Page 7 of His Forced Irish Mafia Bride

I glanced briefly at the room behind her. “Last time I checked, people sit in bars.”

“That’s not an answer.”

“It is.”

A silence formed between us, and she studied me like she was trying to force a reason out of me.

“You don’t drink,” she finally said. “You don’t talk. You just sit there.”

“That’s not totally correct.” That made her stop for half a second, her irritation growing.

“Which part?”

“I do talk.”

“Ordering a drink doesn’t count as talking.” I didn’t respond to that. She leaned slightly forward. “Why do you keep coming back here?”

It was a simple question, and a predictable one, but I looked at the room instead of her. “Because it’s open,” I said.

Her eyes held mine. “That’s it?”

“Yes.”

She exhaled through her nose, not convinced. “Fine,” she said, and stormed away.

***

Father Michael met me the next morning at the construction site. Everyone met me in an office, but not Father Michael. He simply arrived and walked into the noise as if it didn’t challenge him in any way. The site was already in full swing when he came through the entrance.

People noticed him the way they noticed anything that didn’t belong to the usual order of things. I saw him before he reached me, and I didn’t move.

“Sean.”

That’s what he always called me, by my first name. He didn’t use any title and made no attempt to adjust his tone or position.

I answered in the same manner. “Father.”

We stood close enough that we didn’t have to raise our voices. For a moment, nothing else was said. It wasn’t an unfamiliar silence, but wasn’t comfortable, either.

Then we began to walk, and the conversation started where it should in a place like this—progress on the work, the state of the site, concrete timelines that could be measured and confirmed. Father Michael asked nothing that couldn’t be answered simply.

I responded in the same way, clear and concise. Yet beneath the structure of the exchange, something else was moving. The rhythm was too careful and our words were placed with attention that went beyond necessity.

I heard all of it, but I didn’t interrupt or redirect. He didn’t behave like someone attempting to extract information, but he didn’t behave like someone avoiding it, either.

Declan stood at a distance, near the edge of the site office, and didn’t intervene, his attention moving between us with quiet precision.

At one point, Father Michael looked past me rather than at me, his gaze settling on the structure of the site itself. “You’ve built it out quickly,” he said.

“Yes,” I replied. Father Michael gave me a small nod, not in approval but in acknowledgment. The conversation slowed naturally until it simply reached a point where nothing else needed to be said.

Father Michael stopped walking first. “Good work,” he said. The words were neutral, and I didn’t respond immediately. When I finally did, it was only with a slight nod.

Father Michael held my gaze for a moment longer than necessary before turning and walking back the way he’d come.

That night, I returned to Murphy’s again.

Why am I doing this?There was no reason I could give that would make sense, and I genuinely didn’t know the answer. Still, I came back. Murphy’s was exactly the same as it was before, loud in the way that only familiar places were.