Page 26 of Her Irish Savage

“What does that—” But he doesn’t wait for me to finish my question before he comes around to open my door.

It’s time.

Well past time, based on Moran’s original plan for us to arrive by five. It’s nearly 6:30. Other guests will be here soon. That’s fine. It won’t take me long to establish that I’m in control.

As if they’ve already accepted me as their captain, the guards don’t lay a finger on me, though they give Moran a thorough patting down. He submits, jaw locked, eyes riveted to the front door. I don’t know who breathes easier once we’re allowed inside—him, me, or the soldiers who don’t have to fight him.

The fireplace is cold in the parlor, framing a massive casket on a draped stand. The coffin is made out of mahogany, so polished that it reflects the room. The top half is propped open to reveal its white silk lining. A velvet-lined kneeler waits for my prayers.

From here, I can just glimpse my father’s body. His eyes are closed. His hands are crossed on his chest, his fingers twisted around a rosary I never saw him hold in life. Someone has worked over his face with makeup, adding pink to his sallow flesh. His hair is combed with a perfection he would have hated.

They say the dead look like they’re sleeping. They’re wrong.

My father is gone. There’s nothing but a shell inside that casket. Nothing but a symbol, waiting for someone—forme—to acknowledge, so we can all move into the future.

“Fiona! Darlin’! We weren’t expectin’ ya till seven!”

Uncle Aran enters from the door that leads to the hallway, to Crew offices and the stairs that head to the second floor. I know thedúnlike I know the lines on my own hand. I’m surprised by how good it feels to be home.

I assume Uncle Aran is playing up his Irish brogue to impress the handful of Old Colony soldiers who follow him into the room. He usually saves the County Mayo shit for when he’s seriously drunk.

Give him credit, though. He’s dressed for the occasion—a fine black suit, complete with a well-cut waistcoat. He’s wearing his Old Colony tie, deep emerald green with gold emblems of the Liberty Tree scattered among matching shamrocks. His full beard is so white it looks powdered, which makes his red-veined nose seem even larger than it actually is.

He glances at Moran, who is standing behind me, silent as a stone wall. Something tightens in my uncle’s face, or maybe it’s his throat, or the hand he raises to draw me forward. He recovers, though, before I can be sure of what he’s thinking. “Come raise a glass,” Uncle Aran says. “T’ yer dear, departed da!”

Someone’s moved the furniture out of this front room, the matching armchairs that were decades old before I was born and the sagging couch with its tired floral print preserved beneath crinkling plastic. Instead, a table’s been set up against the far wall. It’s draped in black cloth and covered with crystalglasses, Da’s best Waterford tumblers. Whiskey bottles stand sentry at the back.

Uncle Aran is generous, pouring my father’s twelve-year-old Jameson. I wonder if that’s what the Crew are drinking, the men hovering by the hallway door. No one pours for Moran. I’m about to correct the oversight when Uncle Aran cries out: “To Kieran!”

He touches his glass to mine. The toast is echoed by the Crew. All of us drink.

And before I can bring Moran into the circle, a ghost steps out of the crowd. “Fiona,” he says.

Of course it’s not really a ghost. It’s Keenan Rivers. My father’s Warlord, chief of all his enforcers.

Rivers clears six feet easy, maybe six foot three. He’s thin as a whip—narrow shoulders, narrow waist—but he has all the coiled strength of a snake. His eyes are the sharp blue of a winter sky, and I can’t remember a time his stick-straight hair wasn’t ice white. He wears it long, pulled into a club at the nape of his neck.

He terrifies me. He always has. But I’m going to be his captain now, so I pretend my blood hasn’t frozen in my veins.

“Keenan,” I say.

He looks past me and sniffs, like I’ve tracked in dogshit on my shoe. “Cujo,” he says to Moran, raising his glass in greeting. “Come to check if anyone’s bleeding out in the basement?”

I have no idea what Rivers is talking about. But before Moran can finish bristling and shoot off some smart reply, Rivers says to me, “Send your dog to the kitchen.”

Now’s a perfect time to take a stand, to let the Old Colony Crew know there’s a new boss in thedún. I pull myself to my full height, grateful for the extra four inches of stiletto that bring me closer to Rivers’ eye level. “His name is Patrick Moran,” I say, pitching my voice to be heard all the way to the second floor. “And I’m not sending him anywhere.”

“No Moran is welcome in this house.” Rivers says it like I’ve forgotten how to multiply, or maybe how to write in cursive.

Before I can answer, Moran steps up. He’s as tall as Rivers and broader across the shoulders, across the waist too. His dark eyes meet Rivers’ blue ones, obsidian chipping the sky. “I’m Warlord for the Fishtown Boys now,” Moran says. “My captain sends condolences on your loss.”

“Yourcaptain,” Rivers spits out the word like a piece of gristle. “Is the reason we’re gathered here today.”

“With all due respect,” Moran says, which means with none at all. “We’re here because your man smoked three packs a day.”

“With all due respect,” Rivers counters with the bite of a sudden cold snap. “You’ll give my King his proper title in his owndún. You used to know that, Cujo. Have you forgot how men behave?”

“Go to feckin’ hell.” Moran says it casually, like he’s commenting on the weather.

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