Page 71 of Southie
“Always.”
She walked off with Gerald, giving me one last look over her shoulder before they left through the emergency exit. Once I knew she was safely out of the building, I turned my attention to the locker room door guarded by Johnny and Sean. Sean’s smirk was all I needed to know how this was about to go down. Hopefully, today wouldn’t end with me dying.
“Let him through, Sean, and shut the door behind ya,” Paddy said.
Sean and Johnny stepped aside.
I walked into the locker room to face the man who’d be dead in less than two days if Gerald and my plan stayed on track.
“Paddy…”
He pinched the bridge of my nose. “What the hell ya doin’, lad?”
“What are you talking about, Paddy? I didn’t know fighting was against any rules of yours.” I pulled the green flex wraps from my hands. “My training and fighting haven’t affected you. When you call me for a job, I’m there.”
“Your job performance isn’t what I’m questioning. As far as the fighting, we’ll get to that later. You know what the hell I’m talking bout. How the hell do ya think it looks for my Enforcer to be dating a black girl, Liam? Ya know what the organization thinks about that shit. Then ya kiss the lass on national television.” His head shook. “The others probably saw that shit.”
“I don’t give a damn what it looks like, Paddy,” I said, clenching my hands. “If my relationship doesn’t affect my work, it shouldn’t be a problem to you or anyone else.”
“I pegged you as being smarter than this, lad. Not enough nice Irish Catholic girls in Boston for ya?” He shook his head in disappointment. “I thought Ma Daugherty would’ve taught ya better than that. I thought she’d taught ya to stick to ya own. If you want to fuck her, fine, but that shit you pulled out there is unacceptable.”
He stood, straightened out his navy-blue blazer, and left a brown envelope sitting on the long wooden bench in the locker room. “End it or I will. We have an image to uphold. And I’ll be damned if I’ll let ya ruin it by laying down with that lass.”
He sneered before walking out.
“Your girl needs to pay more attention to her surroundings,” Sean said, taking a step just inside the doorway of the locker room with a smirk on his face.
“What the fuck is that supposed to mean?”
He shrugged his shoulders. “Pictures are worth a thousand words.” He chuckled as he walked off.
I sat down on the bench and pulled the photographs out of the envelope. Most showed only Camilla. The others showed us together. However, the last two photographs caught my eye, and anger coursed through my system. The first image showed Camilla entering my grandmother’s house on the day of her murder, and the second one showed Camilla standing in the middle of the street before we left my grandmother’s house that day. She was looking directly at the camera. These pictures meant one thing…Paddy had killed my grandmother or least had someone do it, giving me more of a reason to kill him and let Don Rizzo take over New England.
Before going home, I met up with Detective Rizzo. We’d had our differences in the past because of lies they’d fed me, and I wouldn’t hold that against him. Agostino was right. My Aunt Samantha would want me to accept Rizzo into the family, so I’d try my best to do just that.
I handed Eric the photographs Paddy had left with me, and he informed me they’d identified the driver of the black Audi. I wasn’t shocked at the name because it confirmed my suspicions. Paddy had ordered my grandmother’s death and Sean had killed her.
Eric begged me to let the law run its course, but once he confessed they still didn’t have enough evidence to make an arrest, it became my responsibility to deal with them both.
Chapter 13
Liam
Other than whipping Damian Denning’s ass last night, having Camilla in my arms was the best feeling, but it came with a price. Wrapping her in my arms and tasting her delicious lips in public, on national television, had caused a shit storm to brew not only with Paddy but her father.
I didn’t regret it. The consequences of how our conduct would affect me were not my concern. I couldn't care less.
My concern was the blowback Camilla would face from both her father and Paddy once he found out I wouldn’t take his advice to get rid of her. No one, not her father or Paddy, would keep us apart. We would never be away from each other again. We would smooth things over with her father, someday. However, I planned for Paddy to be out of the picture permanently before he targeted her.
Once at home, we stopped dodging the many calls from her father. He was furious we’d lied to him and that Camilla had chosen me, but he accepted our relationship after I explained my intentions towards his daughter. He expressed his valid concerns and if I’d been a father, I’d feel the same way if my daughter dated someone who had the same lifestyle as I did. All I could do was promise to do everything in my power to protect her from Paddy. I wasn’t going anywhere, and neither was Camilla.
“What’s next?” she asked.
“We meet with your father and clear the air today. Then I take care of Paddy.”
“Liam…”
“You and your father will go up to Gerald’s cabin until I can get this all squared away. I don’t trust you’ll be safe here even with the safe room and the guard at the entrance to the community.”
