Dirty Pool Read online

  David laughed, and passed Michel a grin. “You’re always gonna be the doc to us, kid.”

  Michel bristled at the kid comment. He knew they were just fucking with him, and he enjoyed it, really. That was part of their life, and it meant he was welcomed here. They were treating him as one of them. In a way, they reminded him of his cousins, John and Andino.

  “What are you doing today, anyway?” Sal asked, flipping through a deck of cards before laying out a spread on the table. “I thought you had classes?”

  “Exams,” Michel corrected, “and I finished my last one today.”

  “Yes,” David crowed, “that means the doc is free for the summer. What are we going to do with him, Sal? Put him to work, do you think?”

  Michel rolled his eyes as he came further into the room. He didn’t pull out a chair to sit with the two men at the small table because he really didn’t plan on staying for that long. He just wanted to see if David or Sal had any interesting plans for the weekend because he felt like celebrating his final exams. All year, he’d been careful not to indulge too much. Sure, he’d go out, but he wouldn’t really party. No heavy drinking, and certainly nothing that was going to mess with his mind like a bit of smoke or a pill.

  Well, school was done.

  And these men knew how to party.

  Sal passed Michel a look, considering David’s statement for a moment before he asked, “Have you ever considered that, cafone?”

  “Calling me a fool doesn’t make me want to work for you because I know that’s what you’re asking without actually asking me.”

  The man smirked. “You know how it works. But seriously, have you thought about it? I mean, I talked to your cousin—John. I know you used to deal. Had a bit of a touch for it, according to him.”

  Michel ran his tongue along his teeth, and sucked in air to make a hissing sound at the same time. “I did.”

  “What else are you going to do for the summer?”

  “Study. Find a woman to keep me entertained. Sleep until noon.”

  “Study, he says,” David grumbled.

  Michel flipped his middle finger up at the man, but David only shrugged and went back to the card game with Sal like nothing had happened in the first place. “But yeah, I considered it.”

  Sal nodded, looking at the cards on the table as he said, “I could set that up for you. Just for the summer, if that’s what you wanted to do.”

  Do I?

  That was the better question.

  Michel had a bad habit of missing familiar things. Hustling for money—even if he did have more dollars in the bank than he would ever know what to do with—was one of those things that he found familiar, and easy. Like learning, or his family.

  He also hated being bored.

  This would help with that.

  “All right,” Michel said, “just for the summer.”

  “Perfetto,” Sal praised, raising a brow to David who was smiling again. “Seems we’ve got a new recruit. What do we teach him first, huh?”

  “Ah, I don’t think he’ll need much training. He is a Marcello, after all. It’s in his blood. As long as he’s not stepping on anyone’s toes or working in the wrong places, he’ll be fine.”

  Right.

  In his blood.

  Michel didn’t correct them.

  Blood never mattered to him, anyway.

  TWO

  “Did you check your sugars, lass?”

  “My sugars are fine, Da.”

  “Gabbie—”

  She popped the small sweet chocolate into her mouth, and turned to face her father, Charles, with a grin. “My sugars are fine.”

  Aye, she was going to suffer for that little treat later, no doubt. She would have to check her sugars simply because she broke her diet for one itty, bitty piece of chocolate, but it was worth it. The chocolate melted in her mouth, and slid down her throat like it was pure heaven. She didn’t get sugar very much, if at all.

  Her dad raised a brow, and fought the urge to smile. “When you act like this, you remind me so much of your mam, lass.”

  “Probably more today, huh?”

  He nodded once, and reached out to tuck one of her stray red curls behind her ear. “Today more than other feckin’ days.”

  Charles moved to stand beside Gabbie, and then turned to watch the rest of the people in his home gathering around the large table to get their plates ready. Every year on this day, they celebrated a woman who was no longer with them. Her mam. Gabbie didn’t remember very much about her mother—Betha Casey passed on when she was still a young girl from an accident on the highway as she was driving home from a dinner with friends.

  The absolute love of her father’s life, next to Gabbie, he’d never remarried, and she was his only child. It showed, too. Like this conversation right now.

  “No more sweets,” her father grumbled, giving her a look from the side. “I don’t want a call from the hospital because you didn’t manage your—”

  “I’m twenty years old. I can take care of my diabetes, Da.”

  Charles sighed.

  Gabbie shrugged.

  This was the same conversation they had more times than she cared to admit over the last few years. She understood, though. Her father’s greatest fear was that he was going to lose her, too. She was the last person he truly loved in the world. It made him feel out of control because he couldn’t manage her disease like he had when she was younger. She was the adult with the say so about her own body, what she did with it, and the things she put inside it. Like sugar.

  He had to trust that she was doing what was right, and he simply didn’t feel like she was doing what she needed to. She was used to him hovering, but lately, it just annoyed her more than it probably should.

  As a child, she never understood why her father was quick to bark at anyone who dared to offer her something sweet. She’d been born insulin resistant, and while they were able to manage it for the majority of her childhood, as she slipped into her later teenage years, something changed.

  Hormones.

  Life.

  Who feckin’ knew?

  She packed on the pounds—almost thirty in her senior year. People heard type two diabetes and automatically assumed someone was unhealthy because nobody developed type two unless they weren’t taking care of themselves, right?

  Wrong.

  A very small percentage of people—Gabbie was in that lucky number—could develop type two diabetes because of other health problems, like being insulin resistant. She managed her diabetes with a very strict diet, exercise, and occasionally medications when she needed it.

  She’d lost those thirty pounds, but because of the way her disease worked, she was borderline underweight. Something her doctor and father liked to remind her every time she had to step on a feckin’ scale. She’d gone from putting on weight like crazy in a matter of months to struggling to gain any weight for several years.

  Yeah, a struggle.

  That was the best way to describe this disease.

  “Could we not do this today?” she asked, glancing up at her tall father.

  Charles stared back at her, unaffected.

  She took after a lot of her father’s features—from the red, unruly hair to the freckles that dotted the bridge of her nose and her cheeks … her whole body, really. Even the shape of her green eyes, and the high line of her cheekbones matched her father’s more masculine, stronger features. She was the softer, feminine version.

  But her lips?

  The small cleft in her chin?

  The dimple in her left cheek?

  Charles said that was all her mam.

  “Today is supposed to be for Ma,” she reminded her da, “not for you to hover and poke at me about what I’m putting in my mouth.”

  “But if I don’t do it, who is?”

  Gabbie sighed, and crossed her arms over her chest. The people at the table had yet to realize the man throwing this dinner party to celebrate the life of his dead wif
e had still not joined them to eat. Not that it was stopping them from digging into the food on the platters.

  “That’s the point, it’s for me to worry about now.”

  “Can’t do that, lass,” Charles said, “that’s not how a father’s mind works.”

  She was about to open her mouth and argue further with her father—how was he ever going to learn to trust her if he continued to do this?—when someone at the table saved her from .

  “Charles, are you bothering that lass of yours again?” Brennan asked.

  One of the men at table grinned at Gabbie. Rather conspiratorially. Like he knew exactly what her father was doing, and he was going to try to save her.

  Brennan Brady likely did know, too. Her father’s right-hand man in the Irish mob, Brennan, had been in her life for as long as she could remember. The same way a lot of people at the table were all familiar, comforting faces to her. She hadn’t truly understood that her father was an Irish mob boss until she was thirteen, and couldn’t make friends at her private Catholic high school because the other girls’ parents told them to stay away from her.

  Rumors spread.

  People whispered and avoided.

  High school had been hell in that way.

  She learned the truth, though, and that explained a lot about her father and the men that constantly came and went from her life and home growing up. All those late night meetings in her father’s office, and the way everyone in her life hated and distrusted the cops simply because they were cops.

  Besides, Gabbie quickly learned that in their life, she didn’t need friends from the outside. She had all the people she needed—friends included—within her own family. They were the only people who truly understood what it was like to be in this family, after all.

  What else did she need?

  “Aye, lad,” Charles growled, giving his friend a look as he stepped forward to finally take his seat at the table, “you mind your own broad at home, and let me mind mine.”

  “Let the girl eat,” Kenneth, her uncle, and another man under her father in the organization said from his seat between his wife and adult children. “She’ll mind her sugars, boyo. You make sure of it.”

  “Exactly.” Her father pointed a finger at the two men, giving them a look that told them to shut up. “None of you have to do it—had it been up to you lot, she woulda been shoving all kinds of sugar in her mouth from the time she could chew. Shut the holes in your feckin’ faces, and eat your food before I decide to kick the bunch of you outta my house.”

  Gabbie grinned, and shook her head.

  What else could she do?

  This was her father.

  Her life.

  It was never going to change.

  “Are you going to sit, lass, or stand back there and glare at me head some more?” her father asked.

  Gabbie scoffed. “I wasn’t glaring at your head.”

  “Be a first, yeah?”

  She took her seat at the table next to her father on the left. Across from her sat her cousins, Aine and Aidan.

  “Not a first,” she told her father. She made sure to give him the look that he liked to say reminded him of her mother when Betha was mad at him. “Eat your food, Da.”

  “Are you coming tonight?” Aine asked Gabbie from across the table.

  Charles had a whole mouthful of food as he mumbled, “Going where?”

  Gabbie gave her cousin a look, too.

  A shut your feckin’ mouth kind of look.

  “Going where?” her father asked louder once he’d swallowed his food.

  Grand.

  This was just perfect.

  Now, she was going to have to listen to her father bitch about all the sugar in liquor because her cousin couldn’t keep her mouth shut about hitting up a new club that their family opened the week before.

  “A club,” Gabbie said, sighing.

  Her father eyed her from the side.

  “I know, Da. Check my sugars.”

  Charles’ lips flattened into a grim line. “You’re my only one left, Gabbie.”

  Yeah, she knew.

  It meant a lot of things.

  She was respected.

  Adored.

  Spoiled.

  And entirely smothered.

  “I won’t drink,” she told her father. “But I want to go have a dance, that’s all. I’m done with classes for the summer, so I don’t have to worry about getting up early, either.”

  College was no joke. Especially not for an aspiring criminal defense lawyer.

  Charles nodded, believing her innocent smile. Men, even those like her father with darkness in his eyes that hid all kinds of secrets, were still the same in the end. All it took was a smile, and they were done for.

  “Grand, lass.”

  No, she wouldn’t drink.

  Much.

  She wouldn’t drink much.

  Couldn’t she have just a little fun sometimes?

  • • •

  “Aidan, could you at least wait until I’m not talking to you to stare at a girl’s arse?” Aine asked, her annoyance clear over the bass of the music in the crowded club. “You’re such a cunt.”

  “Can you blame me? Did you see the arse on—”

  Aine put her hand up in her brother’s face, effectively quieting him without saying anything at all, and turned to Gabbie with a shake of her head. “Men.”

  Gabbie grinned around the rim of her one drink she was allowing herself to have. It didn’t have a high sugar content, and she should be fine. But that also meant it tasted like absolute shite. Win some, lose some.

  “Want to dance?” Aine asked.

  “Sure,” Gabbie returned. “At least then, Aidan can find someone to take home without you ruining every single one he looks at.”

  Aine glowered.

  Aidan laughed, and pointed in Gabbie’s direction. “And that’s why you’re my favorite cousin.”

  “I’m your only cousin.”

  “Yeah, well …”

  Gabbie didn’t get the chance to respond because Aine was already dragging her cousin out to the dance floor. They weaved in and out of the sway of sweaty, drunk bodies. She had to give her uncle’s man credit for this new club—it was pretty grand. The music kept them moving, the employees, from the bouncers to the servers, kept everything running smoothly. The whole atmosphere of the club just screamed fun.

  A party, really.

  She needed that break.

  Her black, slinky club dress fell a few inches above her thighs, and glimmered under the flashing lights attached to the ceiling. The swell of people on the dance floor seemed to grow as the song switched to something that had everyone jumping to the beat with hands in the air. Gabbie, having fun and really letting loose for the first time in God knew how long, spun a circle and by the time she stopped to take a breath … well, lost her cousin in the crowd.

  Shite.

  On another night, she might not have been too worried about losing Aine. Her cousin liked to pick up a guy and take him home sometimes, and Gabbie was more than capable of taking care of herself for the evening.

  Except, she was trying to follow her father’s rules. Even if she was twenty, and not a child anymore. It was always easier when she simply fed into her father’s bollocks, and didn’t try to fight him every damn step of the way. One of those rules was for her to stay close to a familiar face tonight since this club was mob-owned by one of her uncle’s men, and that meant business could be happening in the shadows.

  She’d not asked what kind of business because she knew better than to do that. It wasn’t like her father would have answered her, anyway. Better to not bother in the first place, and save herself the lecture.

  Pushing up to her tiptoes in the high heels she’d put on earlier, Gabbie scanned the crowd. All she could see, however, were swaying bodies and sweaty heads. It probably didn’t help that she was directly in the middle of the club and there was literally so much going on in every corner th
at everything drew in her attention.

  Feck.

  She decided to head for the bar—the same place she had left with her cousin. No doubt, if Aine wasn’t there, then Aidan would be somewhere in the fray probably still trying to pick up someone to take home with him.

  Gabbie didn’t find either of her cousins at the bar. Oh, it was packed full of people waiting for drinks, and shouting for the bartenders to hurry up, but there were no Caseys in sight. She smiled at the female bartender when she brought over a glass of water for Gabbie—likely recognizing her face—she pushed it across the bar with a wink.

  “Taking a break?”

  “Trying to find the other two I came with,” Gabbie replied, laughing.

  “Oh, they’ll be back around. No worries there.”

  Probably.

  Sometime.

  Instead of going to look for one of her cousins, she figured it was better for her to stay in one place. That was better than the three of them moving around the large venue trying to find one another, right?

  She was just taking a sip from the glass of water when a man slid in beside her at the bar. He didn’t look her way, instead his attention focused in on the woman behind the bar working at their end. In a way, she thought it was a shame he didn’t look at her, so she could get a full-on view of those handsome features, but she was loving his slightly turned profile.

  Strong jaw.

  White teeth bared in his grin.

  Brown eyes.

  His tanned skin looked almost golden under the lights of the club, and his dark, curly hair tousled down a bit near his ears like he’d been running his fingers through it. The strands couldn’t be contained if the way they fell into his eyes were any indication. He filled out the pair of dark slacks covering a fine arse, not to mention the way the side of his shoulders and part of his back looked covered in a button down, red silk dress shirt.

  God.

  She loved a man that could fill out his clothes, and she adored it even more when he had wide shoulders, and a back that begged for fingernails to dig in.