“I’m not hungry,” Granny says in a stubborn voice that makes me realize how often I’ve said the exact same words.
“I know.” Mrs. Watson is already halfway out the door. “But you’ll eat something anyway.”
“That woman is a menace,” Granny complains as I kiss her cheek.
“A menace responsible for keeping you well,” I say, collapsing into the free chair. The motion twists my spine, and I feel the tug of stretched muscles along my sides. I shiver at a sudden flash of memory, my arms straining to break free from Cole’s harness as he buries his face between my thighs.
Granny’s eyes glint with shrewd appraisal, and I fear my suddenly flushed cheeks tell far more of a story than I’m willing to share. Hurrying to fill the silence before she can, I say the first thing I can think of that has nothing to do with steel or leather or vibrating silicone toys. “Lovely weather, isn’t it? A fine day for drying.”
Not that either of us has any damp laundry to be hung in the sun. But Granny taught me the phrase even before she took me to stay in County Donegal.
“So that’s the game we’re playing?” She tilts her head like a robin tugging a worm from damp earth. “Fine, fine. I suppose a new bride deservessomesemblance of privacy.”
This time, I blush so hard my savaged nipples ache. Crossing my arms over my chest, I nod toward the inhaler on the table. “You had a rough night last night?”
Granny’s lips twist in a familiar frown. She hates her daily battles with post-polio syndrome. “Lots of tossing and turning,” she says. “I finally fell asleep around sunrise. Only to be awakened by police sirens a couple of hours later.”
I grimace.
Granny pounces. “They woke you too, then?”
I try to deflect. “They were loud.”
Granny leans forward. “What aren’t you telling me,a chroí?”
“Nothing!” My protest is automatic.
“Kaitlín Minola Lynch Wolf, I can smell when you’re lying to me.”
I used to believe that when I was a child. Granny could always sift my fibs from reality—something neither Da nor Mam could do. “The bratva dropped by for a visit,” I admit.
Granny’s sharp eyes go to my wrists, and I realize I’ve been rubbing the reddened band where Tarasov bound my hands. She swears in Irish, a combination of nouns and adjectives I never would have thought to string together. “Tell me what happened,a chroí.”
I don’t want her to worry. But all my life, I’ve carried my hurts to my grandmother. She’s eased my fears. She’s made me believe it’s possible to be safe in the violent, unhinged world of the Irish mob. That’s why she calls me herheart.
So I tell her all of it—Megan Wolf and Pyotr Tarasov and Lars Nilsson coming to our rescue after everything was over. I tell her Tarasov threatened me and Cole defended me and now myhusband is bound to work for the bratva. And I tell her it’s all my fault, because I’m the eejit who opened the feckin’ gate.
“You’re no eejit,” Granny says, automatically patting my hand. “The Tarasovs are bad men.”
Bad Men. Those were the words Granny gave me when I was just a child, a tool to help me understand how I’d been hurt. Even now, with Granny close beside me and sunshine streaming through the huge paned windows and Mrs. Watson rattling pots and pans in the kitchen, I shudder.
Eighteen years ago, the Tarasov bratva decided to run all of Baltimore on their own. They kidnapped my sister and me from a public playground, killing our nanny by the merry-go-round. Our ransom: All of Da’s holdings, the Lynch clan out of Charm City forever.
Da called the Russians’ bluff. He said they could keep Breagha and me, along with Larissa’s corpse.
The bratva had us two full weeks. Pyotr Tarasov finally negotiated a trade. He drew up a map, dividing the city into bratva territory and a much-shrunken zone for the Canton Crew.
Resentful, Da bent the knee. He shook hands. He paid.
And the instant Breagha and I were home, he launched the Dogfight—five years of brutal gang war. The Canton Crew burned out bratva businesses, stole Russian shipments from the docks, and executed more than a dozen foot soldiers, the bratva’s so-called thieves.
The Russians did worse.
A lot worse.
The Dogfight only ended when the Feds got involved. Four boyeviks ended up in a super-max prison. My father let his own uncle take the fall for the Crew. The Lynch clan barely survived.
Now I glance at Granny’s dresser, at a framed photo of Breagha and me, taken years before all that. We’re wearing matching white dresses with tights and Mary Janes. My skirt hasa grass stain and my shoes are scuffed and my copper-colored braids are half undone. Breagha’s golden curls form a perfect frame around her face.
