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My father was going to kill me.
6
“You took your sweet-ass time, Kiernan.” Seamus tilted his head back, leaning slightly in his chair as I approached, sensing my heavy footsteps against the worn wooden floor. We’d been trained since we were young to always be on alert. To look. Listen. Feel. Honing the senses that could easily save our lives.
And they had.
“Got a beer for you.” He was sitting at one of the small tables near the bar, my father casually sitting across from him. It was still early, nearly seven in the morning. We’d spent the entire evening cleaning up our mess in the alley. We hadn’t gotten back to the bar until nearly five. They both had towels draped over one shoulder, their shirts dotted with wetness. They’d been hard at work. Lucky for all of us that the bar was closed tonight. We never opened on Sundays unless it was for family.
One thing our father had instilled in us growing up was the reward of family and hard work. And the understanding that a leader didn’t just watch from the sidelines while his people did the work. He got his hands dirty. He dug in.
“If you humble yourself to your people, they will be more apt to follow you when trouble brews. Our community is our family, and we treat family with honor and respect. We don’t demand respect like other families might. It is earned, and you must earn it from those who have your back.”
“We have a problem,” I mumbled, taking the empty seat next to my brother. Seamus and my father frowned, waiting for me to continue. I gulped down half my beer and leaned back in my chair, a ragged sigh escaping me.
Fuck.
“Do leave us in suspense, brother,” Seamus drawled dramatically.
I ran a hand down my face, groaning as I thought about how I planned to word the shitshow we’d gotten ourselves into.
“I don’t think the girl is lying about being stranded,” I started. “Patrick confirmed her car had indeed stalled. But from the looks of it, it was tampered with.”
“Tampered with or meant to look like it had been?” my father asked.
“I honestly believe she was just in the wrong place at the wrong time,” I told him. “From what I could make out from her text messages, she caught her fiancé cheating on her. Drove somewhere to get away, stalled in our parking lot, and drank her weight in whiskey.”
“That the bad news?” Seamus arched his brow.
“Bridg gave me her background details.”Shit. Father was going to murder us. “Bailey Jameson is the adopted daughter of Senator Richard Crowe.”
My father snarled at the senator’s name.
It wasn’t a secret in the underground that Richard Crowe had a hard-on for trying to send my father to jail. Him and the rest of the mafiosos in the city. He fancied himself a white knight. A Harvey Dent, but he was no better than any of us. In some ways, he was much worse.
The only difference between the criminal empire and him was that he presented himself like a fucking king. Royalty. Untouchable. The dark truth of who was hidden behind the façade of the wealthy businessman. His hands were only clean because he paid others to do his dirty work.
“We need to come up with a plan,” my father murmured. “Find out how close she is to her father. What she knows. Maybe we can use her as a bargaining chip.”
“You think she knows anything?” Seamus asked. “She may be his daughter, but there is no guarantee she knows anything useful. Hell, we didn’t even know he had a second daughter.”
Seamus had a point. How the hell had we missed that Crowe had another daughter, or that there had been a union between him and Knight? It didn’t feel right.
“She has to know something,” I interjected. “From what I gathered, her stepmother is pissed at her for leaving her fiancé. Apparently, their marriage is a large opportunity for him.”
“Do we know why?” Father questioned.
“Not the particulars,” I admitted with a small shrug. “But we know who. That’s the other bad news.”
“Just what we need,” Seamus muttered, polishing off the rest of his beer.
I took a deep breath. “Her fiancé, Drew Knight, is the son of Magnus Knight.”
“Well, shit.” Seamus whistled.
“That definitely changes some things,” my father mused, stroking his two-day stubble. “One thing is for sure, though.” He looked up at me with an amused smirk. “You’re going to have to work on your makeup game with that shiner you’re sporting. I suggest heavy concealer.”
Seamus, the fucker, howled with laughter at my father’s dig. I shot him a glare, my hand coming out to smack the back of his head. Little shithead.
