Page 109 of Her Irish Savage

I hold her green gaze, knowing not to blink. “I can. I’ve been Warlord in Philly. I’ll do it here for you.”

“But Braiden—” she says.

“Was a good boss. Things change. I haven’t been his man for more than three months now.”

All the color has left her face. She tries to lick her lips but stops. Her tongue must be too dry. “Patrick…” she whispers.

“What do you want me to do? Take an oath on a Bible neither of us believes in?”

When she doesn’t answer, I kneel in front of her. The kitchen tile is hard on my knees but I take her left hand, hold it between both of mine. “I’m yours, Fiona Ingram. I’m your Warlord, if you’ll have me.”

She puts her right hand on my bowed head. Her fingers tangle in my hair. “I’ll have you, Patrick Moran. Sweet God, I’ll have you.”

I bite off a groan as I push to my feet. I want to kiss her, butthis isn’t about her being my little girl. This has nothing to do with my being her Daddy. So I say, “Good. That’s settled. I’m getting Dowd.”

But Fiona shakes her head. “You can’t do it, either. Not before I’m Queen. Because to all those men in thedún, you’re still one of the Fishtown Boys. Some of them still believe Braiden killed my da. If you take out Da’s Clan Chief, they’ll come after you, and I’m not sure I have the power to stop them. Yet.”

“We’ll tell them what we know. Show them all this shite.” I wave vaguely toward the computer and all its records.

“And when someone puts a bullet through your skull before they’ve finished reading?”

I want her to be wrong. I want to say that I’m the one with bullets. I’ve got half a dozen weapons, and my own bare hands, and I’m taking down Aran Cocksucking Dowd.

But for now, she’s right. And I’m not sure I truly believe it, but she thinks she’ll be my Queen. So I might as well learn to give in when she issues a direct order.

“If you can’t do it,” I say. “And I can’t do it, then who is going to kill that motherfucking dry shite?”

“Keenan Rivers,” she says, like she’s just remembered the words to a song.

My belly turns sour. “Rivers?”

“He’s still the Old Colony Warlord, until a new captain is named. We’ll send the information to him—just the heart of it, the meat. We’ll show him what Uncle Aran’s done, and we’ll let him make the kill.”

I hate the solution. But it keeps Fiona from getting her pretty arse shot. And it keeps me alive for long enough to figure out how to get her on the Old Colony throne.

And Rivers knows how to make men suffer. I close off the picture in my mind, of Da tied to that chair in thedún’sbasement.

“Rivers,” I say.

In the end, we pull together five documents:

One: A letter from Dowd to Barbieri, written on a sheet of plain white paper, presented with an envelope showing the return address of his prison cell, asking for an in-person get-together to “come to a meeting of the minds.”

Two: A transcript from that meeting, where Dowd calls Kieran Ingram a “bog-jumping dry shite without the bollocks to lead three men in the St. Patrick’s Day parade”, along with Dowd’s promise to deliver the Old Colony Crew “on time and all complete so long as all state and federal charges are dropped.”

Three: A phone log from a burner phone, showing a long list of calls to Barbieri, along with a pair of texts to Dowd’s lieutenants—proof who owned the cell.

Four: A black-and-white photograph with a timestamp in the lower right corner, proving it was taken three weeks ago—Barbieri sitting across from Dowd in a restaurant booth, as the fat bearded fuck counts a wad of cash.

Five: A transcript from another in-person meeting between Dowd and Barbieri, the one where Dowd gives up the entire structure of the Crew. There’s a quote half-way through, Dowd responding to an FBI question: “No, goddammit. Pay attention.Riversis the Warlord. The chief enforcer. He’s signed off on every Old Colony hit in the past ten years.”

Fiona says, “Do we send it tonight? Or do we wait until after the Union meeting tomorrow?”

“No reason to wait,” I say.

I hand her a clean burner. She attaches the files. She has Rivers’ number; she checks it twice before she hits Send.

Both of us release a sigh once the documents are gone.

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