Page 60 of My Irish Mafia King

I need to get used to people calling me ‘boss’ outside restaurants. “I know. It could mean a bullet between the eyes, but if I can avoid a gunfight, I need to take that risk.”

“The men are ready to fight,” Colm says.

“I know they are. But how many will die if his men and ours go at it? How many wives will lose husbands, fathers will lose children? Frank and Owen would send the men in without giving a single fuck about that. But that’s why I’m doing this. Things are going to change. From now on, we will not shake down women trying to make an innocent living, we’re not trafficking, and we will not be goddamn cowards. Tell your man to open the gate when I approach. I’ll do the rest.”

“If they shoot, we’re coming in, and we’re coming in hot, boss.”

“Fair enough,” I say, climbing from the car and going to the trunk.

I take off my shirt and put on the bulletproof vest, then throw my shirt back on, with a jacket over it. I grab the megaphone and approach the estate, knowing that at any moment, somebody could take a potshot from a second-story window.

With each step, I’m thinking about my woman, my treasure, with her honey-colored eyes and her wild red hair and the never-quit spirit burning in her heart. She’d hate it if she knew I was doing this. I’m risking our future together, risking everything, but I have to think of the Family.

When I’m about halfway to the estate, our inside man proves himself useful. The gate whirrs mechanically as it opens.

Nerves grip me when I walk onto the estate, staring at the large mansion, rifle barrels sticking from several of the windows. More men crouched behind the fountain with their guns resting on the stone surface.

I bring the loudspeaker to my face. “I’m sure Owen and Frank have promised you a lot, fellas. Money once this has all settled down; a better place in the Family. But they lied to you. You’re surrounded by twice as many men, men loyal to me,the real king of this Family.” My voice booms across to the estate. “If you take me down now, the men will surge in, and there will be all-out war. If you ignore what I have to say… the men will come in, and we’ll massacre you.”

I pause for effect, noticing the men at the fountain looking at each other uneasily.

“But if you listen, there’s a chance for all of you. I know you’re doing this out of fear. But you’ve made a mistake… you should be more afraid of me than them. They were never truly in charge of this Family. They were merely holding the crown until I was ready to pick it up.” I smack myself in the chest. “Me, the true king, heir to Patrick and Declan Callahan. By now, you’ve all heard the recording. You all heard Owen admitting to orchestrating those men’s deaths. He cut my father’s brakes, and I can only assume that lowlife poisoned my grandfather.”

I smack my chest again. “You have one chance to put down your weapons and walk out of this estate. If you do that, I’ll forget you ever made this mistake. I’ll forget you ever chose these cockroaches. You’ll still have a place within the Family… except for the men who attacked the bakery and wounded Ronan. If those men are with you, execute them and bring their bloody corpses out here. You have two minutes to make your decision, or I promise you, I’ll paint this place red.”

I drop the loudspeaker and hold my hands out to my sides, staring at the house, knowing that any second, this could be the end. It wouldn’t take much. They’ve got rifles, not pistols; aiming at this distance would be easy.

A minute passes with no activity, but then I hearbang-bang-bang. A pause, and then more gunshots. The men at the fountain exchange another look.

They leap to their feet when there’s a crash and two bodies fall from an upper window. Not long after, men walk out the front door.

“No weapons,” I growl into the loudspeaker.

This gives them some pause, but they drop their rifles. The men at the fountain do the same. They walk toward me, their gazes bowed.

“Don Callahan,” the first one mutters, and that gets them all going. “Don Callahan, Don Callahan…” Each of them paying their respects as they leave the estate.

“Where are they?” I growl.

“There’s a safe room at the rear of the property, disguised as a pantry,” one man replies.

I take out my cell and call Colm. “Rear of the property, the pantry. I’m going in.”

I draw my gun from its holster and jog toward the estate, aware that Colm would advise waiting for backup. As I pass the corpses of the two men who attacked the bakery, I resist the urge to fire bullets into their lifeless bodies.

My blood pumps hotly, my head swirling with tension, danger, and all that could go wrong. Lucy screams at me in my mind, urging me to stop, but I can't shake the recording from my head: Owen's threats to my treasure, the names he called her.

I rush into the kitchen and open the pantry door. A narrow corridor leads to a barricaded room at the end. Frank and Owen aim rifles down the corridor, poking through the wooden barricade made of broken tables and chairs stacked together.

"This is the end of the line," I snarl, taking cover behind the doorframe. "Your men have abandoned you. You're nothing now but two old, pathetic men, with nobody to back you, no future in the Family."

"Thosetraitors," Frank snaps. "I told you, Owen, I told you."

"Just be quiet," Owen snaps.

"I told you we should've been happy with what we had," Uncle Frank rants. "We had control, money, power. But no, you needed the goddamn title.Don Doyle. Why couldn't you let it go?"

"Justshut up," Owen snarls. "This isn't over until I say it's over."

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