“Take my sister?” He head-butts Mickey a second time. His forehead is stained with blood. “Take the woman I love?” He head-butts Mickey a third time. “Take my fucking father?” The fourth time causes Mickey to go slack, moaning softly as his arms spread out to either side of him. Cor takes Mickey’s gun and cellphone. Shooting off a quick text, he holds the gun to Mickey’s head. “I’ll drag your fucking corpse out there and then everyone will see who the goddamn Don is!”

  “Cor, wait.” I touch his shoulder. There’s blood in his beard and sprayed over his cheeks. He looks at me like a man intent on murder. “Don’t kill him. We have evidence on him. I’m guessing you haven’t been idle for the past couple of months, either. I’m guessing you have video, or you’ve talked to people, or something. We can put him away for life. Don’t kill him. We can do this right. And think about it ... if you kill him, what have the FBI got? Nothing. Nothing to show for two months of Irish mob mayhem. But if you let us take him, we can leave you be. It can go back to the way it was, but with you as Don. We can be together.”

  “An FBI agent and a Don?” Cor coughs out a laugh. “This ain’t a fairytale, Scar.” He pulls back the hammer on the pistol.

  “Cor!” I grip his shoulders, reminding me of the first time I was intimate with him, when he discovered his dad was dead back at The Leprechaun. All this talk of crossing lines, but that was the line back there, the only line that mattered. The line between criminal and human. “Think about this. Think past your anger.”

  “You can kill me,” Mickey groans from the floor. “I don’t mind. I’ve never been a very happy person. I don’t think death will be that bad, will it? Darkness, like before you were born? I miss not being born. It was so peaceful.”

  “Shut the fuck up!” Cor growls, kicking him in the side. “Try’n rape my woman? Take my sister? Kill my father? Shut the fuck up!” He kicks him again.

  “Cor, stop.” I dig my fingernails into his neck, trying to get his attention. “Just think. All killing him solves is your need for revenge. You say you love me? Make it so we can be in love, then!”

  Cor stares at Mickey for a long time, a single tear sliding down his cheek into his beard, before closing the hammer on the pistol. “Your dad is on the way,” he says. “With a couple of my guys. We need to take Mickey out there and show these pieces of shit what their boss is really like. But you should stay here, Scar. All it takes is one stray bullet and this ends now.”

  I make for the door. “I’m not staying here,” I tell him. “I’m an FBI agent. We’re not in the habit of running away from the danger.”

  Cor grins at me. “All right, then. Let’s do this.” He leans down and drags Mickey to his feet, letting out a breath with the effort. “Listen to me, you big bastard, you’re gonna walk right in front of me like this.” Cor places the barrel of the gun to the back of Mickey’s head and wrenches his arm up behind his back. “If you make one move I don’t like, I’m gonna make you eat your own fucking brains.”

  Mickey laughs, swaying on the spot, his face already swollen. “I hope you know that that doesn’t make much sense, cousin. I’m not a scientist or anything like that, but isn’t it the brain the lets a person move their jaw so they can eat food? So if you blew out my brain, I couldn’t be very good at chewing food, I don’t think.” He talks in a drunken, woozy way, and he walks like a hunchback.

  “Just fucking move.”

  Cor jabs him with the gun, and I open the door, wishing I had a gun of my own. To the right is the ballroom. Moira calls from the left, poking out from the corner that leads to more bedrooms. “Scarlet,” she whispers, looking uncertain. “What’s happening?”

  “Go back to the bedroom,” I tell her. “Don’t come out. Hide.” I won’t lose another sister, is what I don’t say. I saw the life drain from one sister’s face and I won’t let that happen again. No way. “Go back!” I snap, when she stands captivated, watching Cor and Mickey emerge from the bedroom. “Now!”

  “Okay, okay.” She nods. “Just—okay, be safe. Please. Both of you.”

  “When we get into the ballroom,” Cor says, leading Mickey, “find a way to turn off the music. We need to show who’s in control, all right?”

  I walk ahead of Cor into the ballroom. The divide down the center is even more pronounced now. On one side the unarmed men sit in a cluster, drinking slowly and looking like prisoners when they glance toward the exit. On the other side, men and scared-looking prostitutes dance, stamp their feet, shout, and generally act like animals in a zoo at feeding time. I scan the room, looking for the sound system. It’s on the opposite side, within view of the armed guards. The guards stand near an elevator, on either side. When the elevator opens and three men jump out, they turn in shock, but too late. My dad pushes his FBI-issued gun under one’s chin, and the other two men secure the second guard. I’ve never been so happy to see my father in my life.

  When I cut the sound system out, quiet spreads across the room, a crowd forming around Cor and Mickey.

  “The fuck is this?” a man grunts.

  “He has the boss!” another exclaims.

  Soon everybody is shouting it. “He has the boss! He has the boss! He has the fucking boss!”

  Half a dozen men pull out their guns and wave them in Cor’s direction, but that also means waving them in their beloved boss’s direction. They hesitate, a couple of them leaning over drunkenly as though wishing they were good enough marksmen to fire at Cor without accidently hitting Mickey. But, of course, they’re not. They’re men Mickey picked up and they’re drunk. As this happens, the men on the other side of the room stand up. They don’t look like prisoners anymore. They look like an army getting ready for a fight. I glance behind me, making sure dad and the two men, one with a goatee and one with a bushy ginger beard, still have the guards under their control. They do. Maybe this doesn’t have to end in blood.

  “You all thought this man would make you into part of the family!” Cor roars, standing side-by-side with Mickey, but with the gun still placed against his head. “You all thought he was the toughest bastard you’ve ever met. You all thought you could do any damn thing you wanted because you had him at your back! You don’t have him at your back anymore! Look at him! He’s beaten. Without him, none of you are shit. If you drop your weapons, leave New York, and never come back, you live. If one of you makes a fuckin’ move, you all die!”

  It’s not true, of course. Their guns outnumber ours twenty to one. But it doesn’t matter what’s true. It matters what Cor can make them believe. And he’s right. The only reason these men feel comfortable behaving this way is because they have Mickey backing them up. I see it, looking into their faces. They deflate, taking a step back. To them, it’s like seeing a God turn into a mere man. One by one, the men drop their guns, the sound like the ringing of a bell at the end of a boxing match. Soon all of the men are without weapons, Cor’s half of the room scooping them up and training their guns on them.

  “Get clear, girls,” one of the men says to the prostitutes. They scatter, heading for the hallway, and then it’s over. One half of the room has guns, the other doesn’t.

  Cor turns to me. “You can call it in now, or whatever terms you use.”

  “But wait!” one of Mickey’s men grumbles. “I thought you were letting us go!”

  Cor smashes Mickey over the back of the head, sending him to his knees, then standing over him—standing over the whole room. “You took the woman I love, you took my sister, and you had a part in killing my father. All of you did. This here is an FBI agent. That man over there is an FBI agent. You’re free to go ... when they let you go.” He pauses, looking like some kind of wild man with his sweat and blood and grown-out hair. “You give criminals like us a bad name, you stupid fucks.”

  At that, the men start to chant, “Don, Don, Don!”

  I smile at Cor, and he smiles back.

  “I love you,” I whisper, far too quietly for him to hear over the sound of the cheering.

  Moira emerges from the hallway, standing at Cor’s shoulder. Dad joins me once the men he was guarding have been led into the crowd. For a second or two, it’s like we’re a new family.

  Epilogue

  Scarlet

  Spring is in the air as I head to the new Irish mob compound, a pub called The Leprechaun, which has changed hands twice in the last year. I think of dad as I walk down the street, the air biting but growing warmer.

  I think of the mass of paperwork that had to be completed during what came to be known as The Ballroom Bust. I think about how we shared the workload together, conducting interviews and corroborating evidence. I think about the time we were in my apartment, surrounded by papers, when he patted me on the shoulder and said, “I’m proud of you, Scarlet. I’m so, so proud of you. I don’t know if I’ve told you that before. I should’ve said it when you graduated from training. I should’ve said it when you made your first arrest. I should’ve said it—I just should’ve said it. Well, I’m saying it now. Maybe it’s too late. And you need to know something else, too.” I always feel like crying when I remember how he looked in this moment, his eyes full of hurt and regret. “I don’t blame you. You need to understand that. I’m a monster for ever implying that I did.”

  And all the hard work paid off, I reflect. Mickey is doing life for multiple murders. His men are in prison or being tried. The corrupt FBI agents—one of whom was a serial rapist and killer, I learned—are gone.

  I stand outside The Leprechaun, listening to the sounds of families, couples, life, and laughter inside. When I step inside, I spot him straightaway. He’s shaved his beard since his time out in the cold, almost as though to acknowledge that he’s no longer fighting for survival. He wears it cropped close to his face now, his hair cut shorter. He’s sitting at the booth where this first started, all those months ago, moving his forefinger around the rim of a glass of whisky.

  “I thought you might not be coming,” he says, when I reach the table.

  “I wouldn’t miss this.” I smile at him, sitting down. I’m wearing the same sea-green dress I wore last time we were here together. “The place looks good,” I tell him.

  “We haven’t had a chance to make any changes yet.” Cor shrugs. “I don’t know if we will. There’s nothing wrong with a family-friendly place.”

  We stare at each other for a few moments. Over the past few months, we’ve been seeing each other regularly. We’ve even updated our ‘official’ status to boyfriend and girlfriend. And, yet, sometimes it still feels like we’re on a first date, playing the teenagers. The excitement and fun and thrill haven’t gone away yet. I’m not sure it ever will—not with a man like Cor.

  “So,” Cor says, leaning forward, “Agent O’Bannon, it’s good to see you.”

  I hide my smile behind my hand. When I remove my hand, I’m an ice-cold FBI agent again. “Mr. MacKay.” I sit up straight, staring at him sternly. “If you could please refrain from looking at me like that, I would be grateful.”

  “Like what?” He grins carelessly, reminding me of the pre-Don Cor. “You shouldn’t be so keen to flatter yourself, agent.”

  “I am here on business.” I tip my head back, looking down my nose at him. “If you could please try and be professional, Mr. MacKay, I would much appreciate it. Frankly, I think you are a brute and a horrible man. I want to get this over with as quickly as possible so we can get out of here.”

  “We?” He darts forward, taking my hand. “Did you say we, agent?”

  “I.” Just holding hands sends tingles up my arm and all across my body. I know what his hands are capable of. My belly gets warm and fuzzy. I am conscious of my breathing, being careful not to pant. But then he slides his hand up my arm, toward my neck.

  “Are you sure I can’t persuade you to have some fun for once, agent?” He grins, massaging my neck, my shoulder. “You look so damn good in that dress I could die, Scar.”

  “Hey!” I slap his hand away. “You just ruined the roleplay.”

  He laughs. “All right, then. You look so damn good in that dress, agent, that it makes me wanna bend you over and fuck you until you’re screaming at me. Is that better?”

  My cheeks are red. My body trembles. I’m reminded for the hundredth time of why I love this man so much. So much of this is still complicated, but—

  “Maybe we should get out of here,” I say, already standing up. “I think it’s finally time I saw your place.”

  Cor is on his feet in a second, offering me his arm. “Come with me, agent. Our work can wait until later.”

  Soon, we’re being driven by one of Cor’s men to his penthouse suite.

  Cormac

  Mickey had tried his best to ruin the mob my father built. That’s the first thing I learned when I became Don, once the FBI had taken away Mickey and his men and left me to rebuild. Mickey had let all our old contacts go to shit, putting our money into drugs and trafficking instead. So, first, I had to dismantle that, putting the women he’d abused into contact with Scar so they could take them on to someplace safe, then rebuilding the mob from the ground up. Without Scar, it wouldn’t have been possible. If I’m sure of anything, it’s that I’m never gonna be apart from her again.

  Her arm feels good in mine. I still need to get used to this sort of thing, walking around arm in arm, holding hands, kissing, and all the stuff normal people do every normal day of their normal lives. It’s even stranger for us with the weight of the FBI between us. But we’ll make it work. Hell, we are making it work.

  “What are you thinking about?” she asks me as my driver takes us to the penthouse. I barely hear her. I’m distracted by the feeling of the small velvet box that’s been sitting in my pocket for weeks. There’s something inside it. Something small, but the weight of what it means feels like anchors weighing me down. It’s felt that way since the day I walked in the jewelry shop and told them I wanted a ring.

  “What’d you say?” I ask in a daze.

  Scar giggles. “I asked what you’re thinking about, space cadet.”

  I look her straight in the eyes. “Us,” I say quietly, wondering if I’m being too emotional. I’m annoyed at myself for thinking this way, but you can’t kill all the hardness in a man like me, I’m learning. You can only make it so that sometimes you’re hard and sometimes you’re soft. “I’m thinking about moving you into the penthouse and how strange it’s gonna seem to everybody else.” My fingers keep stroking the velvet box in my pocket.

  “But it won’t be an FBI agent and a Don living together,” she says, kissing me on the cheek. “It will be a legitimate businessman and an FBI agent living together, and even if that’s a lie, it’s a lie I’m willing to tell. For us.”

  “For us,” I echo. I turn to her, always stunned by the sight of her flowing red hair and her pale Irish skin, the freckles creeping up her neck and down her chest. Her eyes are full of lust, her chest rising and falling in the way that tells me she wants to fuck, long and hard. I slide my hand up her knee, stopping just shy of her panties. “I always knew you were a freak, Agent O’Bannon.”

  The little intake of breath, the sound it makes, is enough to tell me all the fighting and blood was worth it. For her.

  At the compound, we ride the elevator up to my penthouse suite, one of the benefits of being the Don. I haven’t let go of the box. My head feels like I’m a thousand feet underwater. Time is kind of fast and kind of slow – I can’t quite tell. But Scarlet’s fingers intertwined in mine feels so warm and right and real.

  The doors open onto an open-plan living room and kitchen, the hallway leading to the bedroom off to one side. I haven’t spent much time here except to sleep since the winter—I’ve been so busy with mob business—so the place is pretty bare-looking. It looks like a model penthouse suite.

  Scar walks around the place, tutting, shaking her head.

  “Really, Scar?” I ask, laughing. “Don’t forget that I’ve seen your place. It ain’t much better.”

  “Yes, but I’m not thinking about my place or your place. I’m thinking of our place and this won’t do at all.”

  “Since when are you such a domestic goddess?” I drop onto the couch, thinking that it’s a good thing I can sit here watching this perfect woman twirl around my apartment in a dress that flashes her perfect legs.

  “I’m not.” She sits on my lap, looking down at me with hungry eyes. “But I could be—sometimes—for you.”

  When we kiss, we lose ourselves. I can never control myself for long around Scar anyway. Today is no different. I pick her up, pressing my lips against hers and carrying her into the bedroom. She sits down on my groin, rubbing her panties up and down my crotch, my cock pressing urgently against my jeans. When I strip her naked, I can’t believe I ever left this woman for two minutes, let alone two days. She looks up at me with those perfect eyes, begging me to fall upon her, begging me to take her. I take my clothes off, my cock rock-hard for her and my balls aching almost painfully with the desire to be inside of her.

  We fuck like animals. We fuck like we want to screw the past and screw the world. We fuck like we want everybody to know that just because there’re things in the way of us being together, we’re not going to let those things have any say at all. I push deep inside of her, her pussy so tight around me as she comes that I have to push with all my strength. Her whole body vibrates, her eyes rolling back in her head. As the last waves of her pleasure spend themselves, she brings her hands to my face, locking eyes with me.