Unheeded were cockroaches scurrying in and out across slanted floors. A buckling tin ceiling drooped ready to collapse. Was that a dead rat in the corner?
A man with a nutcracker face, hook nose and protruding chin grabbed Fiona and hauled her on his lap. She clouted him over his head with her umbrella. The men hooted.
“Go ahead and laugh, you gorilla. When my brother finds out who has mishandled me, you will find yourself in a heap of trouble.”
“Will you look at the feistiness in this colleen?” The men roared with laughter.
Fiona leaped from his lap, swiveled and kicked him in the jewels. The harshness of the men’s hilarity drowned out thepained sound that escaped from the hoodlum. He snarled, rocketed out of his seat, his fist clenched and ready to knock Fiona’s head off.
From behind, the man’s arm was caught and snapped in two, his bones crunching.
Above the man’s wailing, Elizabeth gasped, cricking her head up and up to get the breadth of the largest bull of a man she’d ever seen. Was it Satan? He cast the largest shadow she’d ever seen and possessed biceps-triceps that could crush walnuts to powder.
“What the hell, Boss,” the man whimpered, nursing his arm. “Just having a little fun with the strumpet.”
“Strumpet?” Satan roared, his face black with fury. He picked the man up and threw him through the front window. Glass shattered everywhere on the boardwalk. The giant leveled his demon stare on every man in the room who found their immediate mission to dart away with the actual cockroaches.
“You have offended my sister,” he bellowed.
“Your sister! We didn’t know you had a sister.” The worst of society cowered to their hands and knees.
“Because I don’t allow her with the muck in this end of town. And if I ever hear of any of you men daring to touch her, I’ll cut your livers out and fry them for my breakfast.” He turned his glare on Fiona grabbed her arm and rudely ushered her and Elizabeth to what must have been his office. He ducked his head and barely squeezed through the door, slamming it so hard it practically vibrated from the frame. “What the hell are you doing here?”
Run. Run. Elizabeth’s quicksand feet would not move. Would he implement the rules for the Inquisition? “Please, sir. Don’t punish Fiona. I begged her to bring me to you.”
“You ruined my best pickpocket,” he accused.
“You mean the man whose arms you broke and tossed out the window?” Fiona said as though it were an everyday occurrence.
“Second best pickpocket. He could be sloppy. If I had picked a man’s pocket, he wouldn’t have known anything about it.” He squeezed into an enormous chair, and said, “Do you realize the danger you were in coming to this end of town? If I had not happened in at that moment, those men would have done their worst.”
Was this the man Elizabeth thought Fiona would kill if he didn’t allow her to marry O’Reilly? No way.
He pointed a beefy finger to Elizabeth. “Who is she?”
On shaky legs, Elizabeth stepped to his desk. Would a forked tail rise, twine around her and snap her to the floor? Would flames shoot around him? Did she hear the thundering clomp of cloven hoofs?
Her breath caught. “Who?”
“You!”
Had the air cracked thunder? “I-I’m Elizabeth Spencer?—”
“I know who you are. It’s my business to know everybody.”
“You just asked me?—”
“Stop it, Patrick. She is my employer. Your glare, your speech and bad manners don’t scare me one bit. If necessary, I’ll tan your hide.”
Elizabeth gulped. Had Fiona reprimanded the most dangerous man in the city?
Maguire burst out laughing. “I find myself in the company of two senseless females who if it was raining soup, would go out with forks.”
Elizabeth blinked twice. Madness stripped her of reality, leaving her scrabbling around the floor of her brain for snatches and snippets of what was occurring. Were they really siblings? Had the giant yielded to his sister like a browbeaten cur?
Satan, heir to the underworld, leader of the bowels of New York City, leaned back in his massive oak chair, straining the springs. “It’s a good thing the door is closed. I don’t want my reputation destroyed.”
His reputation destroyed? Not a chance. In Elizabeth’s mind, he had multiplied a hundredfold with her stomach executing uncontrollable flip-flops. Elizabeth turned to her maid for help. Fiona had her arms crossed and tapped her toe. Was Elizabeth in the august company of lunatics?
