Page 2 of Dublin Brute

Tanya waggles her brows. “Imagine the look on your da’s face when you tell him you’re quitting the stuffy library job he got you to break into the nightlife of a Central Dublin bar.”

I can’t imagine.Even the idea of telling him makes my throat close and my heart race like an ADHD rabbit having a panic attack. He’ll lose his bloody mind. Since my mom’s car accident thirteen years ago, my father has spent all his energy bubble-wrapping my life.

I understood the impulse at first—and after her loss, didn’t mind being sheltered and safe—but after years of taking the benign route and choosing the path of no resistance, I’ve become little more than a shell of a person.

And if it weren’t for Kate and Tanya, I never would’ve realized it.

“He’ll simply have to accept that I’m an adult.”

We stride along the bustling street, the surrounding city pulsing with life. There’s an undeniable charm to Dublin at night, and though I miss the warmth of Barcelona, the food in Paris, and my friends in London, this move has been the easiest to adjust to.

There is something about Dublin that captivates me—it’s gritty.

Sure, it possesses some safe and lovely, high-end areas like other cities, but there’s also a raw truth to Dublin. Just beneath the surface of civility, there’s an edge of danger, a current of exposed electricity waiting to give you a jolt.

That promise of something wild is incredibly sexy and exactly what I hope to infuse into the next phase of my life.

Tanya and I walk beneath the glow of the streetlamps illuminating the city’s historic architecture and the faces of tourists and locals alike. Each steady clack of boot heel against cobblestone reinforces my contentment here—and that’s all thanks to my girls.

Being the daughter of a Europol investigator climbing the ranks is akin to being a military brat. Where he’s needed, we move. It’s been like that for as long as I can remember. So, whenhe announced he’d been heading up a new task force to crush organized crime in Ireland, I packed our bags and here we are.

It would’ve been a new city like any other, if I hadn’t met Tanya and Kate. I joke they are my spirit animals, but they’re more than that.

They see me.

Because they feel trapped by their parental dysfunction, too, they get me.

She squeezes my arm. “As much as I razz you about your da, please thank him again for buying me a ticket to come with you tonight.”

“Oh, don’t be fooled. He did it more for himself than for us. If he sends me off with you, he knows where I am and who I’m with. Then, he can focus on his work.”

Tanya makes a clucking sound with her tongue. “Och, chickie, I’m sure decades of work have made him into that man. Surely, he wasn’t always Jordan the Warden.”

I chuckle at the name Tanya and Kate came up with for him, but honestly…I don’t remember. Before my mother died, he was always away with work.

And after…

“Speaking of the Warden,” Tanya glances at her watch, “do you need to head home straight away, or can we grab a pint? Kate said she’ll join us if we’re still out when she finishes her shift. Tuesdays are quiet at the store, and she said she’d ask for an early out.”

I straighten my spine, squaring my shoulders. “I’m twenty-six years old. I don’t need permission to have a girl’s night out with my friends.”

“Too true.” Tanya bumps her hip against mine.

“Where do you want to go?”

She points toward the street ahead. “The Confession Box has the best Guinness pour in Dublin.”

“Perfect. And we can confess our sins while we’re there.”

Tanya laughs as we get moving. “Oh? And what sins do you think need confessing?”

“How about plotting to abandon our dysfunctional families?”

“Och, that’s not a sin, chickie—that’s survival.”

Brendan

The past year has been a bitch for Clan Quinn. Cormack Quinn—a man above men and our Da—passed suddenly of a heart attack last October. His unexpected passing then left Tag to assume leadership of the family business—running organized crime in North Dublin. It took months for each of us to find our place, the spot where we could do the most good.

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