Senator Alan Davidson was on his way to the White House, and I wasn’t going to do anything to stop that. I was already a dirty secret in his past, and now I had links to the Irish Mob. The last thing he needed was for his ties with me to go public. I intended on keeping our relationship private. Our meetings meant a lot to me.
“Aoife!”
Lena’s bark of my name had me jerking in my seat. “Hmm?”
“You’re daydreaming! I need those carrots soon.”
I stared down at the carrots and carried on with the task she’d given me. I still wanted to sleep a lot, but Lena dragged me out of bed and had me moving around, even when it meant pushing myself a tad too far for comfort. My PT didn’t disapprove though. In fact, she said I was improving in leaps and bounds, which made sense considering Lena had probably been around a lot of people who’d been shot up at some point in their life.
As I peeled the veggies, I wondered what my dad would have to say to me the next time we met. After the shooting, which had hit the press, as well as my injuries, he now knew who my husband was. Knewwhathe was too.
A part of me wondered if he’d cut ties with me because of his career, and I really hoped that all my years of faith in him weren’t about to disintegrate. It was one of the reasons that, though it sucked, I wouldn’t be seeing him for a while. I could remain with my head in the sand about the situation until things were normal enough for me to meet with him again.
Lena huffed. “Would you spit it out?”
“Spit what out?” I asked, frowning at her.
“You’re sighing about something, girl.”
I shrugged. “Just thinking.”
“Stop it. Start doing.” She waggled her knife at me, and Mary-Ellen, one of the men’s wives who Lena actually liked, giggled.
There weren’t many women that Lena approved of. Those she did were allowed into the kitchen where she cooked. Every day. For over one hundred people. She didn’t have much help, but she did it. Without complaint.
I could see why Aidan was so enamored with her.
She was a general’s wife. What a man in his position needed at his side. In essence, I knew I’d have to take after her at some point.
“Youaredithering today,” Mary-Ellen murmured quietly, making me grimace.
Her husband wasn’t high up in the ranks, but he had standing. Far as I could tell, it worked like this:
Each brother ran a certain aspect of the Points’ trade.
I knew Finn worked on property, and Conor did something with computers. I thought Declan dealt drugs and Brennan, I’d come to believe, handled loans. But as for Eoghan, I could only guess. Guns, girls, and/or gambling? The three Gs? With Aidan being the heir, I figured he had a hand in every pot.
Each brother, in turn, had around forty men under him. At the bottom, they had the ‘joeys,’ as Aidan called them. Above them were the runners, and then, there were the captains. Just like in any job, each position came with certain perks.
Mary-Ellen’s husband was a captain, and she was, as my mother would have said, straight off the boat from the Old Country. She was already pregnant and was expecting twins. Every time I looked at her, she seemed to get bigger. Her cheeks were bright red like apples freshly picked from the tree, and there was a constant twinkle in her eye that invited anyone to smile.
In comparison to my best friend, she was staid, but I liked her. Jenny swore like a trooper and would fuck anything that wasn’t pinned down. But Mary-Ellen was surprisingly restful, and with my current health, I realized I needed that. I liked her, and we were becoming good friends with how much time we spent together in this gilded cage.
“Aoife?” She reached over and gently patted my hand. “Are you feeling okay?”
“I miss Finn,” I told her quietly, not wanting Lena to hear.
The older woman grew defensive whenever I said anything like that, would splutter about the men being at war. I figured she missed Aidan just as much as I missed my husband, but rather than moan about it, she got on with shit.
It was easier said than done, though, when you were tied to a seat all the time.
Okay, not literally tied, but I couldn’t exactly bustle around the kitchen like Lena was.
“I know you do.” Mary-Ellen’s smile was sad. “At least he comes and visits though.”
Not every night like he had at the start, but he tried. I’d grant him that. “You still haven’t seen Stephen?” I tried not to gape at that, absolutely staggered by the idea that the men felt okay with dumping their wives and kids here without visiting for weeks on end.
It was disgustingly medieval, I thought, my disapproval ranking up a notch at the way things were ran.