Page 93 of Irish Vice

The child drops to her knees as if Madden’s already pulled his trigger. Clutching her stuffed rabbit like it’s some sort of heavenly angel or maybe a bulletproof vest, she scramble-crawls toward Samantha.

I do my best to cover her escape. Hollering like one of the banshees that haunted my granny’s dreams, I leap from the shadows into the main room. My arms come up fast. My knees lock. I’m ready to kill Madden with a single shot.

But he fires first.

The bullet goes wide, because my brother never bothered with the hard work of building up skills. He’s never invested a minute on a firing range. He’s weak and he’s wild, and he staggers back until his shoulders are braced against the wall.

Pinned by his own retreat, he shifts his focus like he’s driving a road filled with potholes. His pistol twitches toward the nearestsofa. Samantha’s taken shelter behind the green leather; I can hear her comforting a weeping Aiofe. Madden flips his gun toward me, aiming at my head, my heart, then back again to my head. His wrists snap, and he’s focused behind me, which makes me realize Seamus has my back.

I barely shift my chin toward the man I can trust. “Stand down,” I order. Seamus hesitates, but only for a moment. I hear him take a step back and I imagine he’s lowered his weapon.

Madden’s focus is back on me.

I couldn’t shoot him while Samantha played him like a star witness. Most men shot in the head drop like butchered hogs, dead before they hit the ground. But some—all it takes is one—convulse as they die. I couldn’t chance Madden sending a bullet into Aiofe’s brain.

He deserves to die for sending that fecker after Samantha. Hell, he was destined for one of my bullets the instant he put a gun to Aiofe’s head. After the photo Fiona sent, I’d even do it for her.

But Madden’s done more than threaten the women under my protection. He went to Russo. He sold me out in the Philadelphia port. He schemed to break the Fishtown Boys.

Madden shouldn’tdiefor that.

He should suffer.

I would take him to the basement of the Hare and Harp and string him up over the grate in the cold tile floor, but his guinea friend burned the Hare to the ground.

I would lock him in the trunk of Russo’s blood-red Huracán and set fire to the car, but I ruined the Lambo with a baseball bat after Madden failed to steal it from his goombah boss’s garage.

I would tie my brother up in the safe room here and let the Boys go at him one by one, but Donovan O’Keefe was one of my Boys, and he burned to death before my very eyes. Donny’ll never get revenge for Madden selling out to Russo, so it’s up to me to settle the account.

Madden’s one shot filled the room with the sharp tang of a match that’s just been lit. I long to add to that, squeezing off shot after shot, pulverizing his wrists and shattering his kneecaps, standing over his writhing body and blowing away his bollocks.

So I lie. “Set down your gun, and we can talk like men.”

Madden is a traitor. He’s lazy and he’s cruel. But he was raised beside me, both of us at Da’s right hand. My brother knows I’ll never let him off that easy. “You’ll kill me,” he says.

“I won’t.” I lie again.

“Let’s set them down together,” he bargains.

“You’re in my house,deartháir.You follow my rules here. Drop your fucking gun.”

I’m braced for him to fire at me. I half expect him to point his weapon toward the green couch that’s shielding Samantha and Aiofe. But I’m surprised when he takes the coward’s way out, pressing his gun to his own head, leveling the muzzle just above his ear.

“No!” I roar, because I want to be the one to take the shot. I don’t want him stealing this last prize from me.

He flinches and pulls the trigger.

44

SAMANTHA

Ashot fires, and Braiden bellows again, and a body falls to the floor. Aiofe’s trembling beneath me like a rabbit cowering in its burrow. I know I should stay hidden, but I can’t, not after I hear the clatter of a gun kicked across the room.

Braiden’s standing over his brother. Madden is twitching, flailing, making a horrible noise that’s part scream, part gurgle, part moan. His cheek is a mass of bloody splinters, his nose reduced to a bleeding hole.

Braiden presses the barrel of his gun against his brother’s shoulder. “You couldn’t even do that right, shitehawk,” he says. “Count to three,deartháir, and then we’ll start to dance.”

“Stop!”