Page 9 of His Forced Irish Mafia Bride

“Patrick, who is this?” one of the men asked.

“It’s fine,” he said quickly. “She’s my daughter. Nothing to worry about.” He turned back to me. “Just go home. Everything is okay.”

“No,” I said. “What’s going on?”

The men shifted their attention toward me.

“This has nothing to do with you,” the man in front said. “Listen to your father. This is a family matter.”

I looked at him properly, letting the silence sit before I answered. “It’s ironic you would say that, don’t you think, considering that I’m his daughter? Who the hell are you?”

“Just go home, kid.”

“That’s not an answer.”

“It is.”

“No, it’s not.”

“Maeve, leave this alone,” my father said.

I still didn’t look at him. “Tell me what the hell is going on.”

“It’s being handled,” he said.

“What’sbeing handled?”

“Old business,” my father said eventually. “That’s all.”

“Old business?” I looked at him first, then at the men surrounding him, trying to understand how something like that could be enough to explain what I was seeing. “So you’re standing around him like this for old…business?”

The third man changed his stance slightly, a small movement that somehow made everything feel more deliberate.

The man in front spoke once more. “Obligations that weren’t resolved.”

“What obligations?”

My father exhaled slowly, and when he spoke again his voice carried a strain he wasn’t fully hiding. “I...it...it’s nothing.”

“Nothing?” I said.

The man at the side finally spoke. “It will be resolved.”

“How?”

Silence returned, heavier this time, and my father stepped closer to me.

“Maeve, stop. I’ve got this.” I looked at him then, really looked at him, at the strain sitting behind his expression, at the way his certainty didn’t fully hold its shape anymore. I understood something I didn’t want to understand—he didn’t have this.

Nobody spoke after that. We just looked at one another, waiting for someone to break the tension. The man in front shifted first, then the others followed, and without further words they simply turned away and left. There was no urgency in their departure and no explanation left behind.

My father let out a breath once they were gone. I glared at him. “Now, would you please tell me what the hell that was about?”

“It’s fine. It’s nothing,” he said. “Don’t make it more than it is.”

I looked at him for a long moment, but he didn’t meet my eyes. “That wasn’t nothing,” I said.

“It’s handled.”