back to that morning when I’d blinked awake and found Finn had disappeared on me again, Lena murmured, “Your head’s in the clouds.”
Her words broke into my thoughts. I wasn’t down, I had to admit. I was like Finn—pensive. It was like getting married, being shot, and not being able to have access to one another had put us in a philosophical state of mind.
“Not exactly,” I countered, grimacing as I turned to face her at the stove.
The compound, as Finn called it, wasn’t as rough around the edges as it seemed. It was actually like a large hotel with eleven floors. There were no rooms, but small apartments, and the higher up the building you went, the higher the rank your man had. Because, yup, it was like that here.
I hadn’t met many women I liked except for Lena, and she wasn’t exactly someone I could relax around. She was the nearest thing I had to a mother-in-law and I felt that although she approved of me, she was monitoring me too. For Aidan and for Finn. It wasn’t the most pleasant of sensations, and I really missed my best friend Jenny as well as my dad. Neither of whom I’d seen in weeks.
My last visit with Jenny had been in the hospital before I’d been moved here—it was too dangerous for her to come to the compound, or so Finn had said when I’d asked about the possibility. With my dad? It had been longer. A week before my wedding.
We texted, but it wasn’t the same as seeing him, and we were always cautious anyway with things that could be tracked and traced.
Senator Alan Davidson was on his way to the White House, and I wasn’t going to do anything to stop that. I was already a dirty secret in his past, and now I had links to the Irish Mob. The last thing he needed was for his ties with me to go public. I intended on keeping our relationship private. Our meetings meant a lot to me.
“Aoife!”
Lena’s bark of my name had me jerking in my seat. “Hmm?”
“You’re daydreaming! I need those carrots soon.”
I stared down at the carrots and carried on with the task she’d given me. I still wanted to sleep a lot, but Lena dragged me out of bed and had me moving around, even when it meant pushing myself a tad too far for comfort. My PT didn’t disapprove though. In fact, she said I was improving in leaps and bounds, which made sense considering Lena had probably been around a lot of people who’d been shot up at some point in their life.
As I peeled the veggies, I wondered what my dad would have to say to me the next time we met. After the shooting, which had hit the press, as well as my injuries, he now knew who my husband was. Knew what he was too.
A part of me wondered if he’d cut ties with me because of his career, and I really hoped that all my years of faith in him weren’t about to disintegrate. It was one of the reasons that, though it sucked, I wouldn’t be seeing him for a while. I could remain with my head in the sand about the situation until things were normal enough for me to meet with him again.
Lena huffed. “Would you spit it out?”
“Spit what out?” I asked, frowning at her.
“You’re sighing about something, girl.”
I shrugged. “Just thinking.”
“Stop it. Start doing.” She waggled her knife at me, and Mary-Ellen, one of the men’s wives who Lena actually liked, giggled.
There weren’t many women that Lena approved of. Those she did were allowed into the kitchen where she cooked. Every day. For over one hundred people. She didn’t have much help, but she did it. Without complaint.
I could see why Aidan was so enamored with her.
She was a general’s wife. What a man in his position needed at his side. In essence, I knew I’d have to take after her at some point.
“You are dithering today,” Mary-Ellen murmured quietly, making me grimace.
Her husband wasn’t high up in the ranks, but he had standing. Far as I could tell, it worked like this:
Each brother ran a certain aspect of the Points’ trade.
I knew Finn worked on property, and Conor did something with computers. I thought Declan dealt drugs and Brennan, I’d come to believe, handled loans. But as for Eoghan, I could only guess. Guns, girls, and/or gambling? The three Gs? With