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“Maybe they have.” Shay shrugged. “Mom never said anything when I texted her about Uncle Conor. Anyway, she’s used to me coming back home a little bruised up.”
Conor straightened up at that. “You were bullied in your old school?”
“No. From training. I fight hard on the field.” He winced. “I don’t know why. I guess I just get angry sometimes.”
“Because you’re an O’Donnelly,” I drawled. “That’s all we bastards know how to do—fight hard or fuck off home.” With a final squeeze to his shoulder, I pulled back. “I ain’t doing shit without Declan’s approval. Conor, you can be the cool uncle, or you can be the castrated one when he finds out you’re teaching Shay to fight.”
Conor grimaced, sending Shay an apologetic glance before mournfully telling him, “I do like my dick where it is.”
My nephew heaved a sigh. “Dad might want to stop me.”
“Why would he want that? We all grew up the same way—using our fists.” I scraped a hand over my jaw. “What started the fight? And don’t BS me, there’s always a trigger.”
He ducked his head. “They were talking smack about the family.”
Conor and I shared a look. “People always talk smack about the family,” I informed him softly. “You’ll just have to get used to that.”
“Until you’re old enough to beat the fuck out of anyone who dares without the threat of being grounded,” Conor chimed in.
“I wasn’t having them saying that my mom was an Irish mob slut,” he retorted heatedly. “Those pricks are barracudas. When they scent blood, that’s it, they’re in for the kill. I had to nip it in the bud.”
“I thought you were all excited about the place?” I questioned, taking a seat on Conor’s coffee table. “Thought you were all about making connections so you can be President one day. You can’t do that if you beat up every fucker who talks shit about us. They’re all up each other’s asses for a reason.”
“He has a point, Shay,” Conor confirmed. “We gotta think of the White House.”
My lips twitched at Conor—we all humored Shay, knowing the kid didn’t have a snowball in hell’s chance of becoming President with his ties to the Irish Mob, but Conor? Nope. He wasn’t about to let our nephew think he couldn’t have everything his heart desired.
Conor rubbed his chin as Shay shot us both a defeated look. “We could drain their trust funds.”
Shay’s eyes widened. “You can do that?”
“Con,” I muttered, a warning note in my voice.
“It’d only be for a little while,” was his defensive reply. “I wouldn’t spend any of it. It’s not technically stealing if you give it back.”
The mental note to never let my kids anywhere near cool uncle Con became a permanent fixture in my memory banks...
And that was how I spent the afternoon of my wedding day, plotting how to ‘redistribute’ the trust funds of the bastards who’d been talking smack about our family.
It was about seven when I finally got Shay to come back home with me. It was evident he wasn’t looking forward to telling Aela that he’d gotten into a fight, but I figured Declan would come to his defense. I’d already shot him off a couple of messages, explaining the status quo, and while he wasn’t happy about encouraging his kid to engage in illegal online activity, he hadn’t said no.
In Manhattan, the O’Donnellys were both revered and feared. It was a strange mixture, really. A delicate balance. Socialites wanted to wed us for our cash and our power, but their fathers were more aware of who and what we were. What we did.
That didn’t mean they weren’t in business with us, because that would be bullshit.
They were.
We were all up to our necks in it; we just weren’t hypocrites is all and married among our own.
“It’ll be all right, kid,” I told Shay after we pulled up outside his building.
“Will it?” He shot me a look as he reached for the door handle. “If they talk smack about Mom again, I won’t—”
I reached over to clap him on the back. “Every son should defend his ma. That’s right. The natural order of things.”
He frowned. “Is it? One second they were dissing her, the next they were calling me a momma’s boy.”
“Nothing wrong with that either,” I said gruffly. “To them, being a momma’s boy means that a kid actually gets attention from their mother. They ain’t being shoved off to a nanny, and only get a kiss and a gift at Christmas before their cun—” I cleared my throat. “Before their egg donors tail off to Aspen for the winter.” I winked at him. “The next time they call you that, hit ‘em where it hurts.”
