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

  They hurried up the walkway, anxious to get to the cover of the porch where it would be harder for a nosy neighbor to spot them. By the time they reached the front door, Will already had his pick set out.

  Nolan opened the screen, half expecting it to squeak. It didn’t and Nolan held it open and twisted the doorknob, hoping they’d get lucky and find it unlocked. It wasn’t and he stepped back a little, holding the screen for Will while he went to work with the picks.

  Nolan had learned how to use a pick set back when he’d been with the Syndicate, something that had made his punk ass twenty-three-year-old heart swell with pride. It had been awhile for him, but Will had continued perfecting the skills he’d learned with Carlo Rossi’s crew.

  “Jaysus H. Christ…” Will muttered, turning one of the picks in the lock.

  He removed the pick and flipped through the ring, choosing one of a different size.

  Nolan looked around. “Before Christmas preferably.”

  “Feck you,” Will said without looking at him. “Do you want to do it?”

  Nolan didn’t bother answering. Will was flipping through the ring, looking for another pick, when the porch light came on next door.

  “Hold up,” he said.

  Will froze and Nolan watched as the front door opened in the house next to Seamus’s. He stayed in the shadows as a woman in sweats stepped onto the porch and bent over to set something down, then murmured softly.

  “Good kitty. Eat up.”

  She straightened, stretched, and scanned the street disinterestedly. A few seconds later she turned to go back inside, her face momentarily pointed in their direction. Nolan flattened himself against the house a little more and turned his head so she wouldn’t see the shine of his eyes. The squeak of her screen sounded, followed by the front door closing.

  Nolan exhaled. “Fuck.”

  Will inserted another pick in the lock and turned it slightly, his face frozen in concentration. Nolan knew what he was feeling for, the subtle feel of the pins tumbling into place when the right pick hit them in the right way.

  “Got it,” Will said, removing the pick.

  “Nice.”

  Will turned the knob, opened the door, and stepped into the house. Nolan followed, closing the door quietly behind him and stepping through the tiny vestibule to the living room.

  It was identical to almost every living room he’d ever seen in the neighborhood: a small box with one medium sized window and a doorway leading to the kitchen.

  Like the outside of the house, the room was surprisingly neat, with an outdated sofa in brown plaid, matching end tables straight out of the 80s, and carpet that had seen better days but looked clean.

  “Let’s do a quick sweep down here for the envelopes before we hit the rooms upstairs,” Nolan said, keeping his voice quiet. “I’ll take the kitchen.”

  He headed for the doorway between the two rooms and entered a compact kitchen much like the one in Bridget’s house. Like the furniture in the living room, the cabinets were dated but clean, the dishes washed and piled into a dish strainer next to the sink.

  If Seamus hadn’t been such an animal, Nolan would have felt sorry for him. The whole setup reeked of loneliness, the dish strainer holding a single plate and bowl, two glasses, and two forks. Nolan thought about Agnes O’Brien and wondered if Seamus had really loved his wife, if he’d been lonely since she passed and kept the house the way he did as a way to show her respect, or if he just liked it that way.

  Nolan did a quick pass of the kitchen table and the counters and moved onto the cupboards, being careful to put cereal boxes and cans of soup back exactly as he’d found them after he checked to see if Seamus had hidden anything behind them.

  He walked back into the living room. “It’s clean. Not even a piece of mail.”

  “Same out here,” Will said. “Well, there is one piece of mail.”

  He held up an envelope and Nolan leaned in to take a closer look: a postcard for discounted Viagra.

  Nolan rolled his eyes. “Let’s go upstairs.”

  Will followed him up the narrow staircase where they emerged directly onto a narrow hall. Nolan turned into the first bedroom.

  “I’ll check the next one,” Will said.

  Nolan made the rounds of the first room, which looked to be an unused guest room with a bed, two nightstands, and a dresser. A vase of dusty fake flowers sat on the dresser, reflected in its mirror.

  After a check of the drawers, empty except for a Bible in one of the nightstands, just like in a hotel room, he felt under the mattress and looked in the closet. When he didn’t find anything, he stepped back into the hall, careful to leave the door to the guest room open as far as he’d found it.

  He passed the bathroom, deciding to save it for last and try the final bedroom instead, an impulse that paid off when he opened the door and saw that it was obviously used as an office. But it wasn’t the desk sitting against the wall or the papers scattered across its surface that got his attention: it was the laptop sitting on the desk.

  “What the fuck…?”

  “What’s up?” Will whispered behind him.

  Nolan advanced into the room. “I guess Seamus isn’t the Luddite we thought he was.”

  “You have got to be kidding,” Will said, looking at the computer.

  Nolan opened the laptop. It was 6:31 p.m. They had maybe until 7:30.

  Maybe.

  “Take a look around for the envelopes,” Nolan said. “If they’re here, take pictures of them and put them back where you found them.”

  “We could just take the computer,” Will suggested.

  “That would bring way too much heat.” Nolan removed his wallet from his jeans and dug out the flash drive Christophe had given him weeks earlier. “I have a better idea.”

  “What the feck is that?” Will asked.

  “Flash drive.” Nolan slipped it into the computer’s USB port.

  Will stared at him. “You want to tell me what you’re doing carrying around a flash drive?”

  “No.” Nolan looked at the cursor on the password screen. “Any guesses?”

  “The Cat? Black Cat? Cat?” He looked pissed, probably about Nolan’s answer to his question about the flash drive, but Nolan couldn’t worry about that right now.

  Nolan thought about it. No one called the Black Cat anything but the Cat. He typed it into the box and a low thunk sounded from the computer to let him know he was wrong.

  “That’s not it.”

  “Shite,” Will said. “The Playpen? Playpen?”

  Nolan tried it. “That’s not it either. We’ve probably got one more shot before we’re locked out for awhile. Any more ideas?”

  “Nothing I’d bet the ranch on.”

  Nolan looked around the office, willing his mind to think like Seamus’s. His gaze came to rest on the only photograph in the room, a faded picture of a young man with his arm around a beautiful bride. She was looking up at him with adoration, his face proud as he gazed into her eyes.

  He started typing before he could change his mind: AGNES.

  If it didn’t work, he’d take the fucking computer and deal with the fallout.

  The computer opened. “Bingo.”

  Will sighed, obviously relieved. He looked at the flash drive plugged into the computer. “How long will that take?”

  “I have no idea,” Nolan said. “Look for the envelopes, just in case.”

  Nolan started copying all the folders into the flash drive. There were more of them than he would have expected, surprisingly organized and clearly labeled with headings that corresponded to the IRA’s organizational structure as well as the names of certain locations under Seamus’s control, like the Playpen and the Cat.

  He searched the desk for the envelopes. When he didn’t find them, he tapped his gloved fingers on the desk as the folders continued copying to the flash drive, his eyes drifting again to the picture on Seamus’s desk. It was hard to imagine Seamus really loving a woman. Th
en again, it had been hard to imagine him with a computer. Did he intentionally mislead his men, allowing them to think he was some kind of dinosaur who hadn’t yet moved into the twenty-first century? Or had they all been too lazy to look beneath Seamus’s surface? What else would they find there if they really looked?

  “No envelopes,” Will said. “He either hasn’t labeled them yet or he keeps them somewhere else.”

  “It won’t matter,” Nolan said. “I have a feeling this baby is going to give us everything we need.”

  “Makes me fecking nervous,” Will grumbled.

  Nolan looked at him. “You’re nervous about copying files, something Seamus doesn’t have a shot in hell of tracing, but you weren’t nervous about breaking into his house?”

  He shrugged. “It’s outside my comfort zone.”

  “One more.” Nolan watched as a blue bar kept him apprised of the final folder’s progress.

  “We really need to get out of here,” Will said.

  “Almost there.” The blue bar hovered near the end of the progress marker, then finally filled in the rest of it. “Done.”

  “Thank god.”

  Nolan removed the flash drive, put it in his pocket, and made sure the interface looked just as it had when he’d opened the computer. Then he shut the lid and looked at Will.

  “Let’s get out of here.”

  Chapter Nineteen

  Bridget stood in the kitchen, her image reflected in the window above the sink, and soaped up a dinner plate. They had a dishwasher, but her father was working late again and Owen hadn’t felt like eating. Bridget had happily agreed with her mother that it was a takeout kind of night, and they’d ordered pizza and eaten in the living room. They’d only dirtied a couple of dishes, and her mom hated to run the dishwasher if it wasn’t full.

  Owen had sat with them, but Bridget could tell his mind was elsewhere. She wondered if she should ask him about the Dignitas brochure, if he wanted to talk about it. She didn’t want him to know her mother had found the brochure, but he wasn’t exactly overflowing with conversational options.

  His friends from school still came by to say hello now and then, although less frequently lately, now that she thought about it. They brought video games Owen couldn’t really play and junk food he couldn’t eat, but they were trying. Still, Bridget didn’t see Owen bringing up his decision to euthanize himself with Red O’Reilly or Johnny Dolan.

  Her throat closed around the idea of talking about it. She wanted to make sure she was up to the task, that she could have the conversation in a way that served Owen and not herself. Right now she didn’t trust herself not to bawl like a baby, not to beg him to keep fighting, not to tell him how much she still needed him—how much they all needed him.

  Is that what you think is fair?

  Her mother was right. This—all of this—was about Owen: what was best for him, what he wanted. Bridget wouldn’t have the conversation about Dignitas until she was sure she could do it right. He deserved that.

  “I think you were washing that same plate when I left,” her mother admonished as she came into the room.

  Bridget looked down. “Was I?”

  “Something on your mind, love?” The question was casual, but Bridget knew her mom was giving her an opening to talk about the work she did for Seamus.

  She appreciated the gentle opening, her mom was always good about that, but she wasn’t in the mood to talk, about the brochure from Owen’s room or her work for Seamus, especially tonight when Nolan and Will were breaking into Seamus’s house.

  “Not really,” she said.

  “All right then.” Her mom opened the fridge. “Pumpkin or chocolate?”

  “Neither. My pants are getting tight.” They’d been working their way through the leftover Thanksgiving pie for the past four days.

  “Bollocks. You’re as skinny as ever. My own Mum would have scolded me for being so thin.”

  “Thank god you’re not like her,” Bridget said.

  “Psh.” Her mom took both pies out of the fridge and set them on the counter. “You’ve gotten a bit of sass with age, haven’t you?”

  “It runs in the family,” Bridget said.

  Her mom removed two plates from the cupboard and cut into the last of the pumpkin pie.

  Bridget laughed as she rinsed the last plate and set it in the dish strainer. “I said I didn’t want any!”

  “Who said this is for you, madam?” Her mom sniffed, cutting a piece of the chocolate and setting it on the other plate. She set both of them on the kitchen table with two forks. “Maybe I’m just hungry for pie.”

  Bridget dried her hands and sat down at the table. “There are two forks, Mom.”

  Her mom sat across from her and grinned. “Are there now?”

  Bridget shook her head, reached for one of the forks, and cut a small bite off the chocolate. She didn’t really want it—where were Nolan and Will? Why hadn’t they called to let her know they’d made it out of Seamus’s?—but it was chocolate after all.

  “There you go now,” her mother said, like Bridget was in a high chair deigning to eat pureed carrots. “Are you in for the night?”

  The question was her mother’s way of navigating the minefield of her work with Seamus. Bridget wasn’t going to take the bait. Not now.

  “I think so.”

  “Good. We can watch Queer Eye and you can get a proper night’s sleep.”

  “Yes.” Bridget ignored her mother’s dig about the morning she’d snuck in after her night with Nolan.

  Her phone buzzed from the counter and she got up so fast her chair almost tipped over behind her. The text was simple, and not from Nolan, but from Will.

  OUT.

  She breathed a sigh of relief when she saw the thumbs-up emoji, slid her phone in her pocket, and forced herself to sit down at the table, fighting a surge of relieved energy. She couldn’t help wishing the text had come from Nolan, but he’d probably left it to Will to keep up the charade of disinterest they’d been maintaining with Seamus, just in case.

  She had a million questions, not the least of which was whether they’d found what they were looking for, but it would have to wait until she saw them in person at Foley’s. It had become their regular meeting place and Bridget had slowly started to feel like they’d stepped back in time, Nolan playing straight man to Will’s irreverence, Bridget playing levelheaded schoolmarm to them both. The only thing that was different was that she and Nolan were still careful around each other—careful not to show affection, not to stare, not to touch.

  The night she’d spent in his bed had broken the dam on the sexual appetite she’d managed to stifle in the four years they’d been apart. Now she often found herself standing in line for coffee or idling at a light that had already turned green, images playing in her mind like an endless movie.

  Nolan’s head between her legs, his hair wound in her fingers.

  His cock emerging from her body only to disappear inside her again.

  His face in her hands, his eyes full of questions she couldn’t answer.

  She spent all day, every day vibrating with need, both desperate and terrified to be back in his arms and his bed, knowing that every night she spent with him would pull her deeper into the lie she was telling by not telling the truth.

  “Everything all right?” her mom asked.

  Bridget nodded. “Everything’s good.”

  She said it even though she knew it wasn’t true. Falling back into her relationship with Nolan wasn’t good. Neither was Nolan and Will stealing from Seamus.

  But things were moving. Changing. She didn’t know where it would lead, but the fact that she wasn’t standing still anymore, getting in deeper with Seamus, had to count for something. Now that Nolan had what he needed, everything would be okay.

  She repeated it in her mind again and again until she almost believed it.

  Chapter Twenty

  Nolan lifted a hand in greeting as Christophe, looking puzzled and uncom
fortable, walked into Dona Habana, a Cuban restaurant in a strip mall in Roxbury. Nolan would have found it funny if the situation with Seamus hadn’t been so intense.

  Christophe sat down and looked around, taking in the vibrant coral walls and the giant mural covering one wall. “This is… interesting.”

  “I’ve been to Foley’s a lot lately. Don’t want to get sloppy.” Nolan pushed a bottle of Bucanero toward Christophe. “Ordered you a beer. Sorry—no bourbon.”

  Christophe picked it up and looked at the label, then took a drink. His expression was noncommittal as he set the beer back on the table.

  “We got everything we needed from the laptop and more,” Christophe said.

  “More?”

  Christophe nodded.

  “Is it enough to shut Seamus down?” Nolan asked.

  “Eventually,” Christophe said.

  “What do you mean eventually?”

  “There’s quite a lot of financial information to review and trace, money funneled through organizations here and in Ireland, among others. The FBI has procedures that have to be followed if we want a case against O’Brien to stick,” Christophe said.

  Nolan thought about Bridget, about Will, both in more danger with every passing day.

  “Were we right about the dirty cops?” Nolan asked.

  “You were right,” Christophe said. “There are sixteen named in the files on O’Brien’s computer, spread out across Boston and its surrounding areas.”

  “Good,” Nolan said, “because we have a date for the bank job at Harbor Trust.”

  A flicker of interest passed over Marchand’s eyes, the first sign of emotion he’d shown besides his confusion at the location of their meeting. “Which is?”

  “Friday.”

  “That would be this Friday?” Marchand asked.

  “That’s right.”

  “How certain are you?”

  “As certain as I can be: Will’s been assigned to the crew,” Nolan said.

  His gut clenched just thinking about it, but he’d already had it out with Will, had already offered to wire him enough money to buy him a plane ticket out of Boston and set him up in the Caribbean for a long time. He’d been as pissed by Nolan’s offer as Nolan expected him to be.