Page 73 of Honorable Sins

He doesn't go down, or bend forward, or anything, but he grunted. His body reacted to the pain of the hit.

"Here now, are you trying to make sure I never have any chislers of me own?" he demands, his Irish accent thick.

"I get pizza!" I crow.

Uncle Brice nods. "You do at that, boyo. That's enough for today. Let's shower."

Relaxing my stance, every ache and pain in my body rushes to the surface. We've been training for nearly an hour. My muscles hurt. The places Brice hit hurt more.

He can't be easy on me. If I don't end up with some bruises from training, he's not doing it right.

I have friends who take Tae Kwon Do and stuff like that. They get bruised too. Sometimes, way worse than me. But at the end, they're training for a color belt.

I'm learning how to be strong enough to lead the Shaughnessy Mob someday, how to incapacitate and kill if I have to.

Da doesn't want me made before I'm in my twenties. He says killing someone as a kid does something to you, even if you're like him. I don't know what it did to my da, but it wasn't anything bad enough to make him ugly on the inside.

Not like Kenneth Sr.

"What has you wool gathering?" Uncle Brice asks as he pulls off the padded boxing gloves he wears to diffuse the power of his blows when they land on me.

I shake my head. "Nothing."

I take off my own fingerless gloves and follow Uncle Brice into the locker room.

I have to dry my hands to check my phone before hitting the shower. There's a text from Sadie. She sent it right after I started training with Uncle Brice. It's just a number: 91.

I text her back.

Fitz: 91 what?

The one below Sadie's text is from Eoghan.

Eoghan: Kenny is a feckin' muppet.

Fitz: IKR? Good thing you're coming to live here.

My older cousin found out he's coming to live with us for the rest of high school the same time his da told him about divorcing his mam. Eoghan and Gavin seem okay with it, but that's the way we're supposed to be. Okay. With everything.

Mom and da try to keep the bad stuff from me and the littles, but how do you protect your kid from knowing you're divorcing his mam? That'll never happen with mom and da, but they're different.

Da explained about what I saw Uncle Adam doing when we were in Ireland and it made me grateful for like the thousandth time that my da and mom love each other.

Grandda is super pissed about the divorce, but Uncle Adam says he's taking a page out of his little brother's book (my da) and doing whatever the feck he wants. He told grandda that he could name one of the other brothers as his successor, but Uncle Adam was done being married to a faithless witch.

I bet he used a different word, but that's what Eoghan said. He and Gavin earwigged outside the door when Grandda and Uncle Adam were having a right barnie.

Sometimes Irishism are better than plain English.

Eoghan: Doesn't matter where I live. It's all the same.

Yeah, he's wrong about that. Mom is different from Aunt Margot. She'll make sure Eoghan does his art. She understands that a man's strength is about what he'll do for his family, not how he spends his free time.

Not that da has a lot of that. Someday, me and Eoghan won't either, but Uncle Miceli still paints. I figure once Eoghan gets it straight in his head, he will too.

Fitz: Keep telling yourself that. You've never had to live with the littles.

I love my brother and sisters, but sometimes having them around all the time is a lot.