Page 16 of Irish Brute

“It’s my job to worry.”

“Itwasyour job,” I say. “Now, your job is pouring watered-down booze for yer man.”

“And you think whatever scheme you’re cooking up will all play out better than your first wedding day?”

Fuck.

Samantha Mott doesn’t know about my first wife. No one does, stateside. No one but Brennan O’Rourke.

I met Birte in a Dublin pub seven years ago, when Da sent me to Ireland on Fishtown business. She was fresh up from CountyCork, with laughing eyes, a pretty smile, and sass that went on for weeks.

I fell hard the first night she handed me a Guinness. Harder, because she let me kiss her, let me touch the goods, but she wouldn’t come to bed without a ring on her finger.

Da would never approve. Marriages are for dynasties, not love.

So I took Birte back to County Cork within the fortnight. I planned to marry her, bed her, and bring her back to Philadelphia. Da couldn’t do anything after a priest made it official.

I put my ring on her finger. I said all the words. I never dreamed the attack would come so soon, and from her brother, too. The father of the ring-bearer, of the sweet little flower-girl. He couldn’t bear the thought of Birte going to America with a criminal like me.

My wedding day ended with death and madness, with Birte’s borrowed wedding gown soaked in innocent blood.

So I’m not doing it again, not really getting married. I can’t. I need a priest like Father Brennan. A man defrocked for emptying St. Columba’s building fund to pay the hundred grand he owed me for high-stakes poker games.

I tighten my jaw and say to my former confessor, “I know it will.”

“You and your bride have worked your pre-cana?”

“We’re fine,” I say, because Samantha Mott and I have no need of the church’s marriage preparation classes. Pre-cana wouldn’t have spared Birte.

“You’ve had the banns read?” O’Rourke pushes.

I snort. We both know the church’s ancient announcements have been optional for decades. I say, “Be at St. Columba’s next Wednesday. Three o’clock.”

“And the church is just going to open its doors and invite me in.”

“The church will look the other way for one of its most generous donors.” I point a thumb at myself. “New roofs don’t come cheap.”

“And did St. Columba’s need a new roofbeforeyou needed a sham wedding?”

I answer honestly. “You don’t want to know the answer to that.”

His jaw sets, making him look even more tired. “And if I say no?”

He wants me to threaten him. He wants to believe he doesn’t have a choice. But I just shake my head and say, “Fifty thousand dollars.”

He closes his eyes and his lips move in a silent prayer. I don’t know if he’s asking for forgiveness or for some sort of divine intervention. But no lightning bolts rain down, and not a single angel appears out of the shadows.

“Father Brennan?” I push.

He grimaces, but he opens his eyes. “God have mercy on your soul.”

I slide off the stool. “Until Wednesday, then. Dress the part.”

The door slams closed behind me as I head back out to the street. My foot catches on a slick of ice, and I wrench my knee keeping my balance. A neon sign in the window behind me reflects on the snowbank beside the curb—blood-red letters melting into white—and for just a moment I’m back on the steps of a country church in County Cork, making the biggest mistake of my life.

I blink, and the blood isn’t on Birte’s dress. The blood is on my arm, in my hair, soaking through my St. Ann’s uniform shirt.

That’s why my arm itches. Some broken twist in my brain says Samantha is Birte is old Sister Mary Margaret. AntonioRusso is Birte’s murderous brother is the bad man with a gun at old St. Ann’s.