Brutal Kiss
Chapter 1
Daley
“To life, liberty, and fucking blood!” Cousin Sean yells, and half the bar raises up a glass of whisky or beer and takes up the cry, to blood, and down it all goes. It’s like a Saturday evening during peak hours at the Stone’s Throw, except it’s an ugly, rainy Tuesday close to ten at night. The place is packed ass to tits from front to back, and I’m related to almost every single person in the room, from babies bouncing on knees to old men and women, gnarled and wrinkled and scowling, toughened into leathery rawhide from decades of heists and scams and violence and jail time, drinking as hard or harder than the brash youth well on their way to tumbling down the same death-strewn path their elders forged.
It’s been a very long time since I attended a Halloran clan event like this, and only a wake could pull me back into this world.
“Come on, youngest sister, have a drink,” Nolan says, and my brother drapes an arm across my shoulder with a grin. He’s closest to me in age, older by three years at twenty-six, with dark hair and dark eyes. Popular with the ladies, or so he claims anyway. I don’t want or need the details.
“He’s got a point,” Callum says, second-oldest at twenty-nine. “It’s a wake, Dale. It’s disrespectful not to drink.”
I scowl and sip my wine. When I asked for it, the bartender looked at me like I’d gone insane. “I never understood this. Why does everyone need to get shit-faced drunk, argue about politics, and end the night with at least two fistfights in the parking lot? I thought the funeral was a fitting goodbye.”
“Life and death go hand in hand,” Nolan says with a shrug. “You know how our family goes. When someone kicks the bucket, the rest of us do the Catholic thing first, then the Halloran thing next.”
“Celebration of a life well lived,” Callum adds, nodding. He’s got rust-brown hair, not quite red like mine, and light green eyes. “We drink to remember. I hope when it’s my time, everyone gets blasted in my honor.”
I’m perched on a stool at the corner of the bar, trying to hide from the rest of the Hallorans, the Mooneys, the Tooles, the Whelans, and several other families I can’t even remember anymore. Cousins, second cousins, in-laws, and strangers circulate freely around the old, crumbling pub. The booths are chipped, the floors are creaking, and the jukebox hasn’t been updated since the 80s, but the lager flows freely and the whisky’s on the house courtesy of my father.
“Was it a life well lived, though?” I ask, glaring around me at the freewheeling groups of drunken Irish men and women, laughing loudly, shouting over the music. Uncle William’s intensely lecturing a few distant cousins from the Mooney side about which firearms are best for killing at close range while Aoife Toole chugs a beer to raucous cheers from a couple of Whelan girls I can’t name. “Dead at twenty. Gunned down in the streets. How’s that a good life?”
Nolan exchanges an uncomfortable look with Callum. “You’d better keep that to yourself, Dale,” he says, squeezing my shoulder not-unkindly. “I know what you’re saying. Dad knows how you feel, but you don’t need to start saying it here at a damn wake where everyone else can hear. His aunt’s sitting right over there, for fuck’s sake.”
“Nolan’s got a point,” Callum says.
I glare at my brothers. Both of them are Halloran boys to their core, born and bred in Delaware County twenty minutes south of Philadelphia, enmeshed in the life of the Irish mob from the moment they learned how to walk and talk. I’m tempted to remind them of another wake we attended, a long time ago, for a brother that’s been gone for a decade now, but I know how that’ll go. The past remains the past and nobody wants me dredging up old memories.
I finish my wine after another toast. The pub is hot, stifling, and overly crowded. I want to get back into the city before it’s too late and the Septa schedule says there’s a train coming in twenty minutes. Which means I’ve got enough time to make the rounds, say goodbye to aunts and uncles and cousins and whoever else, pay my respect to Uncle Tomas and say how sorry I am for the loss of his son, even though his son was a gang-banging asshole; but still, Ward was my cousin, and I hate that he’s gone so much it twists my guts up inside. After all that, I can get the hell out of here.
Guilt hits me. My brothers are right. Another cheer comes over the bar, and this time I join in the chant: to blood! I shouldn’t think ill of the dead. I didn’t know Ward all that well, just saw him from afar at family functions and maybe spoke a few times over the years, but he was still my cousin. We were close in age, and I can’t blame him for being what he was since there’s not a single person in this room with clean hands. Myself included.