Page 86 of Irish Vice

I’m about to weigh in when my phone rings. One glance atthe screen, and my heart tumbles into triple-time. I’m being haunted by a ghost.

But I didn’t read quickly enough. The phone doesn’t sayIngram, Kieran, and the ringtone isn’t “Sunday, Bloody Sunday”.

It’sIngram, Fiona.

Not a hell of a lot better.

But the girl’s just lost her da, and my ignoring her will only make things worse. And maybe, just maybe, she’s calling to make peace before I’m forced to go to war with the Boston clan.

Yeah. And leprechauns hand out gold at the end of the rainbow.

I cross to the curtained window and tap the screen. “Fiona.” I do my level best to scrub emotion from my voice.

“Your brother’s a fucking bastard.”

Christ. It’s taken something as disastrous as Ingram’s death to make me put Madden’s treachery on the back burner. Glancing over my shoulder at the map, I say, “Tell me something I don’t know.”

“He took it all,” she says. I realize her words sound thick. Slurred. Like she’s talking through swollen lips and a broken nose.

“Took what?”

“The milk run.”

“The money you two stole from me?”

“He beat me up,” she says, like that’s a reasonable apology.

My brother’s always been a shite to women. He started in ninth grade, bragging about Katie Monahan sucking him off beneath the bleachers. Her four brothers beat Madden to a pulp for ruining her reputation and then they turned on me, just for good measure. I’ve refused to get between Madden and his girls ever since—not my circus, not my feckin’ monkeys.

“I’m not your knight in shining armor,” I say.

Her snort sounds painful. “If you don’t kick his ass, my father will. And you’ll end up caught in the middle. Is your piece-of-shit brother worth burning every bridge to the Union?”

Jesus Christ. She doesn’t know her da is dead.

“Braiden…” Fiona says, and I hear something in her voice I’ve never heard before: Desperation.

My phone vibrates in my hand. I pull it away from my face just long enough to see that a text’s come in. It’s from Fiona.

I tap the screen, and it fills with a photo.

Her lip is split. Her nose is broken. There’s blood on her teeth, her lips, her chin. Her left eye is swelling closed, and a dark bruise blooms on her cheekbone.

“Christ, Fiona,” I finally say.

“Make him pay.”

I will. Because only an animal would do that to a woman.

And also because when Madden was beating the shite out of Fiona, he thought Kieran Ingram was still alive. He had to know the old man would hold me responsible for my brother’s violence. Ingram would make me feel every blow Fiona took.

I’m trying to decide if my brother will ever walk again, when Fiona starts to sob. “Please… Come get me, Braiden.”

I can’t have Fiona Ingram at Thornfield while I’m building a defense against her father’s men. Once she’s back on her feet, she’ll hate herself for making this call, for admitting human weakness. She’ll be a thousand times more dangerous than she’s ever been before.

But for now, her da’s dead. My brother beat her. I’m the one she called.

I swear under my breath, long enough that Patrick, Seamus, and Rory all look up from the map. I shake my head; they can’t fix this problem.