“Let me tell you what September looks like for me,” I said and leaned forward a bit. He needed to hear every damn word. “I fly straight from Philly to London on the first. I stay with a cousin for a day or two and then make my way to northern France. That’s where I let go of all things Sons and, specifically, Finnegan O’Shea.”
He looked mildly offended at that.
“I shut off my phones—all three of them,” I went on, “and I drink. I drink copious amounts of Calvados and beer, I watch the goddamn sunset, I eat dinner alone, and I go to bed with the knowledge that for a whole month, I’m unreachable.” Only my sister, Luna, could get in touch with me. Now, I loved Finn like a brother; we’d grown up together. His folks had taken me in when my own parents couldn’t handle the fact that I was queer. But, man, this guy was demanding. And sometimes, I needed a break. “A couple days later, I head south,” I said. “I drive through all of Normandy, down to Bordeaux, where this sweet ass is in high demand.” I ignored Finn’s wince. On any other day, it was just funny. He clenched every time I happened to mention anal—or something close to it. “As soon as I’m thoroughly screwed six ways to Sunday—”
“Oh, for chrissakes!” he exclaimed. “It hurts.”
I laughed. I had to.
“That’s when I continue to Andorra,” I chuckled.
He grimaced from the previous topic, then inclined his head. “I know you have a place there. Andorra still doesn’t have an extradition treaty with the US, do they?”
“Let’s stay on topic,” I replied firmly. “Andorra is where I sleep, take my bike out into the mountains, and nurse every headache you’ve given me for the past year. It’s a week of mental rebooting.”
“You make me sound like a high-maintenance diva,” he muttered.
I cleared my throat and pressed forward. “When I’m done there, I head down to Spain and do my best to wake up in a new bed every morning.” Because my four weeks off were when I made up for the tail I missed out on during the other eleven months. I tried not to shit where I ate. Or eat where I took a shit. Whatever. Relationships and one-nighters had no room in my life. “Sooner or later, I end up at Luna’s apartment in Benidorm, and I stay there until it’s time to go home and switch on my phones again.”
“I get it,” Finn responded, annoyed. “You become a whore in September.”
“I relax and allow myself to be selfish in September,” I corrected. “And, Finn—” I leaned forward a bit more. “How the fuck will I be able to relax if I’m bringing your feckin’ dad with me?”
He scowled and bit at a cuticle, a habit he’d kicked ages ago. But it wasn’t often he didn’t have an answer to a question.
I didn’t get a vacation last year. We’d been balls deep in a war that had ultimately changed the very foundation of our syndicate. A war that just fucking ended. I needed to get away—alone.
I already had my bags packed.
Six days to go.
Everything was prepared, including work shit. Finn and I had sit-downs with the crew bosses tomorrow, after which I ran around Philly collecting payments and made sure the ship was as tight as the crew bosses always swore. With Finn at the head of the organization, we had a list of mistakes from the previous boss that we weren’t going to remake. One of those was the distance he’d created between the upper crust of the syndicate and the low-men. It was why Finn and I wanted my eyes and ears on the ground, why I went out to the different turfs and visited the crew bosses, and why I’d be busy right up until I left for my vacation.
Oh, there was the christening of Finn and Emilia’s newborn son too.
“You know I’m there for him any other time,” I said, tearing Finn out of wherever his mind had wandered. “He’s getting worse, so I get why you’re worried.”
He nodded pensively and then reached for his smokes. “He was drunk when I talked to him on the phone last night. And considering how much he’s lost, I don’t want to know how deep that rabbit hole can be. We can’t let him lose his footing any further.”
I was with him on that. To me, Shannon O’Shea had always been the most solid of rocks. He was a terrific father, a skilled asset to the syndicate… Although, he’d been aiming for the back seat for a few years now. He’d never had the ambition to climb higher in the ranks once he’d gotten his own crew, a milestone he’d reached before I’d been born. But his profession, his legitimate business, had been a priority the past five or six years.