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Four
Brennan
“Where’s your mind at, Bren?”
I tried not to yawn, especially not at the moment when Ma was scowling down at me, because she had the uncanny knack of reading every cue I gave off with an accuracy that was practically mystical.
If I yawned, she’d think I was stressed. Not tired.
If I shivered, she’d think I was feverish. Not cold.
And the bitch of it was, as crazy as it seemed, as nonsensical, she never got it wrong. I didn't know if that was because we were close or whatever, but she always knew.
My yawn might be founded in a lack of sleep, but mostly it was forged from stress.
The last month or so had not only been a nightmare on the work front but on a personal front. Especially when the past and present were colliding and not in a very helpful way.
My regrets were coming home to roost.
In more ways than one.
I’d made it a practice not to regret much in my life. As a general in the Irish Mob, there was plenty to turn me maudlin, but Mariska was a memory that was pretty much laying eggs in my fucking head.
Of late, the family had been turning to me with all their problems, because Aidan Jr. was out of it. I’d always been the go-to fixer, slapping Band-Aids on situations left, right, and center, but that was nothing to now.
Not when we were knee deep in a war with fucking ghosts.
“I’m just tired.”
Ma sniffed at me. Lena might be nearing seventy but she was as shrewd as ever. “Pull the other one. I won’t tell your Da. You know that.”
I winced. “It’s nothing to do with work. Anyway, we’re not supposed to talk about shit like that.”
She rolled her eyes. “I know more than your father would like.”
“More than any of us would like. The last thing we want is you in danger.”
Her shrug had me frowning at her. “I lived far longer than I ever expected I would.”
The irritating thing was, I knew this had nothing to do with the reason she and I were closer than most mothers and sons.
That was what happened after what we’d gone through together. Instead of blaming me for being a shit son, she’d taken me under her wing, and showed me I wasn’t. She’d had faith in me and the promise I’d made her, unlike Da who trusted me with business but who’d never trusted me with her again.
Still, she wasn’t talking about that.
Just the fact she was Aidan O’Donnelly’s obsession. His weakest link. The reason he’d trigger a war the likes of which New York had never seen before.
One that made the current pissing match between the Italians and the Russians look like two kids involved in a fistfight on a playground.
“Sorry, Ma,” I said gruffly.
“You don’t have to be.” She tilted her head to the side, then leaned over to cup my cheek. “Takes more than bloodshed and bullshit to make those shadows appear under your eyes. Are they to do with Junior?”
I frowned at her. “No. Why would it be about him?”
Contrary to what Da thought, the world didn’t revolve around his heir.
I loved Aidan Jr. but I resented the preferential treatment he got when I was the one doing all the fucking work. Da had never really forgiven me for what the Aryans did to Ma though, and it was a constant uphill struggle with him sometimes.
