When the door shuts tight, Leith nods at it. “Favor, Mac. Lock the bloody thing, will you? Next thing you know Paisley’ll be wandering in looking for something as well.”
Though he complains about the interruptions, I know he really wouldn’t have it any other way. Devotion to our entire family’s at the core of who he is. It is for all of us.
“Now, Mac,” Leith says, leaning back in his chair and fixing me with a serious look. “Tell us what you mean by multiple trips to Paris?” He hasn’t mentioned the other plans I brought up yet.
“Well,” I begin. I've researched this heavily, and I'm prepared. “The recent exchange rates make it much more profitable for us to have loan deals in Paris, in addition to everything we have in Scotland. I know you like to keep our work close to the vest, but the interest we’ve made in Paris over the past six months makes it clear we need to pursue business there.”
“Ah, right,” Leith says with a nod. “And at the end of the month, I’m to meet with Luis Martin and seal the deal finally.”
“Excellent,” my older brother Tate says with a grin. He looks a lot like Leith, but with a heavier beard and Mum’s blue eyes.
Leith nods. “Well done, you,” he says with an actual smile that reaches his eyes. “I’m damn proud of how you’ve handled this.”
My chest swells with pride. My dad never gave praise and still doesn’t, no matter what we’ve done. He’s quick with correction or criticism, but seemed to think somehow it would make us weaker men if we were praised. Leith has no such compunctions.Though he hardly lavishes it on any of us, when he’s truly proud of a job well done, he doesn’t hold back either.
Clyde, William, Tate and I all watch as Leith rolls out a newspaper.
“Didn’t know they still made those. Like seeing a fucking dinosaur,” Tate mutters under his breath. I snicker along with the rest of them, but Leith only rolls his eyes.
“I don’t need someone watching what I click on online,” Leith says. “Jesus knows they watch damn near every fucking thing we do. Makes sense that no one can trace the paper, though. And aye, they’re hard to come by, but turns out it helps having a sister whose best friend works at a bookstore, hmm?”
Tate gives him a look I can’t quite decipher. “Aye, brother. Fairly good point, that.”
“Cairstina sure likes it.” Cairstina, Leith’s wife, is an avid reader. The girls’ mate Fran’s got a job at the bookstore in Inverness centre now, and she keeps the girls well stocked with new reads.
Leith rolls out the paper, smoothes it down, and the smell of paper and ink fills the small room. It brings me back to my childhood, and I remember sitting right here in this chair, while my father read the paper. I’d bring him his afternoon tea, or a message from Mum. He rarely looked up. Rarely acknowledged me.
It’s not a pleasant memory.
“Here,” Leith says. He circles an article with a black marker, scowling at the paper. “Aitkens strikes again.” He shakes his head from side to side and looks at me. “It’s time, Mac. What were you saying about the Aitkens?”
I know exactly what he means, though I’m not sure anyone else in the room does.
Just over a year ago, our rivals, the Aitkens Clan, attacked our Clan. They didn’t have the fucking bollox to attack us outright. They’d lose that battle. Instead, they went after our sister. We were told by Jimmy Aitkens that our father had promised our youngest sister Paisley to them in an arranged marriage when she was just a wee bairn, but our father vehemently denies it. And when asked to prove the promise, Banner Aitkens, the Clan Captain, flailed.
The Aitkens were responsible for attacking my family. For hurting my sister.
They’ll pay for what they’ve done.
Ever since then, we’ve planned retribution. It isn’t the way of the Scottish to immediately seek revenge, though I wanted to go after them the very night we found out what they did. We waited. We want them to think that we’ve forgotten what happened. But we haven’t.
It hasn’t been easy for me to delay the vengeance I wanted. That all of us craved. But we’ve kept ourselves busy bringing money into the Cowen Clan coffers, securing deals and trades, and Clyde has upped his racketeering game to record levels.
“We’ve never been in a financially better spot,” Leith says to all, as he addresses the room. “It’s time for us to put into motion the plan Mac proposed last year.”
“And what might that be?” William, our bookkeeper and the older one in our Clan, asks.
Leith jerks his head at me. “Tell them.”
I sit up, eager to discuss what I want to do. “We decided last year the best way to get revenge on Aitkens is through his daughter, but Leith asked me to hold off, so I did. This time, we’ll play meet fire with fire.”
“How?” Tate asks, his keen eyes holding mine.
“Actually, it should be a lot easier than we thought.”
Leith smiles grimly at me, nodding to encourage me.
“Aitkens’ youngest daughter has been kept out of the spotlight, to a fault. She knows nothing about the work her father does, nothing about his rivals.”
