Page 51 of Irish Vice

“Ingram was there.”

“At the Diamond Ring meeting?” I’m astonished. Those monthly getaways are sacred. Only the freeport’s top billionaires attend Trap’s events.

“At the stadium.” Braiden lowers himself to the couch with enough care that I wonder if I should call Dr. Kelleher.

Braiden picks up the book I’ve been reading and returns it to my side. He picks at the fringe on a throw pillow. He looks out the window, as if he’s heard a car come down the driveway, and then he studies the bruises on his knuckles.

“What?” I finally ask. “What are you trying so hard not to tell me?”

He’s strong enough to look me in the eye. “Ingram gave me an ultimatum.”

My stomach swoops with a sickening twist. There’s nothing that old man could say that I want to hear.

Braiden holds my gaze. “I’m to marry Fiona by Easter.”

I answer without thinking. “Fuck Ingram. And fuck his ultimatum. What did you tell him?”

Braiden actually manages an exhausted smile. “Not that. But he knows I’ll not go along with his plan.”

I have a thousand questions. I want to know what Braidendidsay. I want to know who he fought. I want to know what happens to me when Ingram pushes back, because the old man will fight insubordination, tooth and nail.

And I want to know if Fiona’s known this was the plan all along.

But I settle for asking, “So what do we do?”

“Nothing, for now. Nothing till Easter.”

“And then?”

His hand cups my cheek. I want to lean into it, but I can’t allow myself that weakness.

“What happens then, Braiden?”

“Don’t worry about it,piscín.”

“I have to worry about it!”

But worry won’t change a thing. And there’s nothingIcan do. I can’t file a complaint in federal district court, demanding Ingram back off his claim. I can’t write a brief about Fiona, about all the ways she turns the Fishtown Boys upside down. There aren’t any statutes to apply or regulations to parse.

I’m helpless.

But I can turn my head, so my lips brush Braiden’s palm. I can stand beside the couch and wrap my fingers around his. I can lead him down the hall to his bedroom and find the arnica in the nightstand and rub some gel into the bruise around hiseye. When he hisses, I can tell him not to be a baby, and when he growls, I can laugh, because we both know he’s in no shape to make me stop.

I help him out of his clothes, and I pull the comforter up to his chin, same as he did with the duvet in the pool house. I tell him I’ll bring him something to eat, because it’s Sunday, and Fairfax has the day off. In the kitchen, I make a cup of tea, and I add extra butter to thick slices of toast, because I know he thinks toast and tea can make everything right.

But he’s sound asleep when I get back to our bedroom. I leave the food on his nightstand, even though it will be stone cold before he wakes to eat it. And then I go back to my murder mystery, wondering how long it will be before bodies start falling here at Thornfield.

20

SAMANTHA

Meals become fraught at Thornfield.

Fiona’s at breakfast every morning, glorying in a cup of coffee, refusing the food Braiden requires the rest of us to eat. It’s like she doesn’t hear Birte chanting her little rhymes. She doesn’t see Aiofe’s suspicious frowns. Fiona borrows sections from Braiden’s newspapers, turning pages too quickly to actually be reading. More than once, I catch her staring at me over the rim of her mug, eyebrows raised in silent study.

I miss lunch for an entire week.

On Monday, I’m down in Dover, working with Sonja Heller. The ethics board has issued another round of questions, focusing on my application to law school and my activities while taking classes in New York. After scorching my ears with a thorough dissection of the board members’ preferred sexual acts, Sonja fires off a letter of protest, saying the board has overstepped its bounds. She says we’ll likely lose that argument—theboard has virtually unlimited power to ask about my past. But at least we’ve delayed the process for a short while.