Page 17 of Blood in the Water

Nolan was sitting in traffic on his way to the Cat when his phone rang. He looked at the display: Will.

He answered the call through the Lexus’s Bluetooth system. “I’m on my way. Stuck on the highway.”

“Change of plans.” Will’s voice sounded through the car’s speakers. “Meeting at the Playpen, not the Cat.”

Nolan eyed a break in the next lane and swerved into it before the car behind him could speed up to avoid letting him in. “Says who?”

“Says Santa Claus. Jaysus feck. Says Seamus.”

“Why does he want us at the Playpen?” Nolan asked.

“How should I know? I’m just following orders.”

“Be there in fifteen,” Nolan said.

He hung up the phone, unease simmering in his gut. He’d never liked the Playpen — he recognized too many of the girls, knew too much about why they were there and how many of them didn’t want to be — but now it was way too close to home. He couldn’t think about the place without thinking about Bridget, about how close she was toa reality where Seamus would force her to work there to pay off her debt.

Bridget…

It had been a week since he’d begged her to let him fly her and her family out of town, a week since she’d told him no for what felt like the hundredth time. His frustration at her unwillingness to leave was matched only by his love for her. Their stolen hours were the only thing keeping him going. He sometimes couldn’t sleep for the memory of her in his arms, the image of her naked body under his, her eyelashes casting shadows against her cheeks as she came, her body clenching around his as she cried out into the room.

He was going to marry her. His mother would hate it, but she could fuck off. Nolan’s life — and his money — belonged to him. He was going to live it the way he wanted, and he was going to live it with the woman who owned his heart. He was going to spend it making her life better, helping her family in whatever way he could, making sure nothing ever hurt her again.

And that included Seamus O’Brien.

He pushed away thoughts of Bridget. She was sacred. He didn’t want to poison his thoughts of her by mingling them with Seamus. He spent the rest of the drive wondering why Seamus was calling him and Will to the strip club at ten in the morning. Night or day, the Cat was Seamus’s preferred place of business, followed by an occasional meeting at Palmer’s, a hole-in-the-wall on Tremont Street that specialized in burgers so rare they were bloody.

He still hadn’t figured it out when he pulled into the potholed parking lot of the Playpen. The place looked worse by day, the pink sign even seedier against the cloudy January sky. The exterior was faded and crumbling, theglass door tinted. The Playpen didn’t open until eleven, and if it hadn’t been for the four cars in the parking lot, one of them Will’s, he would have thought the place was abandoned.

He pulled next to Will’s car and rolled down his window as Will did the same.

“What the feck?”

“I have no idea,” Nolan said.

“You’ve been careful?” Will asked.

“Fuck you. I’ve been careful.”

He and Will had agreed to assume they were being tailed at all times since Seamus had set them surveilling the rest of the crew. They’d spent the first day tailing Doug, reporting back to Seamus that nothing had seemed out of the ordinary as Doug went about Seamus’s business. They’d been assigned other marks since then, all men working in some capacity for Seamus, most of them longtime employees.

“Bridge?” Will asked.

“She’s been careful too, and it’s not like she’s meeting with the Syndicate on her own,” Nolan said.

“No, but she’s been meeting with you.”

“We’ve been careful,” Nolan insisted. They only managed to get away to the tiny apartment once a week or so, and they’d both been extra cautious in the past couple of weeks.

“Then what?”

“Only one way to find out,” Nolan said, rolling up his window.

The Playpen was quiet when they entered, absent the music that typically beat through the speakers around the room, drowning out the outside world, lulling the men who sat around watching the girls into thinking this was the onlyworld that mattered until they looked down and discovered they were out of cash.

Donovan, the bartender, swapped out some bottles around the bar, talking to one of the girls while he worked. He tipped his head toward the rear of the building. “They’re in the back.”

“Thanks.” Now that they were next to the bar Nolan recognized the woman. “Hey, Carly. How’ve you been?”