1
ANNIE
“Here are the numbers for the overseas bank accounts. We’re ahead of the projections I gave you last fiscal quarter, so you should be pleased. And all of the money is clean. Washed through the businesses you wanted to prioritize—the new gentlemen’s club downtown, the two new restaurants, and the speakeasy.” I push the documents over to my brother’s side of the desk, sitting primly in the chair opposite him despite the fact that heismy brother, and I could wear pajamas to this meeting and slouch if I wanted to.
I’m still his finance manager, and it matters to me that I have this role in the family. That Ronan O’Malley, head of the Irish mafia in Boston and my older brother, has given me this responsibility, this freedom.
Truthfully, it was our father who put me in this role, initially. But I can’t think about him right now. That wound is still too fresh, too new, in addition to the other wounds our family has sustained over the past year.
“Good. This all looks good, Annie.” Ronan scans the documents, and I know he’s giving them the cursory once-over that he’s supposed to as the boss, but he trusts me fully, and he’snever had a head for numbers. No one in the immediate family does, except for me, which is a large part of why I was sent to Columbia to study finance and then brought back home to make sure that our family’s illegal money comes out looking squeaky clean on the other side. I’ve always been good with math, and I love it. The organization, the fact that if you just know the formulas and the patterns, it will work out the way it needs to.
No subjectivity. No arguments or theorizing. Just cold, hard numbers and manipulating them to do what I need them to.
“Did you even read it?” I tease him as he hands the file back. “Or did you just say that to sound smart?”
“If you were an actual employee, you couldn’t talk to me like that.” Ronan smirks at me, glancing at his computer screen.
“Iaman actual employee,” I shoot back. “You pay me a salary. I know, it’s part of the spreadsheets I do every month.”
“Maybe I should dock it for your insubordination.” He grins at me, but there’s no real heat in it. I smile back, the curve of my lips feeling somewhat unfamiliar after the events of the past six months… but the last two, in particular.
It feels good to smile again, honestly. There’s been too much grief, too much death, pocketed with moments of happiness—like finding out that Ronan’s wife is pregnant and that I’m going to be an aunt, or their second, more intimate wedding that they had with just family and friends when they came back from Ireland.
Ireland, where our father—Padraigh O’Malley—died. Ireland, where his body is buried now, in a quick and hasty funeral that our brother Tristan didn’t even fly out to attend. He was too furious that, after a lifetime of strife between him and Padraigh, our father committed a betrayal too deeply painful to ignore—not toward him, but toward Ronan.
Our beloved older brother, who has already gone through far too much, deserved better than that from the father he idolizedand adored all our lives. And though I’ve grieved my father’s death since the moment Ronan called me with the news, I also understand why it had to happen.
Including the means ofhowhe died.
Our world is blood, and violence, and often pain. But it can also be beautiful. It can also be full of life, and joy, and fulfillment, for all the duty and responsibility that wear us down sometimes… and no one more so than Ronan, who is responsible for not only his own wife and child, but also the rest of us. Tristan and me. If something—anything—were to happen to us, or because of us, it’s ultimately he who has to answer for it.
Which is also why sometimes, I wish he’d look a little closer at the paperwork I hand him before signing off on it, even if he trusts me with the numbers.
“Is there anything else?” Ronan looks at me as I tuck the file back into my bag. “I have another meeting here shortly. Although you’re welcome to stay if you like—you might want to, actually.”
I raise an eyebrow. “Why is that? You’re not trying to set me up with someone, are you?”
An odd look passes over Ronan’s face, and I feel a leap of anxiety in my stomach. I’ve been fortunate all my life that neither my father nor my older brother ever pressured me to marry. There’s no need for it, really—Ronan is the heir, and his wife is pregnant, and Tristan has his own empire in Miami and his wife with a baby on the way. The O’Malley line is secured, and there’s no real need for me to contribute to it.
But many families—most mafia families, I’d say—wouldn’t see it that way. Old-fashioned traditions run deep in every flavor of the mafia, and a daughter is most often seen as a prize, a bargaining chip to add more power and money to a family’s name. It’s archaic and off-putting, as far as I’m concerned, but it’s the way of our world.
I’ve never been expected to marry, though. I’ve often suspected that it’s because I’ve made myself so valuable to the family in other ways that my father didn’t want to risk a husband wanting more of me than I gave to the family. Ronan, on the other hand, would never pressure me to do anything I didn’t want to do.
Still, the odd look in his eyes troubles me.What if he’s changed his mind? What if he needs me to marry for some reason?The criminal politics of Boston have changed dramatically in the last six months, and there’s always a chance that Ronan would ask of me what he himself had to do at one point. What Tristan was asked to do.
I’ve been an exception, but that could always change.
“No,” Ronan says, shaking his head, and I let out a relieved breath. “Of course not. You’d find a way to have me sent to prison for sure. One wrong line in the taxes, and this could all come crumbling down.”
A laugh escapes from me, a little high-pitched and nervous. “Good,” I manage. “Besides, I have a date tonight, so I’m already spoken for.”
The teasing comment slips out before I can stop it, probably from my rattled nerves. Ronan gives me a quizzical look, and my breath catches in my throat.
“A date? Really?”
I’m not offended by his surprise. At twenty-eight, I’m firmly what, back in the day, they would have called aspinster. The kind of heavy guard that my father and now Ronan has following me around at all times isn’t exactly conducive to dating, or to sneaking off and getting hot and heavy with a guy, even when I was in college. My romantic experience is, putting it mildly, nearly nonexistent.
“Yes.” I give him a narrow-eyed look. “I have a date. And yes, my security team knows, and I’ll have three of them going along with me.”
