Climax

by Holly Hart

  “It’ll be fine, doll. Come on,” he says, winking at me. His voice gets quieter as he steps out of the SUV. “They don’t bite.”

  I open my door and follow, my stomach growling. I wish I could be so sure. Kieran is right: I don’t really understand why I’m happy to stare down a man with a gun, but a simple family lunch scares the living heck out of me.

  I stop at the top of the porch, waiting for Kieran to ring the bell, but he just turns the door handle. He grins at me before stepping inside. “What, ye think someone’s going to burgle this house? They’ll be gettin’ a real nasty shock if they do…”

  I guess not.

  I catalog the differences between Kieran’s and my family’s houses. The Byrne place is small, compact and understated; it looks just like any other working-class house on the street. I think about my family’s – mine, now – house. Hell, I can’t call it that with a straight face. It’s a mansion, plain and simple.

  I tug on Kieran’s arm. “Is this –?” I stutter, trying to find a way of phrasing my question that won’t sound like I’m putting down the place he grew up in. I’m really not; the truth is, I love this house already. The old wooden floorboards are polished by decades of foot traffic. It feels like a home, not a castle. I’m kind of jealous.

  “It?” Kieran chuckles. He inclines his head and performs a mock bow. “Tis’ indeed, me lady,” he grins, deliberately thickening his accent. I elbow him in the ribs, pouting, and he straightens up pretty quickly. “I guess yer wanting to know what we do with all the money…”

  “Don’t say it like that,” I mutter, making sure that I’m speaking low enough that no one else in his family might overhear. “I don’t want people thinking I’m a gold digger.”

  Kieran laughs out loud. He slaps me on the back so hard I almost double over. The picture of guilt on his face is so hilarious when he grabs me to stop me falling over, I’m not even mad. “That’s unlikely, don’t ye think? Nah, we never did have much use for cash. Da’ always wanted us to be a family outfit, so that’s what we are. We see right by our people, and they look after us.”

  I press my lips against Kieran’s. I’ve only been with this man six weeks, and every day he finds a new way to surprise me. I never realized that he would be so honest about helping other people. I like this side of him. I can’t wait to have a baby with him.

  “Ma’!” Kieran bellows. “Ye got guests!”

  Kieran pushes open the kitchen door, and confidently strides through. I follow behind, a touch less boisterously. An old woman in a maroon apron, speckled with flour, kisses Kieran on both cheeks. I guess it must be his mom, or his ma, as he calls her.

  “This is the gal, then?” The old woman asks, studying my face. Her gaze roves over every inch of my body. I feel like I should hide, just in case she unveils something I’d rather have hidden.

  “Ma,” Kieran grins, “Sofia,” he says, pointing at me. “Sofia – meet Ma.” He claps his hands together. “Well,” Kieran says, with a broad smile on his face. I get a sinking feeling in my stomach as I watch him. He gets that look every time he’s up to no good. “I guess my work here is done…”

  I shoot Kieran a terrified look as he dances out of the kitchen. It’s a look that says: “you’re going to pay for this later!”

  Kieran’s mom embraces me. “Ye can call me Mary,” she smiles. She takes a step back and studies me once again. “Love’s catching, so it is,” she remarks.

  I clear my throat. “I went to Declan’s wedding,” I say. “It was beautiful.”

  I hate small talk. I especially hate small talk when the person you’re talking to doesn’t reply. And right now, Mary Byrne doesn’t seem to be in the mood for a conversation. She shuts one eye and studies me intently.

  “What –? What are you looking at?” I ask. The weight of Mary’s stare is palpable on my chest. I can feel it pressing against me; or maybe that’s my heart beating so fast it’s about to explode out of my rib cage.

  Mary takes a step forward, until we are face-to-face. “How far along are ye?” She asks me, her brown eyes narrowed and beady as a hawk.

  I take a step backwards, hands unconsciously clasping my stomach. My throat goes dry while my mind races. “How did you,” I croak, stunned, “how could you possibly know?”

  Mary Byrne smiles; she pinches my cheeks like I’m a baby. “Call it an old woman’s intuition, that’s all,” she grins. I want way more of an explanation than that, but I can tell just from the look on Mary’s face that I’m not going to get it.

  I bite my lip. “You won’t say anything?” I mutter, looking up at Mary anxiously. I’m just hoping that Kieran’s mom isn’t one of those women who spend their old age gossiping…

  Mary waves her hand, dismissing my concerns. “You must be something special,” she says, with a surprised smile on her lips. “I thought fer sure Kieran would be the last to get hisself all loved up…”

  I flush. “If you told me six weeks ago that I’d end up,” I lean in and lower my voice, “pregnant with Kieran Byrne’s kid…” I shake my head. “I’d have said you were crazy.”

  “We live in strange times, dear,” Mary says, squeezing my shoulder. Then she pats me on the back. “Now get out of me kitchen. I’ve got a dozen to feed and yer in the way.”

  I do as Mary says – gratefully. I think she approves of me, but she’s still terrifying as all hell. Kieran’s sitting in the living room. The TV is blaring in the background. On the other side of the room, there’s a couple kneeling down next to a little girl – straightening her clothes. I realize with a start that it’s Declan and Casey, and I guess their little kid. I sit down next to Kieran. I feel shy, and strangely out of place in this house. It’s hard just to join someone else’s family.

  I elbow Kieran in the ribs – not for the first time today. “You ass,” I hiss. “Don’t you dare do that to me ever again.”

  Kieran leaps to his feet with a broad grin on his face. He drags me with him. “C’mon,” he chuckles. “It’s about time you met me brother and his wife.” Typically, Kieran doesn’t give me a second to adjust to his latest idea. “Casey!” He yells. “Got someone I want ye to meet.”

  Now this – this is awkward. It’s hard to know what to say to someone when you’ve been to their wedding without ever saying hello.

  Casey turns and her face fills with a smile. The bump at her stomach is just about ready to pop. She can’t be more than a couple of weeks from her due date. She looks amazing, long red hair streaming all the way to her waist.

  “You must be Sofia,” she smiles, walking over and embracing me. I’m glad I’ve met Casey first. Even though Declan is the spitting image of the man I love, even down to his haircut, I still find his presence strangely threatening. It’s probably a hangover from the years of conflict between our families. “It’s so great to meet you!”

  I hug Casey tight, careful not to press against her baby bump too hard. It’s like embracing a version of me in eight months’ time. Even Casey’s hair is almost the same color as mine.

  Kieran leaves my side – again – and kneels down in front of the little girl. “What’s her name?” I ask.

  Casey turns to her daughter. She looks drunk on love for the girl. “Carla. She’s Declan’s little girl, but I love her like my own, you know?”

  I shake my head, grinning. “I’ll take your word for it.”

  “You’ll have one of your own before long,” Casey says with a raised eyebrow. I flinch, wondering if another of Kieran’s relatives has a secret power he didn’t tell me about, but I figure that Casey is just guessing. She turns back to Carla. “He’s so good with her, isn’t he?”

  “Who? Kieran?” I ask in surprise, glancing at my fiancé. My fiancé. No matter how many times I hear those words, it won’t ever be enough.

  “Are you happy to see your uncle Kieran, Carla?” Casey calls out.

  Carla nods, displaying a broad, toothy grin to the world. Her curled locks bounce up and down like they’re
caught in the wind.

  Casey winks at me. “See – Kieran’s got the bug. Believe you me; he’ll be badgering you to put one in the oven before you know it.”

  I smile. If only you knew … I think.

  Declan joins his wife. I have to resist taking half a step back. His face is bland. It doesn’t show as much as a lick of emotion. “So,” he grunts, “Yer the woman who’s stolen my brother’s heart.” Declan phrases it as a sentence, rather than a question.

  “Is that what he told you?” I ask, arching my eyebrow. “Because it felt like he couldn’t stop throwing it at me…”

  Declan throws his head back and laughs uproariously. “Funny,” he finally says, speaking through a chest still seized by laughter, “he never struck me as the romantic kind.”

  “You’d be surprised,” I smile softly, remembering – well, nothing much really. Kieran’s very existence is all I need. The fact that he treats me like his Princess is just a very pleasant fringe benefit.

  “So I guess me matchmaking worked?” Declan asks, tenting his lips.

  I frowned at my family’s former archrival. “I wouldn’t get cocky. Let’s just say Kieran and I had a little thing going well before that little plan came over the horizon.

  Declan’s forehead shoots into the sky. “Tha’ cheeky bugger!”

  I just wink.

  “Time te eat,” Mary Byrne says, smiling. “Jus’ us today. Declan, ye need to stop working yer brothers so hard, now. It’s the Lord’s day, so it is.”

  “Yes, Ma,” Declan agrees. The resigned look on his face plainly says that he has no intention of playing along.

  “Listen to your ma!” Kieran belts out while grabbing my arm and leading me to the dining room table. “I’m done wit’ working for ye, ye hear?”

  Kieran sits down. I join him by his side, a broad grin on my face. I can’t explain it, other than to say that I feel happy here – with his family – like I haven’t in a long time. Mary Byrne says grace, and just before we start eating, I stand up. I’ve got every eye in the room on me, which would usually freak me out, but not today.

  I clear my throat. “If you told me a year ago,” I say, “that I’d be sitting down and breaking bread with the enemy –.”

  Declan laughs.

  “I have said that you were crazy. But I just wanted to say thank you for taking me in, and that I hope that our two Families can become friends, not enemies. Because if we don’t…” I grin, winking at Kieran. “Then it’s going to make for some awkward family dinners.”

  Kieran raises his wine glass, and everyone follows. Except Casey, who toasts with water. The glum look on her face suggests that she can’t wait for her kid to pop out.

  Kieran stands up as well. “Actually,” he says, “we’ve got one more announcement to make…”

  I shoot him a concerned look. If Kieran ignores me and decides to announce that I’m pregnant, I – Well, I don’t know what I’ll do, but it sure won’t end up going well for Kieran. He smiles unrepentantly.

  “We’re getting married.”

  Epilogue

  Sofia

  Nine months.

  Well, seven and a half, really. That’s how long it took before Claire popped out, and that’s how long since you and I last spoke. Baby Claire: the girl I never knew I wanted; the girl I know, now, I could never live without. She’s everything to me: perfect; sweet; small. As far as I’m concerned, when she’s awake, there’s nothing else that matters; except Kieran, I guess. But he’s the same way. When Claire is in his arms, I barely get a smile. It’s hard to believe that you can feel all that love for just one person. But every day, I do. It feels like it’s growing: like it’s not my belly that’s swelling anymore; it’s my heart.

  But anyway, I guess you want to know just how we got here. I’m not going to lie to you: it wasn’t easy. Being pregnant is hard enough at the best of times. Throwing a kid like Claire into the mix, now that’s another matter entirely.

  Believe me, sometimes I felt like I had a demon child residing in my belly. It’s hard to imagine now that she’s been born. Now that she looks up at me with bleary, tiny eyes, and waves those tiny pink fingers; but it was all kinds of awful a few weeks ago. The doctors all told me that the morning sickness would stop. But what do they know.

  Morning sickness; Ha! Morning my ass: morning, noon and night is more like it. Every meal, little Claire had me clutching my belly over the porcelain. The first trimester passed, and then the second and nothing changed. I guess most women don’t get hit so badly. Then again, I never did fit in with “most women.” For good, or bad, I was always different.

  The only bonus, I guess, is that I’m not carrying too much baby weight. I kind of wish I was. I’ve been starving for nine months. And now she’s here, in my arms, this little bundle of joy – she barely gives me a moment’s peace. Not even a second for a burrito. Seriously: it’s all I want.

  All that would be hard enough, right? Believe me, there was so much more to it. After Mickey died, that meant that I was head of the Family. And you know what? When you’re in the Mafia, you don’t get to take maternity leave.

  Now, with Matteo by my side, that wasn’t the end of the world. They say old mobsters don’t die – they just fade away. I guess Lorenzi didn’t want to let that happen to him. He never struck me as the kind of guy who would agree with retirement, and I suppose I was right. Damn, he’s got the energy of a man half his age. Hell, most of them can’t keep up with him either.

  First things first: we had to take care of the detective. If only Kieran had thought to bring a camera to the final standoff, we would have had dirt on him for good. I can’t blame him, though. Not when he allowed himself to get beaten black, blue and bloody to save my life. I know plenty of men whose pride wouldn’t have allowed that to happen. Not Kieran: he jokes about it; pretends it’s not true; but he’s always thinking of the bigger picture, like me, us , our family.

  Things don’t always work out perfectly, though. But I wasn’t going to let Detective Mackey get away with it. Hell, even thinking about him makes my body stiffen up, and my teeth grind like a chainsaw turning a hedge into wood chips. Adrenaline sparks through my body. It gets me mad.

  But there are other ways of making a man suffer: especially an evil asshole like the detective. All he ever wanted was fame. Not money, just respect in his department, and in his city. He just wanted to always walk down the street, have people come up to him and shake his hand. But here’s the thing: in Boston, people love crooks, but they hate crooked cops.

  I figured that if Detective Mackey was hip deep in a crime, like my kidnapping, then that probably wasn’t the only thing in which he was involved. Turns out he was looking the other way on a drug smuggling ring run by the Templars. He didn’t take a penny, he just wanted information from them, so he could take out other gangs and claim the credit. They say not all heroes wear capes. Well apparently some heroes don’t catch crooks, either.

  A kid died from cut drugs.

  Cut drugs sold by the Templars; drugs cut with rat poison, or something like that. It makes me sick. There’s one thing the Family has never got itself involved in, and that’s the drug trade. It’s a sick, evil crime that costs lives and ruins communities. If there’s one thing that I’ve learned from Kieran Byrne, it’s that community is what’s most important. If you look after your people, they’ll look after you.

  I guess my dad forgot that piece of wisdom, somewhere along the way. Mickey never knew it. I’m determined to remember it. Without our people, the Family is nothing. And because all that remains are me, a few cousins, and baby Claire…

  Yeah. Our people are important.

  Anyway, back to Detective Mackey. Well, just Mr. Mackey, now. I told you he never took a red cent from those Mexicans. It made it harder to pin the crime on him. Well, at the beginning, it did. I had Matteo withdraw twenty grand in untraceable bills from a friendly bank, and then smuggle them into the detective’s trunk. I had him follow the good d
etective to one of his meetings with the Templars. They say a picture is worth a thousand words. Well, when that picture gets slapped on the first page of the Herald, and someone calls in a tip about money in the detective’s car…

  You get the, uh, picture. The DA refused to prosecute. Too afraid of the police union, I guess. But I’m not worried about that. You see, I took away from Mackey the only thing he ever wanted – respect. He’s in prison now, whether he’s behind bars or not. It’s a better kind of revenge. One I savor every day.

  Kieran and I aren’t married, not yet. I didn’t want to have to grease myself up to slip into my wedding dress. If that makes me a bad Catholic, then so be it. I guess I am. But it will happen, soon enough. Believe me; I’m counting down the days.

  Oh, and did you hear about Ridley? I heard he found himself a woman. But I guess that’s a story for another day.

  My breathing is slow, calm, and steady. I feel like I’ve been through fifteen rounds in the ring with Mike Tyson over the past few days. Hell, over the past few months. Anyone that’s ever said being a mom is easy doesn’t know how wrong they are. Raising a kid is hard enough, but giving birth to one?

  It’s like climbing Everest without gloves.

  Little Claire rests on my chest. My eyelids flicker shut once, twice, a third time. It looks like I’m looking out through a field of wheat waving gently in the breeze. I struggle to keep them open, but it’s hard. I’m still in the hospital, and there isn’t much to catch my attention. It’s a private room, but that doesn’t help. It just means there’s no one on the ward to chat to.

  “You okay, baby?” I croon to the little girl sleeping on me. Claire was inside me, sleeping, for nine months and yet the first thing she does after being born? Take a nap… I don’t know why, but I can’t stop the corners of my lips jerking upward. I find it funny, and I don’t know why. Maybe I’m just sleep deprived.