Page 17 of His Forced Irish Mafia Bride

He still didn’t stop, so I stepped in front of him. The streetlights cut across his face in broken strips of yellow and shadow, and for the first time he looked exactly like what he was, exhausted and older than I’d ever noticed.

“Maeve—”

“Don’tMaeveme.” That made him stop, finally, and I stepped closer. “You don’t get to stand there and act like that man didn’t just tell you to hand me over like I’m an object.”

“Shh. Lower your voice.”

I let out a short laugh. “Oh,nowyou care about people listening?”

Nobody around us cared. South Boston had a way of pretending it didn’t see what it didn’t want to deal with.

I folded my arms, forcing myself steady. “Start talking, Dad.”

He rubbed his face like he was searching for a version of himself that could survive the explanation.

“You owe him money?” I asked.

“It’s more complicated than that, Maeve.”

There it was again, that line that meant nothing. I shook my head. “Of course it is.”

He looked away from me, toward the road. “Years ago I was involved with people I shouldn’t have been involved with.”

“Criminals?”

He didn’t answer. Something heavy settled in my stomach.

“There were deals,” he said carefully, “favors, money moving around.”

“What things?”

“You don’t need the details.”

“Yes, I do.”

“No, you don’t.” His voice sharpened, and I watched him properly then. He wasn’t standing like my father, who argued about bills or repairs or work. He was standing like someone trying to hold a failing wall together with his bare hands. They shook when he tried to light a cigarette and failed, and that made my anger waver, just slightly.

“What happened, Dad?”

“There was a shipment,” he said. “Money disappeared, people blamed the wrong men, and then some people disappeared.”

My voice came quieter. “Did Sean make them disappear?”

He hesitated. “Sean was younger then.” Not an answer, not really.

“You still haven’t told me what you did.”

He gave a short laugh, no humor in it. “If I start telling the truth, there’s no good place to stop.”

Silence stretched between us. Cars passed behind us, music spilled from a bar nearby and then faded, the city moving like nothing was breaking.

“You should have told me,” I said.

“I was trying to keep you out of it.”

“That worked out great.”

His eyes lifted to mine, and finally he said the thing he’d been avoiding. “Sean isn’t bluffing.”