Chapter Eleven
Finn
WatchingAoife at the large dining table with my family had something settling inside me.
It was like I was finally calm, something inside me was able to rest.
It was crazy to feel like that.
At any moment, one of the dipshits could say something to hurt, offend, or terrify the crap out of her. It didn’t matter that no business was to be discussed while we ate the roast beef with thick gravy which Magdalena served us on Sundays. Such talk earned us all a slap around the head with her towel, but it didn’t mean it never fell from our lips.
Magdalena liked her, though. I saw that. She kept looking between me and Aoife, a sparkle in her eyes whenever our gazes clashed.
I hadn’t told them I’d proposed. Even if Aidan Sr. expected it, I didn’t say a word because I wanted to keep it to myself for a while.
Not a secret, just mine to have and mine to hold. Exactly like the woman herself.
I’d kept my hand planted on her lap all throughout dinner. My fingers tightening about her thigh when she laughed, the tips caressing her knee as she talked to one of my brothers.
They liked her.
I couldn’t blame them.
I did, too.
It was early to propose. We barely knew each other, but I knew enough to know I’d want her. Until I took my last breath, I’d need and want and crave this woman, and there was nothing and no one that would take her from me.
A wedding ring wouldn’t cement any of that, but it would stop anyone in the parish from fucking with her. It would keep her safe, keep her inviolate.
The women were never involved in business, but that didn’t mean it didn’t overlap from time to time.
Magdalena knew the extent of Aidan’s work but she knew none of the details, nor was she interested. He kept her safe, he provided for her and her sons, and she kept house for him and had a little business on the side that Aidan deemed ‘women’s work,’ and thus, acceptable. That was how it worked.
Aoife wasn’t like that. Though deep down, she was a traditional little thing, she wanted her own business, and I respected that. I didn’t want, nor did I expect, her to change because I knew, having her hanging around the house, bored out of her brains, wouldn’t be good for either of us.
For me, because I’d never want to get out of the penthouse. Thinking of her there, in what would becomeourspace, would be enough to have me working from home every day of the goddamn week.
And for her, shewasindependent and she had goals and dreams of her own. Ones that I wanted for her, too.
Plus, that cooking of hers? Jesus, I wanted to hoard it to myself, but I was already working out three times longer than before to keep up with the fact I wanted to faceplant in her food. If she stayed at home, cooking only for me? I’d end up four hundred pounds.
So, no, we wouldn’t be like Aidan and Magdalena. We’d be like Finn and Aoife, and that made me happy. As happy as seeing how seamlessly she fell in around the table.
Sure, she’d been nervous at first. I thought she was going to start choking when Aidan Sr. greeted her with two ebullient kisses to the cheek, then as my brothers had greeted her with polite tips of the chin, knowing there’d been the promise of slaughter in my eyes if they approached her like Aidan had, I’d seen the state of play settle. . . .
They knew.
Knew she was mine, and I wasn’t about to let her fucking go.
After Magdalena had bustled out of the kitchen, hugging Aoife then cooing at how pleased she was to finally meet her—finally, ha. I, myself, had only met Aoife four damn weeks ago—she’d taken Aoife into her sacred place, the kitchen, and that was that.
Any nerves she’d shown on the drive over—not many because I knew she was tired after what I’d put her through—had disappeared in the face of helping Magdalena. If Aoife got a hard-on for the penthouse kitchen, I knew she’d have loved Magdalena’s. I’d wanted to see her reaction to the room, but Aidan had dragged me over to his office with Aidan Jr. and Eoghan before the ‘no business over lunch’ rule was truly enforced.
The Colombians had figured out we were behind the killing of the Mexican cartel leader. Eoghan had earned his penthouse on that hit. He’d shot the Mexican then made it look as though the Colombians were to blame. It had taken them three years to figure it out, but it seemed like they were baying for blood.
There’d been a drive-by shooting at a Points-protected establishment, and some of the girls who stripped at one of our joints had been badly beaten.
Much as I felt for them, it was small stuff, but that was how a war started—with small stuff.