“So what if I am?”
Crow might be the boss, but he sure as shite isn’t going to tell me who I can and can’t take up with.
“The thing is,” he says, “ye have to know she’s fecked in the head, Rory.”
I shrug. “Only makes it more fun. Ye know the crazy ones are wild.”
“This isn’t a bleeding joke.”
His face is solemn, and I don’t imagine he intends to let it go. I never take things too seriously anymore, and sometimes, that’s a problem for Crow. He’s as serious as they come.
“I know she’s Mack’s friend,” he continues. “And she seems loyal. To Mack. But to anyone else. I don’t know.”
“What are ye getting at?”
“Only that ye have a known weakness for women in distress, and I think she’s making a grand mockery of you at the moment.”
“Well if that’s the case, then it’s my situation to sort out,” I tell him.
“Does it not strike you as a wee bit odd that she’s so sweet on ye now when only two months ago she couldn’t even stand to look at ye?”
And there it is. Crow’s honesty.
If it were anyone else, I might lamp him in the head. Only I know Crow has my best interests at heart. It wasn’t so long ago that Mack was tricking and lying to him in search of her missing friend Talia. She came to him with bad intentions, and he didn’t trust women to begin with. She played him just as he suspected she might. And now they’re happily married with a kid and another on the way.
So I leave it alone because nothing I say will convince him otherwise until he sees it for himself.
“It’s nothing serious,” I tell him. “We’re just having a dose of fun together. No harm, no foul. You needn’t worry yourself about it, mate.”
He considers me a moment before giving me a nod. He still doesn’t fancy the notion, but he’s spoken his piece and he knows my mind is made up.
“I suppose I’ll see ye tomorrow then,” he says.
“I suppose you will.”
Today’s Saturday, which means I have one more thing on the agenda before I head home. Woman or not.
Every Saturday, without fail, I stop by to visit Niall.
He’s the former boss of the MacKenna Syndicate, forced into early retirement when his ticker started giving him trouble.
I ring the doorbell and his wife ushers me in as usual with a warm hug and offers a cuppa and a bit of cake. Normally, I’d take her up on it, but since Scarlett is waiting for me, I decline.
Niall’s in his office, reading. Thinner since I last saw him, and bored as shite, apparently. It pains me to see him this way. I know it pains him too. But he gestures me in with warm eyes, the same way he always does, and tells me to take a seat across from him.
I do. Niall holds up a finger while he finishes up the page he’s on and I lean back in my chair and kick my foot up onto the opposite thigh.
This man has been like a father to me. He changed my life and I will forever be in his debt.
Niall taught me everything I know. From the time I was only a wee lad, working in his shop as a grocery delivery boy. And then, at the age of thirteen, when my whole world tipped upside down, he gave me a bit of solid ground to stand on.
Out of habit, I adjust the silver watch on my wrist. The one that stopped at ten forty-three over twenty years ago.
That was when I became a man.
And when Niall brought me into this life.
He taught me how to hustle. He taught me how to fight. And he taught me how to manage the anger that I couldn’t seem to get a handle on.
