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I’d had this room soundproofed months ago—the moment I closed the door, she couldn’t hear shit from within its walls. Something she’d already bitched about.
Staring over at Manhattan at a height of a thousand feet, I trudged over to my desk, took a seat, then hit redial.
"About time you answered."
"Excuse me?" I seethed, taken aback by the attitude of this fucking stranger.
"I need you over here."
Eyes flashing, I rasped, "This isn’t Aidan Sr."
She scoffed, "I know it isn’t. He’s dead."
"Who the fuck are you? And, if you know he’s dead, why the hell are you calling my da’s cellphone in the early hours?"
"Because the early hours is when I do my best business, boy." She huffed. "He didn’t tell you about me?"
Dread lodged in my chest. "No. He didn’t."
There was a lot of shit he hadn’t told me.
A lot.
More than I could fucking handle.
God, not another girlfriend—
"I’m Grainne."
She pronounced it ‘Grah-nya.’ Because I preferred learning shit aurally to visually, I knew enough about Irish accents to know that was Ulster Irish. Northern Irish. From the Republic, it’d be ‘Grawn-ya.’
And that, of course, was when I remembered.
The hooker.
Fuck, I’d been… what? Thirteen?
Was this the same person?
How many ‘Grah-nyas’ were there in the tristate area?
"Grainne," I repeated slowly.
"Your father and I were business partners."
Business, not romantic?
I seriously didn’t think I could deal with Da cheating on top of all the other shit he’d been hiding.
"What kind of business?"
"Queens of Heart—"
"The strip club?" I blurted out.
The place was a landmark in a certain part of Hell’s Kitchen. I knew most of the men used it for shit they needed to confess to on Sunday mornings.
I’d been there myself as a kid when Da had decided I needed my cherry popped.
