by Holly Hart
“Duty called,” it reads in neat, cursive school letters. “Help yourself to breakfast. Keys are in the kitchen, might be back late. K.”
I read it in Kieran’s thick Irish accent. It’s weird to see his perfect, practiced handwriting not show a hint of the slang he speaks with. I drag my fingers across the letters, as if I’m going to tease some more meaning out of them, but it’s a fruitless task.
“Ah, hell; I guess you’re not getting laid this morning, Sofia.”
I can’t help but pout.
I was looking forward to going a couple of rounds underneath Kieran’s hard body. Maybe more than I ought. I guess I shouldn’t get hooked on it, in case he throws me out in the cold when he finds out the secret I’ve been hiding from him. Still, I don’t know how I’m going to stop myself from getting addicted to his touch. Any woman would. Hell, I’m just surprised he’s made it to his mid-20s without a girl getting her claws into him.
I learned a phrase, once, from the wives of some of the soldiers: “never let go of good dick.” It’s coarse; but it’s all kinds of true. I’ll never find another man who touches me like Kieran, not if I search for the rest of my life.
I pull myself out of bed, giving my system another shock when I glance at the clock on Kieran’s bedside table. It’s almost eleven in the morning. I never sleep this late. Yesterday must have hit me harder than I thought.
It doesn’t take long for me to shower. All I have to change into is the same black outfit I was wearing the day before. It’s kind of gross, but I’ll live.
I can’t help but grin when I step into Kieran’s kitchen. The stainless steel counters are neat and tidy; I wouldn’t be surprised if they’ve never been used to cook a single meal. Kieran Byrne might be a lot of things, but I doubt he’s a chef.
But the boy can shop.
The counters are covered in different breakfast items: box after box of cereal; half a dozen different kinds of French pastry; there’s even a box of doughnuts. I’m pretty sure if I check the fridge, I’ll find bacon, eggs, milk: everything I need to eat myself into a coma.
On any other day, I would. But if I’m not going to get laid this morning, then I can do something nearly as useful.
I’m going to prevent a war.
Well, that is, just as soon as I’ve eaten this Danish.
I haven’t been to the old sports bar in Roxbury since I was a teenager. Papa figured that since we were going to drink anyway, we might as well do it somewhere safe. For him, that meant somewhere populated by two dozen armed men, who were ready to help his favorite – and only – daughter, if she got into a scrape.
I never did.
I buy a baseball cap from behind the counter of a convenience store, just before stepping in, and pull it low over my eyes. I don’t figure it’ll take long before they guess who I am, but I want to get the lay of the land first.
The smell of decades of spilled beer and cigarette smoke is hard to scrub out of a bar. I doubt the owners of the Union would know much about that, though. By the smell of the place, they never bothered finding out.
Even at lunchtime, the place is half full. It’s a favorite haunt of one of my father’s old lieutenants. If I know Mickey, he’s barely bothered to give Matteo the time of day. I intend to change all that.
I walk through the bar, hidden underneath a baseball cap and a forest of my own hair. No one pays me the slightest interest.
“Bottle of Budweiser, please,” I murmur to a bored-looking female bartender. I want something light. If I’m going to tussle wits with Matteo, I need a booster of courage, but nothing that’s going to dull me completely. When she hands it to me, I hand over a couple of dollars extra. The girl doesn’t even break a smile: tough crowd.
I raise the bottle to my lips, and the first drop of the malty, hoppy liquid explodes on my tongue. I almost spit it out. The bottle falls with a clatter to the surface of the wooden bar as I realize what I almost did.
Strike one, I groan to myself. I don’t know how I’m going to get used to being pregnant. Most girls get to plan for this moment. Most girls dream about it their entire lives. Not me. The news hit me like an eighteen wheeler: in the back. I straighten myself up, and push the beer as far away as I can.
From where I’m sitting, up at the bar, I’ve got a good vantage point over the rest of the room. It’s filled with men I half-recognize, and others I’ve known for years. I glance at myself in the mirror. I’m hit with quite a shock.
I didn’t have any makeup with me this morning, so my face is plain. No hairdryer, so my hair is wild and frizzy. No clean clothes, either. I look like I’ve been tracked through a hedge: backwards. The only bonus is that I look so unlike my normal, carefully manicured self, that I guess I must be hard to spot.
I bite down on the inside of my lip. I don’t like what that says about me. Have I really cultivated my life so completely that I’m not even a person anymore: just a persona? After all of these years making myself over into the “ice queen”; what’s actually left behind?
“Sofia Morello,” a man’s low voice rumbles on my left. His own beer bottle thumps against the wooden surface of the bar. I glance towards him and grimace.
“Matteo,” I sigh, smoothing back my hair. “I guess I wasn’t as stealthy as I hoped.”
Matteo leans over and wraps me with a hug. He’s got twenty years on me, gray in his hair and a few extra pounds around his stomach since the last time I saw him.
“Please,” the Italian grins, “In this place? You stick out like a sore thumb. You think a baseball cap is going to change the way you walk?”
“The way I –?” I sigh: Again: “Never mind. Who spotted me?”
“That,” Matteo grunts, setting himself down on the stool next to me, “Would be me. Truth told, Sofia, you just can’t get the help these days.”
He looks around the room, lips curled back in a disapproving snarl.
“So why are you here, Sofia?” Matteo finally smiles, apparently satisfied that no one is watching us. His men seem too interested in their games of cards, or else staring up at the replay of last night’s game on one of the bar’s many televisions.
I pick up my own beer, playing with it to buy some time. I don’t let a drop touch my lips. But it’s all part of the act. I’m still wincing at my apparent inability to hide in a room like this. How am I supposed to lead these men if I can’t even hide from them?
“Papa,” I say, tapping the glass bottle down on the bar, “always spoke well of you.”
Matteo nods. His face is somber and businesslike now. It lets me know that we’ve started the serious part of the conversation. Not that I needed any hint.
“Your father was a good man,” Matteo agrees. “But that isn’t what I asked.”
I glance up at Matteo, surprised by his tone. “You’re right,” I agree, “it wasn’t. It was the question I wanted to answer.”
“You’ve done it again, Sofia,” Matteo grins. “You ever think about going into politics?”
“That viper-ridden cesspit?” I smile back, “fat chance. They call us criminals, but…” I turn my palms out in a gesture of disgust.
Matteo calls for another couple of bottles of beer. I hold mine up in the air, as if to say “don’t bother with me.” This time the bartender moves a lot quicker. She looks at me with renewed interest, and I see the flare in her eyes when she recognizes who I am. Her cheeks flush pink with embarrassment.
“I’m here because I respect you, Matteo,” I finally say when it becomes clear that my father’s old lieutenant isn’t going to make the first move. “But it’s more than just because I respect you, it’s also because –.”
“Also because,” Matteo says with a knowing grin, “I control the largest group of fighting men in the Morello family.”
I nod. “You got me.”
“Or what was once the Morello Family,” Matteo finishes, arching one eyebrow.
I look up at him sharply. “What are you saying, Matteo? Speak plai
nly.”
“Because it’s you, Sofia, I will,” Matteo says. He looks uncomfortable. “Your brother and his supporters have been around here of late. They are saying some very interesting things; saying some very upsetting things.”
I grimace. Mickey. He just can’t stop putting his meddling foot in things. It’s like he’s compelled to do it. “The men don’t suffer fools lightly,” I say, grimacing and holding Matteo’s gaze. Kieran’s phrase floats into my head, and it seems to fit.
Matteo shakes his head. “They don’t.”
“They won’t die for one, either,” I finish.
Matteo shakes his head for a second time. “They won’t,” he agrees. “So tell me something, Sofia. Why are you here?”
That’s the million-dollar question, I think. Mickey is turning Boston into one giant tinderbox, and standing over it with a match. Matteo looks like he is on the brink of breaking away to form his own Family, and we might be days away from war with the Irish. And that’s forgetting that I’m pregnant with Kieran freaking Byrne’s child…
I drum my fingers against the bar. I hold Matteo’s gaze firmly. I know better than to blink, or to look away. Matteo is old-school. He respects strength and intelligence: and not a whole lot else. I don’t blame him for not respecting my brother. I don’t either. But I need to make a choice.
If I let Matteo break from the Family, and form his own, then the Family’s fighting power will be reduced by half, maybe even more. We’ll be a minnow in a sea of sharks. Someone will snap us up: if not the Byrnes, then the Templars, or another of the groups currently too scared to enter the city of Boston.
“I’m glad you asked,” I murmur, speaking like a politician being interviewed to buy myself some time to think.
Mickey might still start a war, but he would be wiped out. The problem is Matteo’s new Family would be small as well: and just as weak; and, therefore, just as tempting. Breaking the balance of power like that; it’s a recipe for disaster.
“You want to keep your boys alive, don’t you?” It’s a question in name only. I say it as a statement.
Matteo looks around the room, his wrinkled eyes softening. “I don’t care about much, Sofia,” he sighs. “My wife and I never could have kids, no matter how we tried. I care about each and every one of these boys as if they were my own sons.”
This is my opening. I need to seize upon it.
“They are all going to die,” I say matter-of-factly, spinning my bottle of beer. I’m desperate to keep talking; to say something, anything, but I know I can’t. The shock value of what I just said will disappear if I do. I drag out the silence as long as I dare. “You know that, right? There’s nothing that you can do to stop it: not alone, anyway.”
Matteo clicks his fingers. Half a dozen men stand up, fingers in waistbands, or else held up by leather belts. Every single one is no more than a few inches from their gun. A narrow-faced man inches forward, as though he’s trying to listen in to my conversation with his boss. I don’t like it, but it’s not like I have a choice.
“I don’t care for threats, Sofia,” the old mobster growls. The temperature in the room has dropped a dozen degrees, and it’s still falling. I’m on all kinds of thin ice right now. One wrong step and I’ll plunge right through.
“It’s no threat,” I say, looking at Matteo without a hint of a smile on my face. “It’s the truth, whether you like it or not. You know it is, otherwise you would have broken away from my family already.”
Matteo winces. He tries to hide it, but I know it’s there. Papa trained me well.
“We’ll make do,” he grunts, “with or without your psycho brother.”
“Maybe,” I nod, “but then again, maybe not.”
Matteo stares up at me sharply. “Speak your mind, Sofia,” he growls; “before I have you thrown out of my bar.”
I shrug. “Like I said; it wasn’t a threat. They’ll die: you’ll die; I’ll die. It’ll be like a damn Oprah show, except with bullets, instead of gift cards.”
“And it will all be your brother’s fault,” Mickey growls, leaning forward with his teeth bared in anger. “Believe me, Sofia; I don’t want to do this. I made my bones with your father. But Michael is going around town promising grunts the world, if they go to war with him.”
“I’m not my brother,” I sigh. Inside, my stomach is roiling; but I keep my features calm. This is the moment of truth. I can’t afford to blink: not now. I look up at Matteo – holding his gaze one last time.
“But I can be better.”
Chapter Eighteen
Sofia
“We need to talk.”
I say it again, loosening my fingers from the knots my hands are twisting into. “We need to talk,” I murmur, practicing, staring at my reflection in the mirror. I look like crap, and I know it. I try softening my expression, smoothing over the worry lines, and pretending like there’s nothing wrong.
But there is.
There’s a lot wrong.
I’ve been lying to Kieran, and now my chickens are coming home to roost. No matter how long I’ve spent in front of this mirror since I got back from the bar, there’s nothing I can do to change that simple fact.
I say it again. “We need to talk.”
Kieran’s key rattles in the lock. He’s home, and I’m out of time.
Chapter Nineteen
Kieran
I push the door in with my shoulder. God, I hope I find Sofia still inside. A day of running around, firefighting with Declan has got me pooped. I just want to cook a meal with Sofia – or more likely, have her teach me how – and see what other delights her body has to offer.
She’s standing right in front of me as I open the door, like the welcoming committee to heaven. I flash an appreciative smile. Damn, she looks good. Sofia must have bought some sweatpants today, but they hug her body so well I don’t care.
“Hey,” I grin. I can’t help it; it feels like it’s warming up my face. Sofia looks like she’s about to say something, but I hold her off.
“Hold up,” I say, jerking my chin at the massive brown grocery bag I’m bear hugging. “Let me put this down in the kitchen; then I’m all yours.”
The paper rustles as I place it down, and a can of tinned tomatoes falls out. I lean over to pick it up, and see Sofia through the gap between my thighs. She’s hiding behind the doorframe, as though she is scared to enter the kitchen.
“Not my best look, huh –?” I joke, attempting to lift her mood. I don’t know what’s got her so down. But I can think of a few ways to cheer her up …
“Kieran,” Sofia says, wringing her hands. Her face looks wan and drawn. I don’t know how I missed noticing that when I walked through the door. I was so wrapped up in my own happiness, I didn’t even realize it. “I need to tell you something …”
I stand up, and set the can down with a metallic clink. I stretch out my arms. “Well, don’t leave me hanging,” I grin. “It can’t be that bad, can it? It’s not like you’re pregnant.”
Sofia goes white.
“Kieran…” She whispers. One of her knees won’t stop moving: just jumping up and down, up and down. I can’t tear my eyes away from it. I can’t look at Sofia’s face: not right now.
My stomach clenches. I feel like a kid who’s just found out he’s got an unexpected exam, and he hasn’t studied. My mind is racing. Surely Sofia must be messing with me. “You can’t be serious,” I whisper, backing away from my girl. Even as I’m doing it, I know how bad it looks; but my body is on autopilot. “You said –.”
“That I was on the pill,” Sofia nods, so vigorously an absent part of my mind wonders if her head might just freaking fly off. “I was. I mean – I am. Well, not now, not now that I know, but –.”
I squeeze my eyes shut, and Sofia falls silent: the battle of excuses dying in her throat. I can feel her eyes studying my face, interrogating it. I know she wants me to hug her, and tell her everything is going to be okay, but I just can’t. I want to, believe
me I want to, but I can’t.
I run my fingers through my hair. “How long?”
“Just a few days,” Sofia says hurriedly. “I was going to tell you; I just … I just …” She tails off.
My heart stops beating. I look at Sofia, and all I see is betrayal staring back in her guilty eyes. I know it’s a betrayal, because why else would she look so guilty?
I take a step back, only to crash into the kitchen counter behind me. My head is shaking before I even start speaking. “How could you?” I say, with a voice that’s high and accusing. “What is this – am I – a game to you?”
Sofia lets out a little cry. It hurts me inside, but I push past the pain. Doesn’t she see how she’s hurt me? “Kieran,” she whispers, “please. Don’t be like this.”
“Are you going to keep it?” I ask.
The truth is I don’t know what answer I want to hear. I’m Catholic. We keep our children. Hell, even birth control is still frowned upon: at least by some. But still, I don’t know how I can raise a child with Sofia Morello.
Sofia swallows hard. I see her neck bobbling as she does. She nods, looking at me like she’s scared of me. “I am.”
I breathe a sigh of relief. I know in my soul that that’s the answer I wanted to hear. But it doesn’t change a thing.
“I’ll pay for it,” I say, my voice cold. “I’ll care for it. I’ll have it when it’s my time, taking for holidays, everything it needs.”
Sofia looks hopeful. I hesitate before bringing down the knife, but not for long. The longer she stands there, in front of me, the more I consider holding off. Hell, a huge part of me is screaming that I should forgive her: most of me, in fact; just not the part that counts. But right now, my anger is too strong. It’s pushing me along and I’m just driftwood in the torrent.
I point at the door. Sofia’s expression creases with pain. “But right now, I need ye out of here. I need …time.”
Sofia’s pupils widen. If it’s even possible, she goes whiter than she was before. She looks like I’ve pronounced a death sentence upon her.
