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“I looked it up. Apparently, it’s Irish for, ‘My friend.’ It’s a common way to start a letter.”
Well, if it’s Irish, that explains why he thought it came from Darragh, then. Especially if he found the bodies of his soldiers and is sending us back some kind of message. Although the whole “my friend” thing makes about zero sense. I rip open the envelope, scanning the contents of the paper inside.
It doesn’t take long. There’s only one line of text, and even though it’s in English this time, it makes even less sense than the outside of the envelope. I read it out loud so that Curse can hear and maybe provide me some kind of clue about what Darragh might be on about.
“Why can you never iron a shamrock?”
“Uh. Don’t know. Never thought about it. It would probably just melt or disintegrate or something,” Curse says. He’s looking at me kind of oddly, like I’m the insane one instead of dipshit Darragh sending me this mumbo jumbo. Curse eyes my dishevelled hair, my unshaven jaw, the wrinkles in my shirt, and frowns.
“Don’t give me that fucking look. That’s what the letter says,” I explain, flashing the paper at him. He leans over my desk to peer at it with dark, long-lashed eyes. He really did get all of Mamma’s good lucks. She had eyes like that too.
“Oh. Huh.” He straightens back up, lifting his hands and successfully cracking his tattooed knuckles this time. The motion makes every letter of our mamma’s name flex across his skin.
I blink, realizing for the first time that both Deirdre and I had mothers with names that start with F. Fiona and Florencia.
A sign if I ever saw one.
“Sounds like a riddle.”
I glance at the paper again and nod, agreeing with him. Then I throw the paper down on my desk in annoyance.
“See, this is why people call him Mad Darragh. Because he’s always doing weird fucking shit like this.”
Well, that and the fact that he once made another man eat his own severed balls. And not even right after cutting them off, either. It’s not like he sliced them off and then told the poor shmuck to open wide, because honestly, I wouldn’t be surprised if some of the guys working for me had done some shit like that. It’s not out of the realm of normalcy in our fucked-up world. But that’s not what Darragh did. He left the guy there bleeding to go cook him a whole-ass meal. Then he brought it back piping hot, letting the guy think he might actually live, like the stew was a kind of olive branch.
Except it was soupe aux testicules. Or however the fuck you’d say that in Irish.
Bon appétit.
“Sending another boss a riddle instead of a real man-to-man conversation, or a proper business meeting. The fuck is this shit?” I grumble to myself as I spin my chair over to my computer. I open a search engine and type in the words of the riddle.
Thankfully, the answer pops up right away, which means at least it’s a real riddle with a solution out there somewhere instead of some nonsensical bullshit pulled out of the murk of Darragh’s brain.
My brother and I both stare at the riddle’s answer on the screen.
Because you shouldn’t press your luck.
“What do you think it means?” Curse asks.
“Fuck if I know,” I reply, rubbing the scarred side of my jaw viciously. I’ve attended a few university classes recently with Deirdre, but none of them were in literature or philosophy. Or psychology, which is probably more applicable in this situation anyway.
I lean back in my chair, drumming my fingers hard against the arms.
At first glance, an obvious interpretation is that Darragh is telling me not to press my luck. Which is… fucking absurd. I’ve got more territory than him, more men, more money, more firepower. I’m not the kind of man you send threats to and live.
But then there’s that address of A chara. My friend. Is that sarcasm? Or some kind of peace offering? Maybe he’s calling me his friend and admitting in some roundabout way that he knows he pressed his luck, and plans to back off now? Having three bodies dumped at your door can make you look at your mistakes with fresh eyes, that’s for fucking sure.
I give up on trying to figure it out. Having me spin my wheels and stew over this nonsense would probably make Darragh’s dick hard if he knew about it, and I’m not going to give him the satisfaction.
Instead, I’m going to bring him a letter of my own.
Hand-fucking-delivered.
“We’re gonna send Darragh a message,” I tell Curse, and my loyal younger brother doesn’t even bat an eye.
“Guns? Bombs? How many men you want?” he asks, already making plans.
“Nope. None of that. Just a letter. Paper. That’s it.”
