Chapter Three

Colleen

 

I shove the tin back into my cleavage and take a long, deep breath. The tin presses into my bra, cold against the parts of my skin it touches, ice-cold, searing into me, a constant reminder of what I just did. I try and make myself smile as Gabriel walks back to the table from the bathroom, but it’s difficult. Despite his cockiness, despite his impropriety—both things which Mother hates—I find myself liking him. I don’t want him to die or get sick or whatever that powder is going to do to him. I don’t want to hurt anybody.

 

He sits down and goes for the drink—the non-poisoned beer. He looks devastatingly handsome as he drinks it, like a man from a billboard for cologne. His hair is jet-black and shiny under the light, slick, and his face is all carved, clean-shaven features. He doesn’t have a tattoo that I can see, unlike Father’s men who are mostly covered from knuckle to neck. My body responds to him even as my mind wills it quiet. My palms moisten, my tongue feels heavy and dry, but most of all my heart thumps in anticipation for when he drinks that second beer. I have to stop him … but that means going against Father, which I’ve never once done.

 

“Is something wrong?” he asks.

 

“No,” I answer far too quickly, smiling at him as convincingly as I can. “Why do you ask?”

 

“Because you’re about as red as an Irish cherry.” There’s a glint to his voice, like metal, and it’s not entirely unpleasant. He takes a long sip of his beer, draining it to almost half. I wish he would drink slower!

 

“Is that redder than a normal cherry?” I ask, trying for a laugh.

 

He shrugs. “I’ve got no clue, come to think of it. What is it men and women do on dates, Colleen? You need to help me out on this one. I’m not exactly the dating type. Maybe you can tell.”

 

I giggle. It’s a real giggle. He smiles at me. Then the moment passes and guilt and regret stab into me. I have to warn him before he touches the second drink. But Father gave me specific instructions and Shane O’Rourke is always obeyed, no matter what. Shane O’Rourke has not tolerated disobedience since he became the boss, before I was born. I’ve only ever known him as the king. He might beat me, imprison me, sell me. I want to tell myself that he’s my father and he loves me and he’d never do something like that, but it rings hollow. The fact is, I don’t know. And Mother, well, she’s probably worse.

 

“I wonder what they expect from us,” he goes on, slowly sipping the beer. Not slow enough, though; soon he’ll drain it. “Maybe they want us to fall in love.” He grins, ear-to-ear. He seems different than when he left for the bathroom. He’s joking, but there’s something else there, too, a sinister aspect he didn’t have before. Suddenly I can easily imagine this man doing bad things for the Italians. What’s even more disconcerting is that the chill which runs through me is not wholly negative. “What do you think?” he presses on. “Would Shane and Lorenzo be happy if the Italian hitter and the Irish girl fell head over heels, eh? Or would it piss them off, because then we’d have minds of our own?”

 

“Minds of our own,” I whisper, eyes fixated on the poisoned beer now. He’s almost done. “I’ve never had much of one, to be honest.” I laugh, oversharing, but it only seems polite after what I’ve done. “I … I don’t mean that. I do have a mind of my own, of course, but Mother would prefer it if I didn’t.”

 

“You’re her doll,” he says, nodding. “And she dresses you up and pulls your little string to make you say anything she wants. Is that about right?”

 

I sip my wine so I don’t have to answer, but when I’m done he’s still staring at me. “You don’t have to be a jerk,” I whisper, not meeting his eye. It’s not every day I call an Italian mobster a jerk! “I just … Mother really would prefer if I was a doll. She’d like it even more if I was battery-powered, because then she could turn me off if she felt like it.”

 

“So you just do what they say, anything?” His dark blue eyes bore into me. “Don’t you ever ask yourself what you want, Colleen?”

 

“I …” That intensity, the way he leans in to hear my answer. I swallow, wondering … How subtle was I when I put the powder in the drink? Idiot! I didn’t even try to hide it, I now realize, I was so consumed with what I was doing, I gave no thought to how. “I ask myself all the time,” I mutter.

 

“But you rarely get to act on the answer, is that it?”

 

“What is this?” I suddenly blurt. “Why are you interrogating me? Are you always this rude?”

 

“Rude?” He laughs harshly, finishes his beer, and then rests his hand near the second. My heartbeat almost thumps out of my mouth now as I watch his fingers brush against the glass. He’ll drink it soon, and when he drinks it … my mind races ahead. What happens then? Does he keel over? Does he choke? I don’t want to hurt him. I can’t stand the thought of him getting hurt, in fact, which hits me with surprise. I find myself wishing that this was a different life and we were just a man and a woman on a date, not an Italian and an Irish on some kind of mission.

 

“Rude?” he repeats, his fingers leaving prints on the glass. “That’s a funny word, Colleen. Rude. Maybe I am rude. Maybe so, yes, I can see that. I do lots of things that would be considered rude in polite society, if I ever bothered to enter polite society. But even if I’m rude, I understand respect, honor, and loyalty. There’s nothing more important in this life. Men might die, but there’s a reason for their deaths. Men might run, and there’s a reason for that too. I might fight, kill … but there’s always a reason. And when you shake a man’s hand and tell him that he’s safe from any backstabbing for the time being, well, then, he’s safe. Or at least he’s supposed to be.” He looks down at the table as he talks, but on the last, he glances up at me.

 

I bite down on my lip. His expression is ice. It sears coldly into me. “I …” My mouth is dry; my tongue sticks to my teeth. I force it open and say, “I don’t know …” But what don’t I know? I can’t finish the sentence, because there’s nothing to finish it with.

 

“I know,” he says quietly. “Looking at you, Colleen, I don’t see a lady who’s eager to enter into this life. Not like some women. You get those, you know, hanging around the bars and the clubs, hanging off the made men like they think they’re going to leave their wives for a stripper. It never works, but there it is; they want it. But not you. Looking at you, I see a lady who’d be better served in a warm, comfortable home someplace, baking a fucking apple pie and bringing her boyfriend a beer or two. Not this shit.” His face twists, and he makes as if to knock the beer from the table. Then he glances around and remembers himself: an Italian in a sea of Irish. But he looks relieved that nobody approaches the table. We’re alone, even if we’re not. Nobody is watching us close enough to sense that everything is about to change.

 

“Do you have anything you want to tell me?” he asks, his voice dead quiet.

 

“What do you mean?” I say on instinct, but I know and, looking at him, I see that he knows as well.

 

“I’m going to ask you one last time.” His voice is as taut as a hairband tied around too much hair, stretching almost to the breaking point, and soon it’ll snap. His gaze continues to burn. “Is there anything you want to tell me?”

 

I should call for help. That look in his eyes is nothing good. Father would want me to call for help, but I don’t. It’s not even that I can’t—that my voice does not work, or anything like that—just that I don’t want to. I felt bad enough putting that powder into his drink. If the Irish get hold of him after he’s threatened their princess—I hate thinking of myself like that, but they don’t—who knows what they’ll do to him?

 

I let out a sigh, half relief and half fear. “I put something in your drink,” I admit.

 

He listens closely when I tell him about the powder, Father giving it to me and telling me to put it in as discreetly as possible.

 

“I guess I forgot that part,” I say, trying for a joke.

 

“Hmm.” He takes out his cell phone and leans back in his chair, looking at me with coldness now. Jokey Gabriel is gone. “There’s been a change of plans, skipper,” Gabriel says. “That bastard Shane ordered her to put something in my drink. Yeah, yeah, exactly. So what do we … A change of plan? Okay, skip. I’ll check in soon.”

 

He hangs up his cell phone and then leans forward, placing his forearms on the table. “There are two ways this can go,” he whispers. There’s violence in his voice, just waiting to be unleashed. “Either you can come with me quietly and none of your Irish brethren have to die, or you can make a fuss and I’ll kill as many bastards as I can before they take me out. And they will take me out. I’m not crazy. I can see that. But not before I do some real damage. Or … you come with me, you don’t make a sound, and I don’t have to hurt anybody. What’ll it be, Colleen O’Rourke?”

 

I look around the restaurant, at the couples talking obliviously, the bar staff and the waiters and the busboy carrying a tray of dirty dishes toward the kitchen.

 

I swallow both fear and nerves and then slowly stand up. “Let’s go.”