Page 43 of Irish Reign

I dangle my hands between my spread knees because I don’t want to hope. I shake my head. “Evenifyou got out of there alive, you’d be breaking every ethical rule in the books.”

“So?”

“So what will you do when they yank your law license?”

She stares at me like she’s waking up from a very long nightmare. Her throat works, and it takes her three tries to speak. But when she finally gets the words out, her voice doesn’t shake. “They’re pulling my license anyway. I’ve got ninety days or less.”

I refuse to listen. “We’ll get you a better lawyer.”

“I already had the best.” She swallows hard, but she’s brave enough to go on. “There’s no coming back from this. Trap willhave to fire me. He won’t want to, and he’ll put it off as long as possible. But clients won’t invest billions in a company with a disbarred General Counsel.”

“You can sue the freeport. Say it’s discrimination. Harassment. You can keep a case going for years.”

She shakes her head. “I wouldn’t do that to Trap. He’s been too good a boss.” When she finally looks at me, her eyes are calm. Her gaze is steady. “I’ve worked this problem in my head for weeks. I’ve studied all the facts. I’ve applied all the laws. There isn’t any other end.”

I’m used to bowling over my opponents with raw power. My feckin’ Irish charm when I can. Stacks of cash when I must.

But here, there’s no one to intimidate. No one to charm. No one to buy off.

Samantha’s fate has been sealed since she drove down that mountain eleven years ago.

“Let this be the last thing I do as a lawyer,” she says. “Let it work for both of us.”

And God help me, I agree. “Do it,” I say. “Tell me what you need and we’ll take him down together.”

18

SAMANTHA

I’m going to reach out to Russo. Me. Alone.

I’m no longer the little girl who watched her parents die in a fireball of shattered glass. I’m not the terrified young woman who fled a drunken mistake. I’m not even the adult lawyer who heard her cousin die in the most horrific way imaginable.

I’m scared. Any reasonable woman would be. I’ll be matching wits with a psychopath.

My spacious office in the new house feels positively claustrophobic. My stomach churns with too much coffee and not enough courage. I’m staring at my phone like it’s a coiled rattlesnake, and for just a moment I consider flushing it down a toilet so I can’t make the call.

I’d rather face the paparazzi jackals at the end of the driveway than follow through with this.

“You don’t have to,” Braiden reminds me.

“But I do.”

I don’t know how long I have. Ninety days is the outer limit. The ethics board can come back with its decision at any time. So I swallow hard and force myself to say, “And Russo has to believe I’m changing sides. He has to think I’m betraying you. I have to give him a reason.”

For just a heartbeat, every muscle in Braiden’s body goes stiff. But his voice is perfectly level as he says, “Tell him I’m marrying Fiona.”

The suggestion’s absurd, and I start to laugh. But Braiden isn’t joking. “What do you mean?”

“I’d be consolidating power inside the Union. If I control Philadelphia and Boston, the other captains would have to make me General. I’d never have to bend a knee to anyone again. I’d never have to worry about someone taking over the Fishtown Boys.”

“You can’t—” I start, but I’m afraid to finish that sentence. He can marry Fiona if he wants to. He’s got a signed annulment to his marriage with Birte, locked inside the safe in our bedroom closet. And we both know his marriage to me was never valid and binding.

“You wouldn’t—” I try again, but that sentence isn’t any better.

“You won’t...” I trail off.

“Will you?” I finally ask.

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