by AM Cosgrove
In the woman’s hands was a small container which she set on the rolling tray before bringing it over to Mirabelle.
“I was wondering if you were going to sleep the rest of the day away and I wouldn’t get the chance to bring you the soup I promised you.” She smiled and took the chair next to Mirabelle’s bed.
Mirabelle tried to readjust herself, but the cast was making life impossible.
“Here now, love, let me get you straightened out.” Mabel fussed over her for a moment, propping Mirabelle up to make her comfortable again.
“Water first or soup? Maybe best to get some water down there first before we try the soup. Gets kinda salty sometimes.” She smiled warmly. “That’s what makes it taste so good, you know? They add a wee bit of salt to it to make the rest of the flavors pop out a bit more. It is quite good, you’ll see!”
Mirabelle took a long sip of the water. It didn’t taste as coppery this go around. Her mouth had finally stopped oozing blood.
“There, now that that’s settled out, we can get to the good stuff.” Mabel brought the spoonful of broth up to Mirabelle’s lips as soon as she had set the cup of water back down. The warm soup tasted exactly as Mabel had promised. Just like she remembered as a kid. It was a welcome comfort.
She tried to smile. “Thank you.”
“Not to worry, child. I know what you’re thinking. This crazy old nurse is bringing up contraband soup from the cafe instead of whatever that slop is that they’re serving on the floor for dinner.”
Mirabelle laughed and instantly regretted it.
“Sorry, Love, I didn’t mean to make you giggle. Well, I did, but I didn’t mean for it to hurt you. Anywho, I’m glad that you can find something to smile about. Even if it’s contraband chicken noodle soup.”
Mabel chattered away as she fed as much of the soup to Mirabelle as her stomach would allow.
“Alrighty, my shift was over a half an hour ago, but I will be back again in the morning to check on you. Try to stay out of trouble, would you? Don’t give the night nurses too much of a hard time. They mean well, but are a wee bit thick in the head if you know what I mean?”
The nurse smirked and Mirabelle tried to smile.
“Well. I’ll be off then. Be good and rest, child.” She patted Mirabelle’s feet again before leaving.
Mirabelle laid there looking out the window at the darkening sky. She had to wonder how many hours she had been asleep last time her eyes were forced closed. It must have taken up the better part of the day, but she was starting to feel the slightest bit better.
The soup had definitely given her a small boost of energy to counteract the medications she was on.
Now that she was awake, all she could do was stare out the window at the city below.
She didn’t even hear the door open; she was so distracted by the comings and goings of people in the city.
“Oh my God, Mirabelle,” his voice jolted her out of her thoughts and back into reality.
When she turned to find the source of the voice, she already knew it was Jack.
“What are you doing here?” Her voice still cracked as if she was stumbling to form the words.
“I came to see you, of course. It took me a while to figure out where they had taken you,” he said gently as he pulled the chair up beside her bed.
“You shouldn’t be here, Jack,” she whispered.
“I had to, Mirabelle. I had to make sure you were alright. John wasn’t overly helpful with his information, and of course, no one else was willing to talk if he wasn’t.” Mirabelle could see the look on his face telling her that talk of John was going to be a touchy subject—one best avoided for the time being.
“The flat has been cleaned up, and as soon as you are able, we are going to get you out of here, and home again,” he said, picking up her hand and wrapping it in both of his.
She fought back the tears. “I can’t go home.”
She had spent a lot of time thinking about the consequences of her involvement in Jack’s life. She made him an easy target.
“Nonsense. That is the only place you can go, my darling. And it is the only place you belong.”
“No. You will only get hurt again if I come home,” she stumbled through the words, wincing when she tried to sit up straighter.
“You let me worry about that. I will find a way to make sure no one gets through our front door again.”
Mirabelle said nothing but searched his hazel-green eyes for reassurance. She could tell by the tone of his voice that he was not about to take no for an answer, but at the same time, she was going to have to find a way to lie low so she would not bring any more danger to him. If anything happened to him because of her, she wouldn’t be able to bear it. The tears welled up and overflowed from her eyes.
“There now, don’t cry, Mirabelle. None of this is your fault. You had nothing to do with this at all. You were simply in the wrong place at the wrong time.”
“I’m an easy target now,” she choked out.
“No, my darling, you’re not. Whoever it was behind this, isn’t playing by the code. They never should have laid a hand on you, but they did, and I intend to find out who it was and make sure that they pay for what they did to you.”
“You can’t, Jack. They won’t stop if you go after them.”
“Listen, Mirry, they won’t stop now either—no matter what I do. They know that eventually there will be a retaliation of some sort, and in order to ensure that doesn’t happen, they’re going to have to keep trying to pin me and the family down.” Jack shook his head. “Mind you, John doesn’t seem to see things the same way as I do, so he might as well be standing out on the street corner with a kick me sign taped to his back.”
Mirabelle said nothing.
“Not that I expect him to understand how I feel. To him, you are nothing more than a common whore.”
The words stung, but she knew that was the way their family worked. Their own mother had been nothing more than a baby-making machine, only brought into the family to bear children and that was it. From what Jack had told her over the years, that was the way things went with the Rann men. They only had women to bear children, and once the children were old enough to be raised by the men, then the women would be paid a large sum of money to leave and never look back.
Jack had not seen his mother since he was five years old. Women in the Rann family were nothing more than a liability for their men.
“I know you’re not that, Mirabelle. I know deep in my heart, you are more than that, and I will fight to protect that at all costs.”
The words he spoke brought tears to her eyes, and she felt them slip down her cheeks.
“There now, don’t cry. It is going to be alright. We are going to find a way out of whatever this mess is, Mirry, and then we will leave London and start a new branch of the family somewhere else.”
“No, the family is here, Jack. You need to be with your brothers.”
He said nothing but looked down at her hand in his, stroking it gently as he seemed lost in thought.
“I can’t tell you what tomorrow will bring, Mirry, but I can tell you that someone is going to pay for what they have done to you.”
CHAPTER SIX
Jack
He had just said good night to Mirabelle and stepped out of the hospital when his phone rang.
It was John.
“Yes?” he answered gruffly. He was in no mood for John’s bullshit. He had better things to do.
“I wasn’t sure you were going to pick up.”
“Well, you know if I didn’t, lord only knows what you would do. So, despite not wanting to talk to you, I thought it would be in my best interest to answer,” Jack said as he made his way across the parking lot to his car and got in.
“I’m going to need to see you down at the pub immediately.�
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“Well, I am not sure that I want to come down to the pub and see you, John. It isn’t like you and I are going to see eye to eye on the situation. Unless, of course, you have had a change of heart?”
“Things have changed. I will meet you there.” The phone went dead.
Things have changed? What happened in the last six and a half hours that would have made his brother do a complete one hundred and eighty degree turn in his thinking.
He put his car in reverse and pulled out of the parking lot, heading for the nearest highway.
A quick trip across the city later, he was at the pub and next to a very unhappy John. Even Will looked more uncomfortable than usual.
“The pub owners have asked that we stay out here for the time being while the local coppers finish their report,” John said as soon as he was in earshot. “It would seem that our friends here have had a burglary.”
“Well, maybe you can enlighten me on what happened in the meantime?” Jack looked back and forth between his two brothers.
“If you hadn’t done whatever it is, that’s gone and pissed off the wrong sort of people, we wouldn’t be having to deal with this shit now,” Will blurted out, his usual cheery blue eyes clouded over.
“What the fuck are the two of you going on about? How does anything I’ve done, have anything to do with the pub?” Jack growled.
“It would seem that the same sort of people that dusted you and the girl up, came here and did a number on the inside of the joint.”
“What?” Jack looked over at Will, who nodded in confirmation.
“They left the place in shambles, from what I understand. Broken tables, bottles smashed. It doesn’t seem like anything was stolen, except maybe some small cash from the tills. Otherwise, nothing.” John nodded and took a long draw of the cigarette he had just lit.
“I don’t understand, if their problem is with me, why come here?” Jack’s mind raced as he tried to come up with names of people he might have pissed off.
The list was long, but none that he could name off the top of his head would be pissed off enough to have the balls to come after him, let alone come after his brothers.
“I don’t know what you’ve done, Jack, but if this shit keeps up, they could come after me and my businesses,” Will looked around nervously as he spoke.
Jack followed his gaze around the parking lot where the cops were still milling about, saying nothing. He didn’t know what to say. He was at a loss for a name or a place to even start looking for one.
Nothing like this had happened to their family in recent years. They were not one of the larger families that operated out of London, but they certainly had a reputation of being one of the ones that you didn’t want to mess around with.
So, the question came back around to who would have the balls to do this?
“Jack, can you think of anyone on the inside you might have pissed off, that would wait until you were back outside again to take you out, one piece at a time?
“Honestly, John, I haven’t a fucking clue. I am just as mad and frustrated as you are.” Jack pulled a cigarette out of his pack and lit it, once again turning his attention to the cops who looked as though they were about to pack up and leave.
“Well, we are going to have to figure it out. We can’t afford to have these things happening. We can’t operate if the coppers are constantly buzzing around all of our places of business and our homes. It doesn’t look good for business and certainly isn’t the message we want to be sending out to the world,”
Jack snickered.
“I’m glad that you think this entire thing is funny, but none of the rest of us do,” John snapped.
“Listen, John, I don’t find this even remotely fucking funny. I’m just laughing at the fact that your brother gets jumped in his own home, and his woman is damned near killed, and you decide the family is doing nothing and not getting involved. Yet when your favorite pub gets chewed up, you are jumping into the fray with both feet beating your sword against shield claiming to want to protect and preserve the family name.”
“Jack, for the love of Christ!”
“No, no. I get it, John. You think this is all about me and the so-called messes I’ve created for myself. I don’t think that it is but go on and keep letting whoever is behind this to continue driving wedges into the middle of our family, and tear us apart from the inside out.”
Jack watched John’s eyes darken and his jaw tense. His words had worked their desired effect.
“You didn’t think about that, did you? No, because you always assume everything is a direct result of the things that I do. Never once did you think that someone has been planning this shit and we are playing right into their hands.”
Silence.
Will looked uncomfortable.
“I hope I am not interrupting anything, but I was wondering if you all want to come inside now that the coppers are gone?” No one had noticed that the barkeep, Jim, had walked up to them.
“I suppose.” John nodded and waved a hand to motion for the other two to follow Jim inside.
The second they stepped in the doorway, they could see the damage was extensive. There wasn’t a direction they could turn that wasn’t in shambles.
“Did they come in here with sledgehammers?” Will asked, stepping up to a half wall that separated the entryway from the main dining area that now had a giant hole showing through to the other side in it.
“That could have easily been a boot, but either way it would seem that they did as much damage as they possibly could to the joint before leaving,” Jack mused, looking around.
They had even taken out several of the priceless antique Tiffany lamps hanging from the ceiling throughout the dining room.
“I don’t know what I am going to do,” Jim said, throwing up his hands.
“We will see to it that your establishment is back up and running as soon as possible. I will make some phone calls and have people here shortly,” Will said, pulling out his cell phone.
“Thank you, Mr. Rann.” The older man looked instantly relieved, but the fear never left his eyes.
“We should look into seeing if we can have some of our people here to make sure that this doesn’t happen again. Jim doesn’t deserve this shit,” Will said as he scrolled through his phone.
“I can’t spare anyone right now, Will. You know that,” John said absently.
“For the love of Christ, John. When are you going to understand that we have to protect the people who—”
“Enough!” John snapped, glaring at Will.
“John, you can’t be—” Will started before Jack put an arm up to silence him.
Jack knew that this was neither the time nor the place to push John. Jack had already given him more than enough to chew on, and if Will started in, then it would no doubt seem like Will and Jack were ganging up on him and vying for control.
That would do nothing to help the situation, but rather, make it far more difficult. Jack was going to have to find a way to start bridging the gaps that were being made in their relationships before the family was completely torn apart.
The contractors arrived an hour later to start cleaning up the mess that had been left. Jim quickly scurried away to handle what he needed to, leaving the three men alone in their private room.
“Well, I suppose this means that this room will get a facelift finally after who knows how many years,” Jack said, picking up an overturned high back armchair before sitting down in the middle of the chaos.
“I am going to see if they left any fucking bottles intact. I need a fucking drink,” Will said, heading over to the badly damaged bar.
John stood in the middle of the room, staring down at his feet with his hands stuffed into the pockets of his long coat.
“You know, John, the other chair behind you looks as if it will st
ill hold weight. Might have a bit of a wobble to it but it seems to be in one piece.”
John looked up startled, as if he had forgotten Jack was in the room and had interrupted him from his thoughts. Without saying a word, he picked up the chair, tested its stability, and sat down, hands folded neatly in his lap.
“I found some Crown that was stuffed in the back of the shelf that seems to have survived. The top of the bottle is completely cracked, but it’s in one piece, so I am going to assume that there isn’t any glass in it.” Will said holding up a fair-sized bottle in his hand, “Now if I can find some glasses that made it through this mess, that will be a real test.”
Will ducked under the counter, searching.
At least someone is keeping busy, Jack thought.
Will had always been that way since he was little. When he was in an uncomfortable situation that he didn’t want to be in, he wouldn’t be able to sit still.
“Just bring the bottle, Will. There’s no chance in hell you’re going to find any glasses at this point,” John said, not looking up from his hands.
Will dutifully cracked the bottle and took a swig as he brought it over to the others.
“Ugh. Not the best of shit, but it’s something to wet the whistle, I suppose.” Will grimaced as he passed the bottle around.
“Where do you come up with these sayings? Wet the whistle? No one says that shit anymore,” Jack laughed before taking a long drink of the fiery gold.
“I don’t know. They just come to me sometimes. It’s hard to say really where I first heard them, but whatever the case, they seem to have stuck with me for some odd reason and I just can’t help myself.” Will shrugged before ferrying the bottle across the room to John.
John stared at the bottle a moment. As if contemplating if he was going to take a drink or not.
“It isn’t as bad as what Will says it is, Brother. He just can’t drink.”
