Page 29 of Her Irish Savage

A closet with a feckin’ king-size bed. But a closet, all the same.

What the hell is she thinking, making promises like that in front of a pack of yokes who’d gladly see her dead and buried? Or married off to make peace among the clans? Or forgotten altogether, because she’s just a girl, and not one of the men present thinks she can ever be a real threat?

I can’t make her take back the words. And standing here won’t get her any closer to finding ten million dollars.

For a moment, I think about offering her my arm. But the last thing she needs is for the Crew to see her leaning on aFishtown man, especially when rumors still run sharp that my boss killed her da.

So I settle for shouldering a path through the room, slow enough that she can follow.

Head high. Eyes straight ahead.

She listens to me. She even folds her fingers into fists, like she’ll beat down any man who hints this is her last time inside thedún.

The road in front of the gray clapboard building is lined with vehicles now, the usual rule about clear streets set aside for the wake. A pair of Boston’s finest makes their way down the sidewalk, snapping photos of license plates.

They spend extra time at the gate to thedún’sside yard, getting the number for a black Cadillac Escalade. One of them starts to test the driver’s door, but his buddy calls him back, reminds him they don’t have a warrant. They turn back to the street.

They don’t bother with the car on the corner, on the opposite side of the street. From here, I can make out two people sitting inside the dirty gray sedan—a man and a woman, both wearing dark suits with shirts so white they shine like flashlights.

They could be mobbed-up guests, finishing a conversation before they honor the dead man inside thedún. They could be real estate agents, making a late-night survey of Southie properties for prospective clients. They could be tourists, straying way off the beaten track for Boston nightlife.

But in my bones, I know they’re feds.

I saw a car like that parked outside my da’s house, long before I knew what he’d done. Suits like that. Agents like that. Not afraid to be seen. Not afraid to let the mob know someone’s under investigation.

The FBI got my da killed in the basement of the building behind us.

Who the fuck am I kidding? Da got himself killed. No one forced him to turn traitor.

But the car on the corner says there’s another turncoat in thedún. It could be anyone in the Crew. It could be Nero Sacco, the prick that’s run the Boston mafia since long before I left. Hell, maybe the feds have a hard-on for the priest that showed up while Fiona was on her knees by the coffin.

There’s no way to know for sure. And tonight, I don’t care—because I got Fiona out of there alive.

The damage has been done, though. She made a promise she’ll never be able to keep. She boasted. She bragged. And the Crew will make her pay.

11

FIONA

What the fuck have I done?

I could have left the wake without saying a word. Moran said it in the hotel: he had my back. He proved it, kneeling beside me in front of Da’s casket.

But I had to make a scene. I had to promise ten million dollars to the fucking Corman Museum. Ten million dollars my father will never know about. Ten mill he’ll never respect me for.

I wait for Moran to tell me I’m a fucking idiot. But he only starts the Land Rover’s engine and says, “Got your phone? Pick out a hotel for us.”

“Us?”

“I’ll stay through the funeral,” he says.

“Why the fuck would you do that?”

His shrug doesn’t shift his grip on the wheel. “Because it’ll piss off Aran Dowd. Because Rivers called me Cujo.Because you need someone keeping an eye on you, before you spend a billion dollars getting Fenway Park renamed for your da.”

My father would have sold me into slavery to own the Boston Red Sox. But I don’t want to talk about Da. Or about how easy it was for Uncle Aran to manipulate me back there. So I settle on asking, “Cujo?”

Moran’s lips part on a puff of disgust. “It was a book. Horror. Came out about twenty years before you were born. It was about a?—”

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