I’m a boxer and an enforcer, good with my fists and not much else. The only reason I’m sitting in this seat is because Ronan trusted me to keep things together while he’s gone, and Lochlan—who everybodyactuallywanted for the job—is too busy playing house with Chantal upstate.
I’m the backup choice. Everybody knows it, even if no one says it out loud.
“Enough squabbling like schoolgirls, you fucking pansies.”
Seamus has thrown himself into the argument, his gravelly voice booming despite his failing health. He takes a long sip from his whiskey, gnarled fingers curled tightly around the glass.
“If I didn’t know any better, I’d say you all have pussies instead of dicks and balls,” he says. “Here’s a history lesson for those of you with your mother’s breast milk still on your breath. The last time the Irish and the Bratva went head to head, I knew how to put those fuckers in their place. We didn’t debate and deliberate and wring our hands over strategy.
“We hit them hard and we hit them fast, and we made damn sure they knew who the hell they were fucking with.” His watery green eyes find mine across the room, his scowl deepening. “Perhaps if the current leadership showed the same resolve, we wouldn’t be having this useless conversation. We’d have already put them in their place.”
I’m grinding down on my jaw. It’s the only way I can keep the irritation at bay. Keep from erupting at the frail old man and putting him inhisplace.
I’m not his sons—I won’t tolerate his bitching and down talk.
I endured enough of that growing up from myownfather.
“Speaking of current problems,” Sean says, breaking the tension with his usual lack of tact. “What are we gonna do about Kill’s little stray?”
Several heads turn in my direction. I resist the urge to turn my growing anger on Sean and put his head through the fucking wall.
“Her name’s Jhene,” I grunt. “Refer to her as such.”
“She’s a liability,” Brady pipes up, his pale face pinched with worry. “The Bratva wants her back, and as long as we’re harboring her, we’re painting a target on our backs.”
“So what do you suggest? We hand her over?” Teagan asks.
“I’m suggesting we consider all our options,” he answers with a shrug. He avoids my glare. “What’re we even gaining from protecting her? She could be useful as a negotiating tactic. A way to calm tensions without any blood being spilled.”
“She’s not a bargaining chip,” I growl. “She’s a person.”
“Right… but a person who’s causing us a lot of problems,” the pale bastard counters. “Problems we didn’t ask for.”
I’m on my feet, hands balled into fists, before I realize I am. “I said she’s not to be used for bargaining! It’s not up for fucking discussion. Anybody who’s got a problem with that can take it up with me personally.”
The meeting breaks up shortly after that, the men filing out in twos and threes ’til I’m left in Ronan’s office with only Seamus remaining.
He heaves a pained sigh as he pushes himself out of the armchair he’s sat in then starts for the door. “They were right,” he says as he goes. “About the girl. Her battle isn’t ours. She’s dead weight, and there’s no sense taking a stand for her. Be smart for once in your life, Kill.”
He’s gone in the next second.
I scowl to myself and sink back into the chair behind the desk. I still don’t give a fuck about what Seamus thinks of me or the decisions I make, though I can’t negate what he said.
My gaze drops to the stack of paperwork that’s accumulated in Ronan’s absence. Invoices and bank statements and contracts full of paragraphs of bullshit I have no interest in sorting through.
I’m no Einstein. I’ve never been known for my brains. It’s never bothered me that I wasn’t.
But filling in as Clan Chief only serves as another reminder.
The numbers on the pages swim and float before my eyes. They blur the longer I look at them.
Dyscalculia, they called it when I was a kid. A learning disability that makes numbers as foreign to me as ancient Greek and made my dear father grunt about how he had a dunce for a son.
How I’d never amount to anything…
My phone buzzes in my pocket. I pull it out to find a text from Dez, my manager.
Where you been?
