by Sienna Blake
“What is this place?” I asked in a whisper.
“We grow pot here,” my da said.
“Pot? Like, weed?”
“That’s it, girl. You ever tried it?” He peered at me.
This felt like a strange thing to ever be admitting to my da. I nodded, but I didn’t give away any specifics.
“We’re one of Ireland’s biggest growers,” he said proudly.
“Isn’t that…wrong?”
My da snorted. “Alcohol is legal. And it can fuck you up more than pot. Pot is natural. It’s a plant. Used for medicine and shit. D’ya wanna know why alcohol is legal and pot isn’t?”
I nodded my head, holding my breath.
“Taxes. Control. The greedy fucking government wants the taxes earned on alcohol, so they keep it legal. They can’t regulate pot so they keep it illegal. Same thing with meth.”
“Meth?”
My da nodded. “Here.”
He pulled up to a final shed, smaller than the others. Through the open door I could see that the inside was bright and white, sterile looking. A laboratory.
“Pot is a steady earner,” my da said. “But I want to expand. We’re setting up a new operation. Most of the meth sold in the country right now is imported.” He shook his head. “That shit is getting too dangerous to do. Ports are being overrun with cops. The waters around Ireland are being patrolled too much. I want to setup a local lab right here.”
I was silent as the tension in the car grew.
Part of me wanted to run screaming. The other part wanted to be okay with this, because my da was okay with this. Surely if he thought this was okay, then it was. Right? I mean, that whole thing with the government and being greedy and stuff.
Another smaller part of me screamed that it would be dangerous to have my da think that I was against this. I knew too much. I’d seen too much now.
He’d never hurt me. He’s my da.
“Cat’s got your tongue, girl?”
“There’s not any labs here already?” I blurted out, a safe neutral question.
“Smaller ones, yeah. Run by fucking amateurs out of their mother’s basement.” He sneered. “Idiots. They don’t know what they’re doing. And their product is substandard. I’m going to change all that. I’m going to give Ireland the best fucking meth they’ve ever seen.”
His face and voice vibrated with excitement, with passion. He could have been talking about a new device that would cure cancer or a new seat belt that would save lives.
I remained silent, unsure of what to say, my stomach twisting with uncertainty. I knew my father had been jailed for drugs the last time. But after he was released I thought that he had changed his ways. I mean, why would he keep doing something that could get him thrown in jail again? He promised me he wouldn’t leave me again. What if he got arrested for a second time?
“The setup is almost complete. My distribution lines organised.” My da placed a hand on my shoulder, forcing me to look right at him. “I just need a head chemist. One that I can trust.”
It took me a second to realise he was talking about… “Me?”
My da nodded. “You’d make more money in your first year than a decade in any other fucking lab.”
Shit. What did I say to that?
“What if…what if we get caught?”
“We won’t.”
You can’t promise that, a voice inside me said.
“I’ll…I’ll have to think about it.”
“Baby girl, what’s there to think about? I’ll make you rich.”
I shifted in my seat, staring into the bright white lab. That could be mine. My office. My lab. I wouldn’t have to study for years, work as a shit-kicker intern and then a shit-kicker assistant for years. I could have my own lab right now.
Meth was just chemistry.
I loved chemistry. I was good at it.
“You could do anything. Whatever you wanted.”
Cooking meth for my father was definitely not what Diarmuid had in mind when he spoke those words to me.
I imagined the horror on Diarmuid’s face if he ever discovered I was cooking meth. I was struck with a deep sadness. He’d be disappointed. I don’t know if I could stand to disappoint him.
“And…if I say no?” I asked.
For a moment, I might have sworn that I saw a flash of irritation across my da’s face. But it was gone so quickly I couldn’t be sure.
Fuck. I didn’t want to disappoint my da, either.
He smiled. “If you don’t want to work in the family business, then that’s okay. If you’d rather struggle through university and get a shitty lab job somewhere else, that’s fine.”
He said it was fine. Somehow it didn’t sound fine.
“How about this, baby girl?” he continued. “You work for me for one year, and I’ll set you up with more money than you need to support yourself while you study.”
“One year?”
He nodded. “Just one year. Although I suspect, once you see how much money is in it for ye, ye won’t want to leave.” He raised his hands in a surrender-style motion. “But if you do, no harm, no foul.”
“You’ll just let me go.”
“I’ll just let you go,” he promised.
My mother’s weathered face flashed in my mind, her eyes glassy from the white smoke that came from the crystals in her little glass pipe.
Somehow, I felt like this white crystal was the kind of thing that never let go.
51
____________
Diarmuid
“Diarmuid,” a familiar male voice called from behind me as I strode through the hallways of the station.
Niall fucking Lynch.
“The answer’s no,” I called back over my shoulder without even stopping to look at him.
“You don’t even know what I’m about to say.”
“It’s still no.”
“For fuck’s sake, Diarmuid. Stop for a sec.”
“Can’t. Places to be.” I pushed out the front door of the station, tumbling out into a rare fine, bright evening. I wasn’t lying. I had a cold beer in the fridge and a hurling match on TV waiting for me.
Another evening alone.
Another evening trying to stop myself from thinking about a certain blonde-haired woman who I should not be thinking about.
Another evening tossing between remembering how her lips felt against mine and beating myself up for wanting more of her. So much more of her.
I heard the door catch behind me. Fucking Niall followed me. I sped up, aiming straight for my truck. Dammit, why did I have to park so friggin’ far away today?
Niall caught up and jogged beside me. “When was the last time you met up with Saoirse?”
“I’ve dreamed about how your sweet pussy would taste. Wondered how hard your back would bow the first time I dipped inside you. What noises you’d make when I sucked that pretty little clit in between my lips.”
I halted. And turned on him, bristling. “None of your business.”
Niall narrowed his eyes. “It is actually my business. What do you guys talk about?”
“More,” she whispered.
“Not yet. Even as wet as you are right now it’d still hurt when I pushed inside you. When I slowly stretched you around me. Add another finger.”
I winced at the memory assaulting my mind. I forced these thoughts from my head, focusing on Niall’s ugly face, feeling the stirrings of my erection relax.
“She’s not involved with her father.”
“You don’t know—”
I grabbed his shirt collar and yanked him towards me. “I do fucking know. I know her.”
“Settle down, Brennan.” Niall pushed at my hands.
I regretfully let him go. Technically I was assaulting another officer right outside the fucking Garda station. It was a stupid move to even put my hands on him. He could have my badge for this. But fuck, did he make me want to hurt him, bad.
Niall brushed down his shirt fr
ont. “Even if she’s not involved in his operations, she knows something.”
“Even if she did, which she doesn’t, I am not making her turn against her father.” I turned on my heel and kept walking.
Niall, of course, followed. “Do you know how long we’ve been trying to pin down Liam’s full operations? We only managed to find one small field five years ago. Only one. The fucker didn’t spill at all.”
I let out a snort. “And you thought he would? Eejit. Even threatened with jail time, these guys don’t rat out.”
Niall’s face reddened. “It was a good strategy.”
“It was an impatient strategy. You got tired of having to wait him out. Nabbed him before he could lead you to the golden goose.”
“See,” said Niall, “that’s why I need you on my team.”
I rolled my eyes. “Never happening.”
“I still don’t understand why. Your career could go places if you just moved into the drug squad.”
I wanted to work with my kids. I needed to. With them, I made a difference. Niall would never understand. That’s why I’d stopped trying to explain it to him.
I unlocked my truck, swung the door open and slid into the driver’s seat. I tried to slam my door shut, but Niall moved his body in the way.
“Move,” I growled.
“I tried the carrot, but I think you’d respond much better with the stick.” Suddenly the look on Niall’s face made me uneasy, like he’d been holding his best hand until now.
“What the fuck are you talking about?”
“You know the captain and I are good mates. We play golf together every Sunday.”
“Why do I give a shit about whose asshole you lick?”
Niall smiled and it reminded me of a snake. “I have you figured out, Brennan. I used to think that the promise of promotion would get you on board. But now I know you only give a shit about one thing…”
He slung his arm along the top of my truck door and leaned in, the gleam in his eye worrying me. “You get me something on Saoirse Quinn, something I can use against her father. Or I will get you kicked out of the JLO program.”
My blood froze. My whole purpose for living disintegrating before my eyes.
“You wouldn’t,” I said.
Niall shrugged. “You’re a difficult man to work with, everybody knows that. You never hand in your reports, never attend team meetings or work functions.”
My hands turned to fists in my lap.
“Maybe if you’d played nice it’d be more difficult to convince the captain to get rid of you.”
It took everything in my willpower not to crack my fist into his face. I had never hated a man as much as I hated Niall fucking Lynch right now.
I hated myself more because he was right.
I was a difficult person to work with. A difficult man. An asshole.
I knew that. But thus far, it’d done its job, keeping people away from me. It’d not harmed me too much.
Until now.
Niall buttoned up the breast of his suit jacket. “This is your last chance to prove that you’re a team player. I don’t give a shit about the girl. Get me something to pin down Liam or you’re gone.”
He shut my door for me, shot me a wink, then strolled back into the station as if he didn’t just curse Saoirse and me both.
I sank back into my seat and rubbed my eyes, reeling from what had just happened.
This wasn’t just a job to me, it was my life, my calling. What would I even do if I wasn’t a JLO?
But could I betray Saoirse? Could I use her to keep my job? My stomach twisted at the thought, making me feel sick.
Whatever I did, I would lose.
Fuck. I was screwed.
52
____________
Saoirse
It had been days since my da revealed to me the extent of his “work” and made me a job offer. Inside me, all the parts of me warred. Confusion pulled me this way and that. The only person I wanted to talk to was the last person I should be talking to about this.
Still, I messaged Diarmuid asking to meet. Perhaps I did it because I knew what he would tell me. I knew the faith he had in my future, and it had nothing to do with cooking drugs. I just needed a little bit of his belief that I was something more than a criminal’s daughter. I needed him.
Diarmuid’s message came back hours later. It was not what I wanted to hear.
Diarmuid: I’m not sure meeting is a good idea.
Strings of annoyance twanged in me again. I stabbed back a reply.
Me: I just want to talk, nothing else.
What does that say about me that the only one who truly understood me was a man over a decade older than me, who just thought of me as a girl. There was a long pause before his reply came back.
Diarmuid: I can’t be trusted around you.
Me: What the hell?
Diarmuid: I think it’s best if you ask to be reassigned.
Reassigned.
That was it. Diarmuid wanted me out of his life. Rejection flooded through my veins like boiling water over glass.
Not again. Dear God, not this again.
I shouldn’t have touched myself in front of him. I shouldn’t have been easy.
Did he think I was a slut? Like my mother? Is that why he was rejecting me now? I knew he wanted me. That much was clear when he pressed up against me. Did I disgust him? Was that why he was telling me to leave him alone?
And by text message. He didn’t even have the balls to say this my face. Anger made my fingers shake.
Me: You are a coward.
Diarmuid: I’m sorry. It’s for the best.
Me: Fuck you.
I threw my phone across the room and flung myself on my pillow, my tears already soaking the cotton. That’s where I lay for a long, long time.
I only dragged myself out of bed when I had to go to work the next morning. I stepped into the café and knew instantly something was wrong. Lisa and Claddagh, two other waitresses who were friendly enough, stopped talking and stared at me from behind the counter.
I frowned as I passed them, heading towards the staff room at the back.
“What’s the craic?” I asked.
They exchanged a look, then Lisa came jogging over to me. “Saoirse, you never told us your da was Liam Byrne.”
I hadn’t lied to anyone here, I’d just been evasive when they asked about my family. Thank God that my ma and da never married and that I was given my ma’s last name. I’d had enough of the bullying and teasing at school when people eventually found out I shared DNA with an infamous criminal.
“What does it matter who my father is?”
“Not to me, but—”
“Saoirse,” my boss, Ed, called from the staff room entrance. “Come have a chat with me, will ye?”
Lisa gave me an apologetic look, patted my arm, and mouthed, sorry.
My stomach sank. I knew already what he was going to say.
Sure enough, Ed went on a rant about how I’d lied, how he couldn’t be associated with a criminal family, how he spoke to a friend of his at the Garda and they’d told him that I’d already been arrested twice.
I burned at his judgement. Not just his but everyone who had come before him. Before I knew what I was doing I was shoving him back, raising my voice, cussing at him as I got in his face. I heard the footsteps of the other staff coming through the door to their boss’s rescue. I felt their hands on me, pulling me off him, telling me to calm down. My anger sizzled like water on coals.
Ed straightened and pointed a shaky finger towards the exit, his face slightly pale. “Get out before I call the Gards. Don’t ever come back.”
I yanked my arms out of their grasp. I felt their accusing eyes on me, worry, fear, vindication. See, she’s just like her father.
I wanted to scream at them all. I’m not like him. I’m better than that.
What good would it have done? They already thought they knew me. They’d already laid down their judg
ement. And I’d already done the damage by attacking Ed.
So I said nothing. I ate up all my anger, turned and walked out of the café, tears blurring my sight and numbness swallowing me.
Because at the end of the day Ed was right—they were all right. I was a criminal’s daughter. I had bad blood flowing through my veins. I guess I couldn’t run from what I was.
They’d already made up their minds about me. Why bother fighting the box they’d put me in? Why not just embrace it?
I wiped my eyes and my vision cleared a little. Rebellious resolution turned my blood to granite.
I grabbed my phone out of my pocket and dialed Diarmuid’s number. I just needed him to tell me that everything would be okay. I just needed to know that there was one person—one person—on this planet who thought more of me.
He didn’t answer. I stabbed out a text.
Me: Please. I need to talk to you.
Please Diarmuid. Just one word from you and my faith would be restored.
I waited for a response.
And waited.
He never replied. The silence cut me like the sharpest knife. The shackles of my parents’ sins closed around me, making it hard to breathe. When nobody believes in you, why keep fighting against it? Why keep trying to prove them wrong?
I called the one person who I could truly count on, the only person I should have trusted from the beginning.
“Yeah?” he answered when he picked up the phone.
“You remember the job offer you made me?” I said in a low whisper.
“Yeah…?”
“I’m in.”
I could almost hear the grin widening across my da’s face. “That’s my girl.”
My da took me back to his farmhouse. This time we went inside the lab.
Its setup was surprisingly professional. Rows of stainless steel tables, cupboards of beakers and trays, all brand new. And shiny machines.
