Mafia Romance

by Aleatha Romig, Skye Warren, Annika Martin, Natasha Knight, Kaye Blue, Michelle St. James, Renee Rose, Parker S. Huntington, Alexis Abbott, Willow Winters

  “Never been more right, lad. Never been more right.”

  It was an oft-repeated greeting between Will and Derry, the rotund and jovial bartender at The Chipp. Neither of them seemed to tire of it. Nolan just played along.

  They ordered two beers and Nolan settled in, letting his gaze travel the bar like something might have changed when he already knew it hadn’t, when he already knew it never would. Someday hover cars would fill the air outside and the customers at the bar would all be robots and The Chipp would still have dirty, scuffed linoleum and a juke box that only sometimes worked and multicolored Christmas lights behind the bar, the fat old kind, not the new LEDs that were tiny and too bright.

  “You okay?”

  Nolan turned his head to look at Will. “You going to ask me what I’m thinking now?”

  Will laughed and shook his head. “Fuck you.”

  Nolan took a slug of his beer. “Back at you.”

  A moment of silence stretched between them. “I saw her the other day,” Will finally said.

  “Saw who?” Nolan asked even though he already knew who Will was talking about. If nothing else, it bought him time. Time to compose his face into a mask of nonchalance and to steady his voice for the conversation to come, a conversation Nolan intended to shut down as quickly as fucking possible.

  “You know who.” Will took a slug of his beer. “Don’t be a dick.”

  “Just being myself.”

  “Don’t,” Will said. “You suck at lying and you suck when you try to pretend you don’t care about her anymore.”

  “Didn’t say I don’t care,” Nolan said. “It just doesn’t matter anymore.”

  “She’s still smokin,” Will said. Nolan glared at him. “I mean, she looks very nice,” Will amended primly.

  “Fuck you,” Nolan said.

  “Back at you.” Will hesitated. “She’s working for some kind of legal clinic downtown. Helping immigrants or something.”

  “I don’t care.” It was a lie. A lie that sustained him when her face drifted to him in the dark of night, when he woke up with it burned into his mind, a remnant of his dreams.

  Will continued as if Nolan hadn’t spoken. “She’s still working for Seamus too. I think she’s doing it for the money. To help Owen.”

  “I said I don’t care,” Nolan said through his teeth.

  Will raised his glass. “And you’re a fecking liar.”

  Nolan had wept when he’d heard about Bridget’s little brother’s ALS diagnosis, a diagnosis that meant Owen would likely have a short and painful life. He’d had to check the instinct to go to Bridget, had had to remind himself that she didn’t want him in her life.

  “Are you going to change the subject or am I going to leave you with the tab and get the hell out of here?” Nolan was aware that his voice had turned hard, the humorous edge he’d been working to sustain gone.

  “Fine,” Will said. “Jesus you’re a stubborn fool.”

  Nolan wanted to disagree: Bridget had ended it with him. His refusal to think about her, to talk about her, wasn’t stubborn—it was reality. But arguing the point would only continue the conversation, and that was the last thing he wanted.

  “Speaking of Seamus, how’s business?” Nolan asked.

  “Business is business,” Will said. “A lot of fighting, a lot of resistance to Seamus.”

  “Still?”

  Will nodded.

  “Does it matter?” Nolan asked.

  “The other groups make a lot of noise—Hennessy, Flanagan, even Durnin—but they’d never dare touch Seamus,” Will said.

  Seamus O’Brien was legendary on the street, a deceptively jovial old-school immigrant with rumored ties to the IRA. He hadn’t gotten the memo about it being the twenty-first century, an oversight that caused him to hate the Italians with a passion, even back when Raneiro Donati’s Syndicate had run Boston with Carlo Rossi’s help.

  No one had been happier than Seamus when Donati was arrested, then assassinated, taking him out of the mix for good. The Syndicate’s operations had been thrown into chaos, a situation Seamus took full advantage of by organizing his own troops into a hierarchy of leadership not only for Southie’s criminal underground, but for all of Boston and its surrounding areas.

  Running the neighborhood was a matter of principle for Seamus—Southie was Irish, had always been Irish. The money that came with running it probably didn’t hurt either, even though as far as Nolan knew, Seamus lived in the same row house he’d owned since the 1990s, back when the neighborhood was almost exclusively working-class Irish.

  Nolan turned his beer in his hand. “You sure you’re good?”

  He worried about Will. It didn’t matter that they’d both known Seamus since they were kids: Nolan knew that when push came to shove, Seamus was more dangerous than a rabid dog—he was a seemingly friendly one who would rip out your throat for half a hamburger.

  “Me?” Will scoffed. “I’m good. You know me, I keep my nose clean, do my job, stay out of the fighting, bank my money.”

  Nolan nodded. “You give any more thought to school?”

  “Nah.” Will drained his beer. “Not for me. Too much reading.”

  “You read more than anyone I know, myself included now that I work eighty hours a week.”

  “I read what I want to read, not what someone else tells me to read. And I don’t have to write a fecking paper on it either.” Will clapped him on the back. “Don’t worry. I’m covered. I’m more worried about you.”

  “Me?” Nolan laughed. “I couldn’t be better.”

  “So you say.”

  “I’m billing over a million a year. I live in a two million dollar apartment. I drive a hundred thousand dollar car,” Nolan said.

  “Sounds boring as fuck.”

  Nolan laughed to cover the sting of truth. His life wasn’t as dangerous as it had been when he’d been with Donati’s Syndicate, but that didn’t mean he was bored.

  Did it?

  “I prefer to think of it as growing up,” Nolan said.

  “You sure you’re not just asleep?”

  Nolan looked at him, his old rage, his dearest friend, fighting to be let loose. “What’s with you tonight? You trying to get me to throw a punch?”

  Will sighed and turned his eyes to the mirror behind the bar. “You already did that, remember?” He paused. “You just seem… checked out.”

  “I’m not checked out,” Nolan said. “I’m steady. There’s a difference.”

  “Is there?” Nolan didn’t say anything and Will continued. “I miss it, man. I miss you.”

  Nolan swallowed the lump in his throat. “I miss it too.”

  He’d already dropped out of law school when he met Bridget, had already joined the Syndicate, thinking it would help him figure out how to be a man. She’d been sitting on a blanket on the dried grass at Ramsey Park, reading Cases and Materials on Constitutional Law, her brow furrowed in concentration. Nolan had recognized the textbook, but it had only warranted passing attention in the face of the woman reading it.

  She’d been wearing some kind of short striped dress that was obviously a waitress uniform, her name tag announcing her—BRIDGET—as if he needed to know anything but the way the light caught her hair, the lump that formed in his throat when he looked at her.

  He’d fallen a little in love with her on the spot, a feeling that only grew as he got to know her over the next few months. She was studious and shy, slogging her way through school part-time while she worked an assortment of odd jobs, determined to help her parents, to make the world a better place.

  He’d been surprised to find out Will knew her from school, had known her most of his life, even if they hadn’t been close. They’d fallen immediately into an easy camaraderie, the three of them hanging out at The Chipp, watching Little League games in Ramsey Park, and swinging in the playground into the early morning hours.

  Bridget loved Southie, loved its little groceries that had been in the same family f
or four generations, loved the pubs like The Chipp where everyone knew the drunk neighborhood dads emerging at two a.m., counting on someone to come along and get them home.

  She’d made Nolan see the honesty in it, the heart, an observation that had made his own house—an historic brownstone on Beacon Hill—seem fake and stuffy. It was a place where one didn’t put one’s feet on the coffee table, where one didn’t take off one’s shoes until they went to bed at night, where one dressed for dinner and never came down to breakfast in one’s pajamas.

  Bridget’s family walked around in their pajamas whenever they wanted to, sometimes until noon on a Saturday. They lay on the couch to watch TV and set their drinks on an old coffee table with rings from drinks past. They talked too loud, laughed too much, shouted when they were angry. It had been real in a way that had been unfamiliar to Nolan, different even from his grandparents’ tidy, quiet house two streets over.

  He’d wanted to be better for her. He’d even asked her once if she thought he should go back to law school, but she’d only said that he should do what made him happy—and what made him happy was being with her and Will, pretending he was just like them. It had lasted almost three years, right up until Bridget dumped him.

  The Syndicate had fallen shortly thereafter, another sign that it was time for him to move on, time to go back to school, much to his mother’s delight.

  “You ever think about calling her?”

  Will’s question pulled him from the past.

  “No.” Nolan spoke too quickly, the ever-ready answer to a question he’d asked himself too many times.

  “You’re not curious?”

  “There’s nothing to be curious about,” Nolan said, his eyes on the bar. “She was crystal clear.”

  It’s over, Nolan… I don’t love you anymore… It was never going to work…

  He’d fought her at first, but then he’d seen the glint in her eyes, the shine of determination that he’d come to know well.

  It was too late. She’d already made up her mind.

  Will sighed. “Still… sometimes things change.”

  “They do,” Nolan agreed. “They did. They just didn’t change the way we wanted them to.”

  He stood and rested a hand on Will’s shoulder. “Want a ride?”

  “Nah, I have a stop to make on the way home. Besides, I want to walk before it’s so cold my balls freeze.”

  “Sounds good. See you next week?”

  Will nodded.

  “Firing range next time,” Nolan said.

  He knew Will was feeling morose when he didn’t object.

  Nolan waved at Derry on his way out of the bar and stepped outside. It was dark now, and cold enough that he was surprised he couldn’t see his breath. He backtracked toward his car and the gym, silently cursing Will.

  It was his fault Nolan felt Bridget’s presence so strongly, that Nolan had the pointless desire to keep walking, past his car and Ryan’s, past all the old neighborhood haunts, until he came to the Monaghan house.

  At this late hour the lights would be off, all except the small light Bridget’s mom kept on in the kitchen. If Nolan walked around to the side of the house, he might see a soft glow from Bridget’s room, the lamp on her nightstand illuminating whatever book she was reading until she fell sleep. Her hair would be piled on top of her head, her glasses perched on the bridge of her nose. She would smell like fresh air and vanilla, like sleep and comfort, like home.

  He slowed down when his car appeared up ahead. He almost kept walking, almost continued on the path he’d walked in his mind, to the woman he couldn’t forget, the only one he wanted. The one who didn’t want him.

  Chapter Two

  Bridget Monaghan pulled next to the curb a block away from the house, even though there was almost certainly parking out front. The neighbors were nice that way, leaving plenty of room for the Monaghans to park close to the house. It wasn’t the only way they showed kindness. Since Owen got sick, they’d taken upon themselves to bring food over at intervals too regular to be random (Bridget suspected that Ida Breen, the older woman who lived across the street, coordinated the drop-offs), edged the weeds when Bridget’s father let them get too long, and once even raised funds to repair the cracked sidewalk in front of the house, a small problem that had become a major obstacle for Owen’s wheelchair.

  But sometimes she just needed a minute. A minute to collect herself after work, to set aside the troubles of her clients—nearly all of them immigrants fighting to stay in the country—and to prepare herself for the troubles waiting for her at home. Then she would park a block away and sit, listening to the soft tick of the old Honda’s cooling engine and the occasional sound of a neighbor kid playing outside, a rarity compared to the daily play that had accompanied her own childhood on the block.

  She would wait until she was calm, her mind clear, before stepping out of the car and making her way down the street. Her mother would ask why she’d parked so far away, but her father would just look at her with sad, knowing eyes. Owen would be in his chair in the living room, his eyes on the TV, or if he was feeling strong, a book propped up on the tray attachment Bridget had bought for his wheelchair last Christmas. He would look up when she entered the room, an apology that broke her heart written on his face.

  It wasn’t his fault. He’d been sixteen when he’d started stumbling during everyday activities, seventeen when he’d fallen down the stairs one morning and agreed to go to the doctor, beginning a battery of tests that took weeks to complete and whose copays nearly bankrupted the family’s meager savings. He’d been diagnosed with ALS two days after his eighteenth birthday.

  It had been four years since the diagnosis. They were lucky he was still alive. Lucky he could still speak in halting sentences, still move his hands, still swallow.

  But it was hard to feel lucky.

  She wanted her brother back, the one who bounded into the room on strong legs, who played hockey, who had a ready smile and teased her relentlessly about Nolan.

  Nolan…

  She missed him too. Missed the comfort she’d found in his arms, the way he seemed to know what she was thinking even when she didn’t say it, the way he made her feel like life was full of possibilities, like it wasn’t a foregone conclusion that she would take a shitty job that barely paid the bills and marry one of the neighborhood boys she’d known since she was in diapers and have a pack of kids who would repeat the whole thing all over again.

  She forced herself to shut the door on him—on his mischievous smile and the way his blue-green eyes shined when he looked at her. Thinking about him only made things worse. She’d done what she had to do, would do it again if given the chance.

  Her phone rang from inside her bag. She pulled it out and looked at the display, preparing to silence it, then saw the name and thought better of it.

  “Hi, Seamus,” she said.

  “Bridget.” His voice was warm but she wasn’t fooled. “I may need you to head down to D-4 tonight. Dougie got pinched.”

  She stifled a sigh. Boston PD district four serviced the south end of the city near Fenway. “When will you know?”

  “Couple hours.”

  “Want me to pick up the cash at the Cat?”

  The Black Cat was a local dive bar that served as Seamus O’Brien’s unofficial headquarters, a fact that wasn’t ironic given Seamus’s belief that the rules—cosmic or otherwise—didn’t apply to him. Bridget had no doubt he took special pride in running his growing illegal enterprise out of a building whose name would be considered bad luck by any Irish worth his salt.

  “Like always,” he said. “Mick’ll give you the details then. Thought I’d give you a heads up so you could keep an eye on your phone.”

  “I appreciate it.” She said it even though they both knew she always kept an eye on her phone. It was part of their arrangement.

  “You’re a good lass,” Seamus said. “Don’t know what we’d do without you.”

  You’d find an
other desperate kid from the neighborhood with a night school law degree. Someone else who had a sick loved one with hundreds of thousands of dollars in necessary medical care. Someone willing to give up everything, to do anything, to keep that loved one alive.

  “You’d manage,” she said.

  “Don’t underestimate yourself,” Seamus said. “You’re very valuable to me.”

  “Thank you.” She didn’t want to be valuable the way she was valuable to Seamus. “Talk soon.”

  She hung up the phone, flipped down the driver’s side visor, and looked in the mirror, making sure her makeup was in place, her hair still pulled back into a sleek knot that kept it out of the way.

  When she was sure she looked more pulled together than she felt, she grabbed her bag and stepped out of the car. She didn’t bother locking it. It wasn’t worth a damn, and anyway, no one on the block would mess with it, not with Owen sick like he was.

  She kept her head up as she walked toward the house, her heels clicking on the uneven sidewalk, weeds sprouting in the cracks. She prayed no one would see her making for the house, that Ida wouldn’t step onto the porch to ask after Owen, that Heather, the young mother next door, wouldn’t wave from her living room window. Bridget had her hands full steeling herself to greet her own family, to force a smile, make a joke about what Owen was watching or reading, kiss her mother’s cheek and dodge the question about where she’d parked.

  It was a well-rehearsed play, one that kept them all sane, that made them feel like they were normal. It took every ounce of energy she could muster to play her part, and while it was exhausting, it was preferable to the alternative, to crying and screaming and railing at a god who was cruel enough to strike her brother with ALS.

  She breathed a sigh of relief when she made it to the porch without seeing any of the neighbors and stepped into the house.

  “Hey!” she called out, setting her bag down by the coat rack near the door.

  “There you are,” her mother called out.

  Owen’s eyes tracked her as she stepped into the living room. He still had some mobility in his neck, but not much, and she always made sure he could see her before touching him.