Page 64 of Irish Vice

But Samantha… I call her, and I’m not surprised when I drop into her voicemail. I try her work phone, too. Voicemail, again. I try her landline in Dover, which is ridiculous, because she hasn’t had time to get there, even if that’s her destination. When Mary answers, I ask her to have Samantha call. I say it’s urgent.

After that, I have to wait.

I pick up my speed—not because I think that will get Samantha home faster, but because that requires a faster reaction time. My brain has to focus on something other than all the possible threats to my wife’s safety.

It works.

By the time I weave through the reporters and sign-carrying eejits at Thornfield’s front gate, my mind is calm. I’ve left behind that feeling of helpless urgency. I’m back to being a Captain, to making the hard decisions no one else can make.

It’s not until I sit behind my office desk that I realize Madden never returned my call.

25

SAMANTHA

This morning, I told Braiden that Fiona wasn’t the problem.

I was wrong.

Fiona arrived the first day Birte was out of the attic. That made it difficult to calculate how much household chaos could fairly be attributed to Braiden’s first wife and what belonged on Fiona’s own doorstep.

But those leather outfits… That constant smirk… The never-ending sexual energy she brought to everything from breakfast to business meetings… From the first moment Fiona crossed Thornfield’s gate, she did her utmost to undermine me.

There once was a whore, wore a collar…

This isn’t a mob thing. It’s awomanthing. Fiona wants my man, and she’ll stop at nothing—even immature, threatening limericks—to get him.

I refuse to let her win.

When I’m an hour outside of Boston, I pull into a rest stop.With the car engine running, I take out my phone and call up Lexis-Nexis, a legal research app I use every day at the office.

Lexis can tell me a lot about individuals. I can find out if someone owns a car, boat, or plane. I can track down their driver’s license number and their passport number. I can locate outstanding judgments and liens, along with any bankruptcies they might have filed. And I can find a home address.

All I need to do is lie.

The system asks if I have a legitimate need to know the information I seek. There’s a long list of justifications, but none applies to my current situation. I don’t hesitate before I tap the button that says I’m a law enforcement officer.

I’m accepting a wide range of penalties if I’m caught, but five minutes later, I have a home address for Fiona and Kieran Ingram.

Plugging the information into a map, I discover it’s a massive three-story home taking up half a city block in South Boston. That makes sense. Southie has been an Irish-Catholic neighborhood for ages. Just the type of place an Irish Mob boss would frequent.

I tap the screen on my phone and follow turn-by-turn directions to the Ingram family home.

Growing up in Philadelphia, I lived in the shadow of Antonio Russo’s sprawling downtown compound. I’ve spent the past four months at Braiden’s suburban mansion. I understand mobsters’ strongholds. But the Ingram family home is something completely different.

The street looks like any other road in Southie—narrow, well-worn, with clapboard houses sagging on their foundations as if they’re too exhausted to stand straight any longer. On most blocks, cars are parked nose to tail, so close together they look like they’ve been lifted into place with a crane.

But one block is different. There are no cars on the street. A couple of kids slouch on the corner, shoulders slumped, hands in their pockets. They look young enough for junior high. Iwonder if school has already let out for the day, or if they’re playing hooky.

Two grown men stand on either side of the Ingrams’ front door. Massachusetts must be an open-carry state—these guys make no attempt to hide their shoulder holsters or the textured grips of their handguns. They’re wired, too, with visible plastic earpieces hinting at easily summoned reinforcements.

The thugs stare at me as I drive past the dark gray house. I keep my eyes on the road, but I get a vague impression of slicked-back hair a couple of decades out of date and determined jaws just begging someone, anyone, to say the wrong thing.

Two more dropouts hunch against the lamppost at the far corner. One of them whistles—at me or at the Mercedes, I can’t be sure. His buddy cuffs him hard across the back of his head.

It takes me two blocks to find legal parking, and then I’m grateful for the Mercedes’ smooth power steering. I nail the space with less than an inch to spare. It feels wrong to leave the car here, unattended, but I don’t have a choice.

My fingers have just closed on the grip of my briefcase when my phone rings. Glancing at the screen, I’m not surprised to see Braiden’s name. He’s already called two dozen times, precisely on each quarter hour, the entire time I drove north.