So, not only was I too young to retire, I was an integral part of the gang. I was their money. Conor too, but it was more on me. My father wasn’t going to let me go anywhere. Even in these circumstances.
Looking back, I should have realized Aidan would never have let anyone outside the family handle something so vital to the running of our organization. I’d just been floored by his trust in me. But now? It made sense.
I knew more about the Five Points than even Aidan Jr. did, and he was the next in line for Aidan Sr.’s throne.
As the money man, everything went through me at some point. I knew when a drug shipment was slipping through the Canadian border, and I also knew if Eoghan was on a job in the goddamn Congo.
That Aidan had managed to hide a payout to the cops from me, told me he’d gone off the books on this one. I couldn’t blame him. In his shoes, I’d have done the exact same for Aoife.
Yeah. I would.
That was the sum of it.
What Aidan had done? I’d do too. So I couldn’t bitch and moan about this situation, but what I could do, was change.
And Aidan would listen because this was my leverage.
Pressing a kiss to the back of Aoife’s head, I changed gears. Aoife was worth going to war, but it wasn’t worth me losing my life in the battle.
I’d get reparations for her. She just wouldn’t know it.
In my arms, she twisted over, and I marveled at how much stronger she was. By the end of the first week at home, I fully expected her to be eating better and to have some more motility. Just watching her move in my arms, not seeing the flash of pain cross her features as she wandered around the place, was the best gift I could have asked for.
She huddled into me, pressing her lips to my pec, and I was grateful I was naked when I felt the nudge of her knee against the seam of my closed thighs.
“You slept well,” she murmured, the words soft, her breath brushing against my chest with a delicate caress.
“I needed it,” I admitted.
She stroked her hand down my side. “How come you don’t have any tattoos?”
Whatever I expected her to say, she never said it. Damn woman.
I choked out a laugh—was she disappointed I didn’t have any ink? “How comeyoudon’t have any tattoos?”
She smirked. “I’m not in the mafia. I thought all Five Points had tats.”
I’d always been the rebel. “I didn’t want one.”
“And Aidan let you get away with that?” she questioned, pulling back to stare at me, her surprise evident.
“I managed to wheedle out of it every time it became an issue.”
“I thought it was a peer pressure thing.”
“It is. Now, I wonder if he let me get away with it because of what I am to him. He said one of his proudest moments was when Aidan and I asked to ascend to the ranks.”
Her nose wrinkled. “He makes it sound like you’re doing something honorable.”
After where my thoughts had been, I couldn’t be offended. Two days ago, I would have been though. Crazy, wasn’t it? How the world could turn on its axis after one conversation. Her mother’s death, the shooting, then news of my true heritage… all of it twined so firmly into a knot of Gordian-like proportions.
A breath gusted from my lips. “To him, it is honorable. We’re at war in his mind.”
“Explain,” she insisted, staring up at me with bright green eyes that trapped me in her snare.
“Aidan’s third generation Five Points, Aoife. He was raised with the stories of how we were oppressed by the British. His great-granddaddy fled to the States to evade arrest.” I shrugged. “Every year we send a tithe to the IRA.”
A shocked gasp escaped her. “No way.”