2
FALLON MAHER
The boss was right.
Two months flew past, and by the beginning of November, we hadn’t had any new trouble from the Giordano family.None.I could tell by the way Aspen’s eyebrows knitted together every time we mentioned how quiet it had been that he didn’t think this was over. Cillian and Rowen were calmer, but they were still worried. They kept looking at Vail like he might disappear. I didn’t blame them. He was a handsome man—strange, but fuckable and intelligent.
I liked him, too.
Which was a problem, a real problem.
The Shaughnessys didn’t hate me, but they weren’t my biggest fans. They were asked to take me in so they could train me because my father and two older brothers were members of the Killough Company. This was a fact. No one was doing me any favors; it was all because of myname. I was a legacy, born into a loyal Irish family who’d given themselves to the Killoughs. While Vail had shown interest in adding me and Aspen to his little harem, and Cillian and Rowen seemed okay with it, I had my doubts.
I stared mindlessly at the television as one of the soccer—sorry,football—teams scored. Cillian roared, jumping to his feet and pumping an arm up in the air.
“That’s what I’m talking about. Ye bloody legends.”
I huffed and fell back against the ugly orange leather couch. Aspen was on the other side of me, while Rowen sat on the white armchair to the left of us, gaze trained on the iPad in front of him. He tapped the screen incessantly and made irritated huffs every so often.
Cillian fell back on the couch beside me and slapped his hands together, elbows on his knees and attention stuck on the TV. “Come on now, boys, ye got this.”
“Isn’t this a replay?” I asked, bored. “This game happened a few nights ago. Derry City won or some shit.”
He shot me a glare. “Houl yer whisht, ye dope. I made sure not to check the scores so I could watch this bloody match. Now ye just ruined it for me.”
Rowen snorted as he tucked his feet under his thighs on the armchair. “Eh, ye knew Derry was gonna win.”
Cillian’s attention turned to him and his body stiffened. “I didn’t. I missed the match because we took Vail out to the pub, didn’t I? Got real ossified and it took me two days to get over the hangover. This was the first chance I got to sit down and watch the damned match.”
“Derry’s always been too good for them,” Rowen said with a shrug, sending me a sly grin.
Cillian waved his hand. “Ah, bullshite. What do ye know? Ye don’t even watch the bloody match. Go back to checkin’ out yer porn.”
“I’m not.... Ye know what, I’m not even going to give ye the time of day. Go back to watching yer football match.”
I laughed and stood, stretching. “Who wants another beer?”
Cillian and Rowen both said, “me,” while Aspen nodded, so I left them alone in the living room. Out in the kitchen, I yanked open the fridge and pulled out one beer for myself but took three others from the pantry. Vail was somewhere upstairs finishing off his grading. It was closing in on the end of the term and we’d all agreed to leave him alone until he was done. It was hard not to hear what he and his guys did in Rowen’s room all night. They took turns fucking him, and he whimpered so beautifully. I was guilty of taking myself in hand and rubbing one out more than once while listening to him. If I was a different man, I might have been embarrassed about it, but I wanted him.
Simple as that.
I grabbed a box of leftover pizza and placed the cans of beer on top of it, carrying them all back into the living room. Each of them snagged a beer off the box, and when there was only one left, I sat back down in my spot, setting the box on the coffee table in front of us. I opened my beer and swigged before taking a piece of pepperoni pizza and chomping into it.
Cillian’s mouth curled in disgust. “Should ye be eating that gut rot?”
It wasn’t that he hated pizza, but he hated pepperoni. Obviously all the whiskey he drank had fried his brain.
I grinned at him and shrugged. “Eh, you only live once. You sound like my mom.”
He shook his head and focused back on the game. One of the Dundalk players rushed the goal, his orange-and-black-striped uniform eye-catching on the field compared to the red and white of Derry City’s.
Cillian stood again, screaming at the screen, “Come on, ye great man. Get that ball in the net!”
The Dundalk player kicked the ball and it arched in the sky and missed the goal.
“Fecking hell! What the fuck were ye doing?” he yelled again, this time in fury, the beer in his hand sloshing over the edges and sliding down the can to where he clutched it. He fell back on his seat, quietly cursing the player.
I rolled my eyes and waved my free hand at the screen. “Why can’t we watch the fight that’s on?”
