AllFreeNovel
Share Us
I’m about to suggest we shower and get breakfast when a knock sounds at the door. She turns to look at me. “Come in,” I say, figuring Fiona has already spread the word that I’m in here. Otherwise, nobody would bother.
Oisín enters the room, back to his annoyingly proper British self. “Sir, you have a visitor in your office. It’s your brother Kai.”
I fucking facepalm. He’ll have plenty to say about me doing last night’s job without him. It’s too early for this shit. My head throbs as I swing my legs over the edge of the bed. “Tell him I’ll be down in a second.”
“You’re squinting, sir. Should I get you something for the póite?” he asks, referring to my hangover.
“How very observant of you. Yes, if you wouldn’t mind.”
“Could I interest you in a full Irish breakfast too, sir? I wouldn’t know, but your father once said it was the best cure after a night of getting hammered.”
“A Guinness will do,” I say as I get out of bed.
“As you wish, sir.”
“I should have known you were drunk,” Aurora says as soon as he’s gone. She sits up and crosses her legs on the bed.
“Not another word, little bird. Have a shower, and I’ll meet you in half an hour for breakfast.”
She crosses her arms over her chest, but I’m not ready to talk about last night with her. I have another fire to extinguish in my office. Oisín passes me the beer as I reach the end of the stairs. He hasn’t mentioned it, but I know he has his own thoughts about last night.
Kai is pacing the length of my office when I enter. “What the fuck, man?” He starts before I even get a word out.
“You might want to calm the fuck down,” I warn, taking a swig of my beer. Brother or not, I will not allow anyone to disrespect me … especially in my home.
“Don’t pull that rank or big brother crap with me. You were off your tits last night and reckless.”
My siblings and I don’t speak much Irish slang, but when we do, more than likely it’s because we’re pissed. We get that from our father. His vocabulary was quite colorful when he was mad, and we always found it comical.
“Look, if this is about last night’s job, I took care of it.”
“Yes, it’s about last night’s job. Why do you think you have to keep doing things without me? I told you that I was all in. If something happens to you, where do you think it would leave our family, Lennon? We’d be picked off one by fucking one.”
“I’m trying to save your goddamn soul, Kai. The shite that our clan is involved in can weigh on you and bring you to a very dark place. Some of the lives I take are warranted, but sometimes it’s not—like last night. Those family members were guilty of nothing but being related to the wrong fucking rogue scumbags. Yet I couldn’t let them live. They were a threat to our family, and I will protect you all at all costs.”
“I get that, brother. It was necessary. You did what needed to be done, but you don’t have to do it alone. I surrendered my soul with eyes wide open the moment I transitioned to Clan Captain.”
“I hate this life for you and even more knowing that the timeline for our siblings are dwindling.”
“I know what you mean. Is that supposed to be the hair of the dog?” he asks, gesturing toward the beer in my hand.
“Something like that,” I answer.
He chuckles and then heads to my wet bar to pour us something stronger. I’m not really in the mood for whiskey, but he’ll need that drink more than I do when I tell him my news. I wait till he passes me the tumbler, and we both have a sip. I set the beer down on the desk in exchange for the liquor.
“So I do have other news,” I share. “I’ve been in touch with Eoghan.”
“Cousin Eoghan?”
“Yes. He is Clan Chief … been that way for the last year now. He reached out to me a few days ago.”
“What could he possibly want?”
Eoghan’s father, James, and our father were brothers. Their father, our grandfather, Lorcán, was the reason our father left their clan and moved to the United States. He met and fell in love with our Greek mother but was forbidden to marry her. Marriage was arranged between him and an Irish woman of another powerful Irish Clan. Our father had forsaken his duty in the name of love and was disowned for it. As children, we were taught the history of our family and shown pictures of our parents' old lives, but that is as far as the connection extended. Our mother chose our father over her family too. We wrote both sides off long ago. It was their loss if they didn’t want to know us. I wasn’t expecting the call I got from Eoghan, so I was surprised to learn that our father had been in touch with him before he died. With our father out of the picture, James took over the reins about twelve years later. He and our father never made amends. James blamed our father for abandoning his family for a woman. James was just as ruthless as our father and made many enemies, but cancer ended his life. Even with him dead, their clan’s reach is of the same power as Matteo—the strongest and most feared.
“Our uncle James died a year ago. Eoghan had been in touch with our father just before he died, hence how he got my number. Father had no interest in returning to Dublin although Eoghan tried. He was even willing to step down and let our father claim his rightful place, but our father declined.”
“Does he know that Father is dead … murdered?”
