Page 63 of Irish Brute
“You’ll like this one.” He’s almost out the door when he turns back. “You’ll want to wear one of your skirts.”
24
BRAIDEN
Ican still see the look on Samantha’s face this morning, her glare as I told her what to wear. If Madden hadn’t been waiting downstairs, she would have paid for that defiance. Ideally, with her back flat on the examining table in Kellher’s surgery, her legs over my shoulders, and my face buried between her thighs.
Christ, she’s distracting.
Fairfax will have her things moved into my room by now. Any other day, I’d leave the Hare by noon. Go home and pick a fight with Samantha over how much room her suits take in my closet. Order her into her collar and distract her from her work, the way she’s keeping me from mine.
But Madden dropped a disaster on my plate this morning. Russo’s shitehawks are muscling in on our southside protection racket. Tommy O’Neill was shot through the head last night, three blocks from the last stop on his route. Whoever got himtook his money, then went back and strong-armed the Mitchum brothers for a second payment.
Madden already made good with Farley Mitchum, before he came out to Thornfield. If word gets out we can’t protect our marks, those envelopes’ll get light in a heartbeat.
So Madden and Patrick and me, we spend the day figuring out how to keep our side safe. We’ll run some patrols, take advantage of the new boys who came over from Dublin this summer. It’ll give us a chance to see if any of them have management potential.
And we’ll mov in on some East Falls business in retaliation. There’s one block with three pizza joints; Patrick will hit them up for a little Irish blessing on their livelihood. They’ll squeal to Russo like knackered lambs, but we’ll have made our point.
By the time we set the plan, I’ve got a headache, tiny little hammers pounding behind both my eyes. They only get sharper when I visit Tommy’s widow. Siobhan’s a good girl; she’s wearing her black with a fierce pride.
It’s the next stop, Tommy’s girlfriend, that makes the roots of my teeth ache. Colleen’s wailing loud enough to drown out the sirens from the fire station down the street. Her eyes are as red as her hair, and she already smells like a still. She plants her hands on her hips, telling me I have to pay her rent through the end of the year, telling me I owe her. Madden drags her out to the kitchen and crashes around making her a cuppa. I drop a few hundred-dollar bills on the coffee table and go out to wait in the car.
All of which goes to say, I’ve had a day by the time Eoghan drops me back at Thornfield. I’d like to take a handful of paracetamol, wash them down with a slug of good whiskey. Then head upstairs to order Samantha into her collar and onto her knees.
But Samantha’s waiting for me in the front hallway. She’s wearing a black jumper—no surprise—but she put on a skirt, like I told her. It’s got purple flowers in dark green leaves, all shot through with bits of pink and yellow. Her hair is done up in some complicated twist, and she did something with makeup to make her eyes look huge. Her lips are shiny and slick, and I consider burning the tickets in my pocket.
“I— Is this okay?” she asks, when I’ve been staring too long.
“It’s perfect.”
If I kiss her, we’ll both lose track of time. And like it or not, Idohave to put in an appearance tonight—the cost of pretending to be a legitimate businessman in this corrupt town.
It takes all my willpower not to check if she’s followingallmy rules. If I find out she’s not wearing knickers, we’ll never get downtown.
So I hold the door for her like a proper feckin’ gentleman. I lead the way across the drive to the garage. I take the keys to the Jeep, because it’s closest to the door. And we head back downtown, like I haven’t spent the past eight hours driving through some of Philadelphia’s worst traffic.
“Tough day?” she asks when I swear at the thirty-seventh red light.
I force myself to grin. “Just a little short on sleep.”
She blushes, which almost makes this trip worthwhile. I ask her how her day went, and she tells me about some chaos at the freeport, a construction project that’s overdue and over-budget, with Prince hollering for blood.
I like the sound of her voice, her bright enthusiasm as she tears into the issue. Her job is to solve problems, and she’s good at it. My hammering headache fades to the dull tap of a pickax by the time we pull into a poorly lit side entrance.
“The Convention Center?” she asks. She has a right to sound confused. The marquee signs are dark, although a line of conespoints us to our destination. I just smile, knowing my silence must be driving her mad.
There’s a line of luxury cars close to the entrance—BMWs, Audis, a handful of Teslas. I park in the second row; there’s no reason we can’t walk.
An intern greets us just inside the double glass doors. “Good evening,” she says. “And welcome to Donor’s Night. The escalator will take you up to the main floor.”
Samantha is actively looking for clues now. She cranes her neck, trying to read the intern’s clipboard, but I angle us toward the moving staircase before the surprise is lost.
We’re greeted by an explosion of color at the top of the stairs. A giant sign, two stories tall, saysIt’s a Small World. The letters are picked out in flowers—bright blossoms of pink and yellow burning against a field of green.
A woman waits in front of the sign. Millicent Kennedy is tall and thin, with short gray hair and a jaw that could cut glass. She’s wearing an evening gown, and she holds a glass of champagne, but something about her bird-like eyes says she’d rather be hip-deep in muck.
“Mr. Kelly,” she says. “Welcome to Donor’s Night.”
