“Have you a name?” Gustaine eavesdropped everywhere, on everyone, invisible at their feet, in crevices and refuse. A name would help.
“She calls herself Dani O’Malley.”
I’m awfully underrated but came here to correct it
SURE ENOUGH, THE BASTARD was rebuilding Chester’s.
I stood on the sidewalk, hands fisted, a muscle working in my jaw, assaulted by such acute duality that I’d locked my limbs to keep them from ripping me apart, as they attempted to obey polar opposite desires.
Conflicted is not my natural state.
I’m an arrow to the goal, focused, unwavering. I pick a side and stick with it where every single facet of my life is concerned.
Except for one.
That. Man.
Half of me wanted to punch my fist into the air and shout, “Bloody hell, my sidekick’s back and it looks like he plans to stick around for a while this time!” while I dashed below to confirm the auspicious event with my own eyes.
The other half of me wanted to slam my fist into Ryodan’s face and break bones.
No, I reevaluated my percentages, half wasn’t quite right. Thirty-eight percent of me was in favor of caving to an idiotically happy smile, while sixty-two percent of me was incensed, infuriated, enraged, with thick plumes of steam threatening to erupt from my ears.
I don’t get headaches often but I was about to have one. There was too much pressure in my body and no way to vent it.
While he’d kept me out of commission without my consent, he’d made mind-boggling progress. A framed structure now stood on the previously empty lot above Chester’s underground nightclub. Several hundred workers were rushing to and fro, prepping for the next phase of the project.
Footers had been poured and were curing, there were steel beams and girders waiting to be placed. Bobcats growled, there was even a small crane maneuvering stuff around. Here, piles of lumber rested on pallets, there, enormous blocks of smoky stone were stacked high.
He had to be running three shifts a day, working through the night. Ryodan was like that. Once he wanted something, he wanted it yesterday. He’d wait if he had to, with the true patience of an immortal, but if he could bypass that waiting he would.
Why now? His bloody club had been wrecked years ago and he’d not once made any effort to rebuild the facade aboveground! What message was I supposed to take away from this—you may have worn yourself out helping Dublin for two long solitary years but I’ve gained their fealty in a mere matter of days?
Not that I thought he was doing it to mess with me, which—given how much he used to mess with me would have been a fair assumption—but I no longer think everything he does is about me.
Still, my super ears were picking up way too many compliments about him.
“Hey, miss? Miss?” a man said behind me.
I ignored him. I was no doubt in his way and he wanted me to move so I wouldn’t delay a single second of the great Ryodan’s planned re-creation of the world, which the bible of Dublin would soon be rewritten to immortalize.
“Miss, is that you? I thought it was!” The man circled around, stopping in front of me. Plucking his cap from his head, he stood, clutching it in his hands, a warm smile creasing his ruddy face. “Nobody else with that sword. Top of the morn to you, m’dear! The missus keeps asking if I’ve seen you again. She’d like you to join us for supper of an evening.”
I retrieved his name from my mental files: Connor O’Connor. Some parents should be shot on naming day. After I’d visited them six months back, I’d approved Rainey placing eight-year-old Erin with the middle-aged couple who’d lost their children when the walls fell.
I managed to unclench my jaw but forcing a smile was out of the question. My bones were connected by too-tight rubber bands. Nodding tightly, I said, “That’d be lovely, thank you. I’ll drop by when I can. How’s Erin?”
“The wee lass is fine as can be. She still has the occasional bad dream, but they’re fewer and further between.”
“Wonderful. I knew she’d be happy with you.” I still couldn’t unclench my hand so I jerked a fist at the commotion. “What’s the plan here? How many stories?”
“At least half a dozen, I hear, but I’ve not seen the plans. The boss is below. You might ask him. I hear he’s got an eye for the ladies, and a beauty like you could dazzle him into telling you anything.” He winked at me.
His opinion and reality were clearly suffering massive disconnect. Answers from Ryodan? As if. Beauty like me? I had Duck Tape on my neck, a scowl embedded in every muscle in my body, and I hadn’t even brushed my hair.
“Well then, Miss Dani, I’ll be leaving you to your business but I’m hoping you’ll find time to drop by. You changed our lives, gave my missus her sparkle back, and when that woman’s happy, my world’s right as rain. There’ll always be a seat for you at our table, and my Maggie’s a fine cook.” Blushing, he tucked his chin down in a nod of sorts and ambled away.
An eye for the ladies?
That was pretty much all my brain retained.
If Ryodan was nodding from the top of his arrogant, womanizing staircase again, I was going to saw his head off. I had no idea why and didn’t care. I just would.
Hands fisted, jaw clenched, I sped across the lot in half-freeze-frame, adroitly navigating machinery and men, to the door in the ground that led to Chester’s-below and began my descent into Hell, to raise some of my own.
I feel stormy weather moving in (it’s raining men)
AS THE SHINY NEW steel trapdoor closed behind me on its shiny new hydraulic arm, I descended the (also-new) stairs that had replaced the clumsy ladder once welded to the wall.
As a teen I’d watched the See-You-in-Faery girls in their skintight short skirts paired with insanely high heels navigate that tricky ladder with a derisive snort, thinking, Please, wear panties!
The stairs were a definite improvement.
There used to be two sets of trapdoors and two ladders before you reached the foyer of Chester’s-below. That was no longer the case. The entry must have been the first thing Ryodan set his crew to modifying. The foyer was now a single mammoth vestibule, with a long, elegantly curved staircase framed in enough to use, but not yet finished, that ended on a black marble floor so highly polished it served as an obsidian mirror.
I clenched my hands so tightly I nearly broke my own fingers. He’d clearly admired the floors of my flat. And copied them.
New, colossal double doors soared twenty feet, made of thick matte black steel embellished with fantastical panels of wrought-iron twisted into complex designs, undoubtedly laced with wards ready to be activated at a moment’s notice. Ultramodern charcoal consoles inlaid with onyx and a dozen white leather and chrome chairs graced the perimeter of the foyer.