We know just what to say and do inside and outside a courtroom to keep ourselves out of jail and to put the conveniently wrongfully accused—innocent—behind bars for life. Just as often, it’s keeping the inconveniently rightfully accused—guilty as fuck—mobster out of jail.
The judge bangs her gavel one last time before jury deliberations begin. I looked for Tiera as I returned to my seat and spotted her immediately. She wouldn’t look at me. My heart sank, and it still aches now as I watch her slip out of her row and turn toward the door without a glance in my direction.
“D'fhéadfá ceist a chur uirthi amach anois.” You could ask her out now.
My brother is hardly subtle. I glower at him as I pack up my laptop and papers. The bailiff’s already led Donny out of the courtroom in handcuffs. Dickwad and his team are still whispering to each other, and I’m not worried anyone can understand. I just don’t want to be pushed. She rejected me once. I’m a glutton for punishment when I work out, but not with a woman I’m inexplicably drawn to when she wants nothing to do with me.
“Fine. You going to your club, then?” Cormac continues in Irish for that question since that’s not something anyone needs to hear either.
We’re all silent part owners in the best—and worst—BDSM clubs in the tri-state area. It pays—truly—to know where people like to act out their kinks. I don’t know of a single syndicate member from the Four Families—the Kutsenkos, the Mancinellis, the Diazes, and us—who isn’t kinky when they fuck. It’s an outlet that balances what we do all too frequently. We have the control we desire from someone consenting to their submission. It’s in a controlled and predictable environment. And sex is fun. We just don’t need our names on the letterhead while we collect the membership list and plant informants.
“Maybe after the game.”
Yeah. It’s not a scrimmage this time. I’m not playing a different position, so I’ll be staring at Tiera during every kickoff and trying to block her every time she crosses the center line. Everyone in my family—all the men and women play rugby. Some families play badminton at picnics. We drink beer and crash into each other in the mud. But we each have sports we’ve played independent of the family. Most would assume Cor and I played football or wrestled. Nope. Dillan wrestled, Cor swam and played water polo, and I played soccer. People don’t believe Cor’s buoyant or that I’m agile. We are.
“Earth to Shay.”
“Feck off.”
“You didn’t hear any of what I said, did you?”
“I tuned out. You were boring.”
“Do you have plans with Makayla or not?”
“I do.” She’s who I might go to the club with.
I’m mooning over a woman who isn’t interested in me when I don’t even date. I have a sub, and we’re in a monogamous arrangement. I wouldn’t break that to sleep with Tiera or anyone else. I’d end things with Makayla before that happened. But we aren’t romantic partners.
She goes out on dates, but she’s found no one she’d rather have sex with than me. I haven’t gone out at all. We see each other once during the week and usually most of the weekend if I’m not working. I’m certain she’s googled me. After all, we have one of the most intimate relationships two people can have. But she’s never questioned me or pointed out when I lie about where I am in the three years we’ve had a contract.
“I gotta go, or I’ll be late to the game. I’ll call you in the morning.”
“Not too early. I’ll be at Deirdre’s.”