Page 9 of Irish Brute

Sweet Jesus.

He only says these things out loud because he knows he can’t be caught. The men standing behind him don’t even blink; they don’t shift their weight. I’m powerless here. Trapped by a madman.

“I told Elisabetta,” he says. “And now I’m telling you. We will be married tonight, in the church of Santa Caterina.”

“I can’t marry you!”

“Get your things,” he says, as if I haven’t spoken. “One suitcase will suffice. You and Elisabetta are nearly the same size. You can wear her clothes, once you’re home.”

I’m a lawyer, not a doormat. I need to make an argument he can understand. One he can accept, that gives him a way to back down in front of his men.

“I’m not a virgin. Your wife must be pure.”

He purses his lips and makes a dismissive sound. “My first wife was chaste when we wed, and see where I am now. This time, I will take a used cow. One that knows the road home.”

For all the emotion in his voice, he honestly might be talking about livestock, or maybe a second-hand car. He stares at me, his chin carved out of limestone, his eyes shadowed like stagnant pools.

“I can’t,” I whisper. “I won’t.”

“You will,” he says. “Or I will send a man to Gateshead Court. Your old nanny, Bettina, she still lives there. She has arthritis in her hands and knees. She’s slow to move. She’ll be an easy target.”

Bettina was the only adult in that house who ever had a smile for me, who ever spoke a kind word. I know he’ll kill her without blinking. But still, I have to fight. “You’re bluffing,” I say.

His lips twitch as he shakes his head. “You always were a spirited girl. I will tame that soon enough.”

He reaches into his breast pocket. For one heart-stopping moment, I think he’s going for a gun, but he pulls something even more dangerous.

A phone.

He taps the screen, placing a call through the speaker.

“Boss?” says an unknown man.

“Go to the Canna house on Gateshead Court. In thirty minutes, shoot the old woman who lives in the basement apartment. Take her kneecaps before you kill her. Make it hurt.”

“On my way, Boss.”

The strangled sound in my throat used to contain words.

Don Antonio returns the phone to his pocket. “Once you and I are on the road, I will call him off. So are you taking any personal possessions? The roads are bad, and we must be at Santa Caterina’s by sunset. We leave in five minutes.”

4

BRAIDEN

Samantha’s condo. Samantha’s rules.

I can accept some boyo pounding the door. God knows I’ve been the drunk man before, the one who lost his keys.

I can put up with an arrogant fecker pushing his way in where he clearly isn’t wanted. I didn’t become Captain of the Fishtown Boys without throwing my weight around often enough.

I can even tolerate some shitehawk making Samantha Mott stutter like a lost schoolgirl. She’s a grown woman who’s made plenty of choices in her life, and some are bound to come back to haunt her.

But the prick out there is bragging about shoving a gun up his own wife’s cunt. And he just put out a kill order on a helpless old woman.

I can stand a lot, but a man has his limits.

As I get to the living room, the jackeen with the itchy trigger finger is looking at a ten-thousand-dollar watch. “Four minutes,” he says.