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She sat down, trying to put her finger on the dread in her stomach. The Cat was a safe space for Seamus’s operation, a place he owned lock, stock, and barrel. The people of Southie always treaded carefully around him, but no place was more completely his turf than the Cat. And yet there was an unfamiliar tension in the air, the men around the table grim-faced and quiet at the one place they usually let down their guard.
“Get you a drink?” Seamus asked.
“No, thanks. I can’t stay long.”
He picked up a stack of hundred dollar bills and put them into an envelope marked Big Billy H. “What’s the word on Dougie here?”
Bridget looked at Doug. “The DA is willing to plead you down to petty larceny. You’ll still do thirty days because of your record, but it’s a good deal.”
“Can you do thirty days, Dougie?” Seamus asked without looking up from the pile of cash.
Doug grinned. “No problem, boss. Just a little paid vacation.”
“That’s what I like to hear,” Seamus said. “I’ll send word to Eamon, let him know to expect you on the inside.”
“Thanks,” Doug said.
“You’ll take care of the details?” Seamus asked Bridget.
She swallowed her distaste. This wasn’t why she’d gone to law school. “Of course.”
He nodded approvingly. “You’re a good girl. You always have been.” Seamus reached for a stack of already-full envelopes and flipped through them until he came to the one he wanted. He removed it from the stack and looked at her, his blue eyes sharp. “Assuming you want to continue with our prior arrangement?”
“If that’s all right.” She had to choke out the words. Every week she got deeper into debt with Seamus O’Brien. The money from Nolan’s mother was gone long ago, and the money Seamus paid Bridget for her legal work, while significant, just wasn’t enough to make the copays on Owen’s meds and physical therapy and to provide for experimental treatments that weren’t covered by their insurance.
Seamus had offered to solve the problem by fronting her an extra five hundred a week, an amount that compounded at a startling rate with the interest that was part of the bargain.
“Of course it is,” Seamus said, holding out the envelope.
For a split second she considered standing up and walking away. She imagined going home to her parents and telling them everything, letting the chips fall where they may.
But of course, she would never do that to Owen.
She took the envelope. “Thank you.”
Seamus smiled. “Anything for you, lass.”
She tried not to think about how she was going to pay back all the money she owed him. Tried not to think about how far he would go to collect, about the stories she’d heard from her father about Seamus’s reputation in Ireland, about some of the things he’d done to people in their own neighborhood and the girls who worked for him at the Playpen, a strip club on Lagrange Street that was reported to offer more than lap dances by women like her with debts to pay.
Paying back the money was a different problem for a different day.
“Is there anything else I can do to help?” she asked. She was eager to leave, to be outside on the street where she could breathe freely, where Will’s eyes weren’t burning a hole in her back with unspoken questions, where she didn’t feel the weight of her predicament and the choices she’d already made.
“Not now,” Seamus said. “But I might need you again soon.”
“Everything all right?”
He took a drag on his cigarette and studied her through the smoke. “Time will tell, lass. Time will tell.”
She hesitated, wondering if she was imagining the tension in his voice, wanting to ask more and deciding it would be a bad idea.
She nodded and stood. “Let me know if you need me.”
“You do the same.” There was something dark in his words: a promise hopelessly intertwined with a threat.
She settled her bag on her shoulder and started for the door, her gaze meeting Will’s in the split second before he looked away, his eyes shaded with something that looked like worry but might have been disappointment.
The expression haunted her as she made her way to the front door. Had Will told Nolan about her work with Seamus? Did Nolan care? Did he pity her? Or did he consider their failed relationship a bullet dodged, Bridget another loser from Southie who would have only dragged him down?
