Page 4 of Guilty as Sin

“The dumb fuck met with Andy the Auctioneer!” Finn slaps the Muloney boy upside the head. Da sighs with something like pity.

“Do you know why they call him the Auctioneer, lad?” Da asks.

The kid shakes his head.

“Because he’ll sell your ass to the highest bidder!” Finn cackles.

The Muloney boy closes his eyes. Tears leak down his cheeks. More shame at his own stupidity. That’s when I start to consider he may be telling the truth.

The Auctioneer is associated with the Vanleusens. But he’s associated with everyone in the criminal underbelly of this city. Including us. On very rare and detestable occasions.

Point is, he’s not one of Seven’s own.

Da knows this as well as I do. He turns back to me with his measured reasoning.

“If the Auctioneer was the point of contact for a Muloney-Vanleusen deal, then Cormac Muloney was poorly informed. That doesn’t sound like Cormac Muloney.”

Muloney’s boy Connor nods in desperate agreement.

“Why’d you go behind your family’s back, then?” I ask him. By breaking with them, the kid broke the first and foremost rule of this life. You never go against your family.

“Wanted to impress my father,” he mumbles. “Prove that I’m ready to lead.”

“Ah, well. You’re not,” I say. It’s a hard lesson. Learning your place.

As the second son, I learned it early. Helps that Liam’s not a giant prick about being the firstborn. And that I have a talent he doesn’t—running the legal side of the family business. I’m in charge of the real estate. The developments, the hotels, the restaurants. The general public knows us as an American Irish family that achieved our massive success in the hospitality sector.

What they don’t know is our mafia side.

If they dug back a generation, they’d find it. But only if they knew where to look. Da’s from the family that ran Galway for most of the twentieth century. He’s the fifth son of his generation, deemed useful but unimportant. When he found out Mam was pregnant, the two of them moved stateside. Da wanted to make his own name and a better life. A ruthless life.

From what I recall, the Muloneys have a similar history. They’re also a generation away from the old country’s organized crime, but they’re more explicit about their current mafia dealings than we are. The Muloneys’ underground empire is Boston’s open secret.

And no.

This kid is not ready to take over any of it.

“We’ve come to a deal with the Muloneys,” Da says. “We let the boy live in exchange for an alliance.”

I don’t like it. But it’s the wise move. War is coming, one way or another. Having a powerful ally would tip the scales in our favor.

But it has to be the right ally.

And the right alliance.

“An alliance sealed with a marriage,” Mam says. Just as I predicted.

Liam doesn’t react. As heir to Da’s empire, he’s kept in the know. Finn, on the other hand, explodes.

“You want Sloane to marry this piece of shite?” He cuffs the kid on the back of the head. For once I agree with Finn.

Connor fucking crossed us.

Just thinking of him near our sister makes my blood boil.

“Not your sister,” Mam says to Finn. She points to the Muloney boy. “His.”

“You want him to marry his sister?” Finn sneers in confusion.