Shannon (2 page)

Pain was good. Pain helped a man remember he was alive. Shannon O’Shea welcomed pain in many forms. Taking part in unsanctioned, bare-knuckled boxing matches, unsanctioned, unlicensed MMA matches, punishing workouts at the gym, rough sex—you name it, he was down for it. Pain was often the only honest human sensation he could feel. Even lust was kinda perfunctory, a natural need for release and nothing more. But pain—ahhh, pain demanded attention. Stayed around for days helping him to remember he was not a ghost, he had survived.

“Your father chose me to be in charge of the ladies for a reason!”

That annoying voice, the constant bitching—that wasn’t the kind of pain he wanted or needed at all.

Shannon stopped on the way to the ornate office the Russian woman screeching at him had claimed as her own. Already there were men inside getting rid of all the gaudy shit she had decorated the room with, stripping it down as much as possible until it could be remodeled. He didn’t turn to look in her direction, just rolled his shoulders to will his temper back down to a reasonable level. Not only had this bitch gotten too many of his girls hooked, she was giving information to both the old man
and
a son of a bitch trying to poach the few top-shelf girls who didn’t have a need for H or worse, meth. Bart…motherfucking…Holten. Son of a bitch wasn’t even Irish. There were too many snakes in his little illegal garden of sin, placed there by none other than the bastard that spawned him, Paddy O’Shea. It was time to get rid of the old man’s underlings. Kieran had come up with a plan that would free Shannon and his brothers for good if the old man wouldn’t step aside. But of course he wouldn’t—Paddy thought he was a god. His sons would show him soon enough that he was all too human. All too vulnerable.

“I am in charge.” Shannon spoke evenly. No way he was offering her any other explanation than that, because that was all the fuck she needed to know. Damn, he hated to be challenged by the scum Old Man O’Shea had running the less-than-legal elements of the family. Really fucking hated it. But this bitch at his heels—well, she was one of the worst. The reason he was here tonight was because of her; he planned on making sure she was done running his girls. “Since you obviously can’t handle a bunch of prostitutes without drugging them,” he continued with scorn in his voice

The bitch had the nerve to actually scoff. At him. In his fucking presence. He had to give it to her—the bitch had more balls than most men.

Sneering right in his face, Magda had the unmitigated gall to challenge him even further. “The bitches are easily controlled with a little help. Hey—we don’t need new girls!”

Perhaps Shannon would’ve been able to shake off the latest in the long line of Magda Magpie’s insults and presumptions. If only she hadn’t actually reached her bony hand out to grab at his shirt to try to turn him to face her.

As if she could. The soon to be ex-Madam was perhaps a buck-o-five soaking wet, her tall thin frame all angles with no muscle tone. It would be a cinch to break her in two, but Shannon didn’t fight women, and he wasn’t the stone cold killer of the family.

“Get-your-fucking-hand-off-me.” No one touched him—he hated to be touched. His brother could slap him on the back, maybe a quick hug, but other than that, he couldn’t stand a person’s hands on him.

Magda may not be bright, but she took a hint from his tone and stepped back, allowing Shannon to continue on to the office. Too bad she couldn’t keep her mouth shut.

“This is stupid! I saw the girls you have lined up for interviews! These are girls belonging in Basic maybe, but not the Ritz, not Sugar Babies.” Her breath was coming out in little huffs as she struggled to keep up with Shannon’s stride. Fuck, why didn’t she shut the fuck up? “No one is going to pay top dollar for—”

“Mickey, gag this bitch and sit her in the corner.” Fuck Magpie for pushing him to this point.

Dropping his large frame on the fragile-looking chair behind the desk, Shannon did a quick scan of the place once more. The furniture was going to have to go, as were the fucking cameras in every room. The connection to the various “pharmacies” Old Man O’Shea had created had been shut down. Eighty percent of the girls at Basic, the working-class brothel, would have to go, about sixty percent of the girls at the Nunnery, a place for the bored suburban dad or mom, and about forty at Sugar Babies and at the Ritz, the high-priced houses. And it was all because Magda Magpie the Russian bitch supreme, egged on by the old man, found it easier to control the women in her charge with drugs than to actually manage the varying businesses.

Watching Mickey stuff Magda into a corner chair, Shannon took several deep breaths to calm himself. Nothing was worse in his opinion than mistreating women and children. Didn’t matter what their profession was. In fact, prostitutes were some of the most honest people he knew. Thinking back on the very few times his mother had been able to visit Fionn and himself, he’d never forget her whispered words of wisdom. “
Never judge a woman by what she’s forced to do
,” she’d breathe out, her eyes full of sorrow. “Y
ou never know what forced her into that position. And never take what ain’t given freely. You’ll be taking more than her body—you’re taking her soul.
”

He hadn’t understood those words then, but he did now. Gillian O’Sullivan had never been anyone’s wife; she was the possession of Patrick “Paddy” O’Shea, often referred to as Old Man O’Shea in the neighborhood. After catching the eye of South Boston’s most notorious “boss” at the tender age of sixteen, she no longer had any say to anything about her life. He and Fionn had been taken from her when they turned six and given into the care of Danny, one of the old man’s most merciless enforcers. So had the old man’s legitimate sons, Conall and Kieran. There the boys had been pitted against one another for food, clothing, knowledge—even to take a shit. Instead of creating animosity between the four, as had no doubt been the old man’s intent, it had created an unbreakable bond between the four. They grew strong, they grew merciless, but they grew strong together.

The world was full of prostitutes of all kinds. Hookers, street whores, high-class whores, sluts—you name it, more than half of society was one of them. The thing was, most people didn’t understand true whoredom wasn’t about sex at all. It was about selling. Didn’t matter if a person was selling their body or their soul, they were selling some part of themselves to claw ahead, be better than the next guy, or just for greed and need. Most times, the need fed the greed—need for bigger and better toys, need for power, need for escape from their very existence. Shannon understood prostitutes of all kinds, which was why he chose to deal with the most honest of the bunch, sex workers. Unlike business whores, drug whores, or gangster whores, sex workers presented their product up front for a price and gave exactly what was paid for. The whole “I give you physical pleasure, you give me money” was simple, to the point and not full of bullshit, unless that was what you were paying for. Even then it was honest. A person pretending so the buyer could escape. So who was the real whore?

One thing that Shannon had figured out pretty quickly was that women and men who sold themselves were usually the most honest of any so-called criminal you’d ever meet. He took any kind of abuse to one of his girls pretty fucking personally. It was his own fault the drugs problem had gotten out of hand in the brothels; he’d been so tied up with slowly closing the pharmacies that were poisoning the neighborhood and placing firmer restrictions on the Arsenal, South Boston’s one-stop shop for weapons of all kinds, he hadn’t been paying as close attention to the brothels as he should have.

That was changing today. Any girl who had been using was out. She could either accept help to get clean and get set up in a new business or she could leave. One thing Shannon was crystal-clear on—junkies couldn’t be trusted. They weren’t too discriminating about workplace safety or customer service. The last thing he needed was girls spreading diseases and getting sloppy.

So he was holding interviews for all houses here at Sugar Babies, the high-priced joint located in a huge triple-decker house near the border of the South End. Made it easier for rich pricks to come get their fix. Sugar Babies specialized in light BDSM, mainly focusing on May/December experiences, though not all their clientele were older men. It was more about the girls, usually ranging in ages between nineteen and thirty, but all of them having something sweet about them. They dressed in frilly, girly things and called their johns Daddy or Uncle. Kinda sick but it was the biggest moneymaker of all the houses. Dumb fucks who couldn’t afford it spent the kids’ college funds on his girls. Not his problem. But keeping the stable fresh and clean—that was.

“Leave,” he told the men who had been working to change this office from a Euro-trash nightmare to a workable office. “Send the first girl in,” he told Mickey after the mountain of a man had secured Magda in the chair. Where the hell had he gotten the rope? Mickey was a marvel, hand-picked by Shannon’s brother Fionn to have his back. They just couldn’t trust many that had been loyal to the old man, especially not Shannon. One wrong step could mean prison, and as far as he was concerned, his entire childhood had been that. He wasn’t going back. Mickey had actually grown up in the same projects as the brother in Lowell. Raised by an elderly, senile grandmother and not too bright, Mickey had followed the boys around like a faithful puppy until they finally took him under their wing. Not like a brother, but as one of the very few people they didn’t outright distrust.

While waiting for Mickey to bring in the first of the applicants, Shannon decided to take care for something he should have done as soon as he took over the houses. Speed-dialing Fionn, he resolved to make some permanent cuts in his employment that were long overdue.

“What?” Fionn answered on the first ring. Shannon and all his brothers were close like that.

“
I need your assistance on a couple of jobs.”

“More than one? So, it’s a good day to die. What’s the job?”

“First one is Magda Magpie. I need her gone.” He knew he didn’t have to explain. Fionn had been waiting for his list of the Paddy faithful that needed to go.

“Can’t say I blame you. Bitch has had it coming for years. All I can say is, it’s about damned time.”

“Next one is a bit tricky. Bart Holten. He’s making a play for my girls. More at Basic Bitch and the Nunnery than anywhere else. Trying to offer them more money, but when they refuse—and they all refuse—he’s threatening them or their families. I don’t have to tell you the information I get from them is too valuable to lose. Besides, he’d likely have them all into drugs in order to control them
and
the flow of information. And I have a feeling this is all the old man’s doing. He’s testing me. And he wants that information channel for himself.” The very best information for anything was through the girls. He could channel deals to Conall, who was a fucking mastermind at business, information on the docs, local politics, or police and federal investigations to Kieran. And if there was someone who needed killing—well, then there was Fionn.

“You need him dead?” Fionn asked, probably not at all concerned one way or another.

“No. Not yet. But I want to send him a message. If that fails…” Shannon scrubbed a hand down the front of his face. Shit, this could get messy. But if Paddy was going to be taken down, his inside men needed to go first. Leave the old man weak, vulnerable. Then the four of them could move in for the kill.

“He have family who can be used for leverage?”

“Only one. Her name is LeeAnn Bates. He married her mother but didn’t give the girl his name. The fucker didn’t have enough sense to separate himself from her at the earliest opportunity. She lives with him in Beacon Hill.” One thing for sure, Fionn wouldn’t really hurt the girl, but his reputation was so deadly Bart would never know that. Unlike Paddy and his degenerate crew, the brothers didn’t run around hurting innocents…if it could be helped.

Fionn snorted through the phone. “I wonder why she refused to leave. Keeping Daddy’s money close, no doubt.”

“Probably. In any event, she was seen with one of my girls who frequents the Irish, trolling for clients and information. Don’t know exactly what she’s doing, but quite likely she’s reporting to her father.”

“So, I take it I’m to snag her? Hold her until we decide how to deal with…our little problem?” Fionn was probably not alone; in fact Shannon was willing to bet on it. Otherwise he would’ve just said it bluntly—until they got rid of their father.

“Nab her. I’ll let her father know we’ve got her. If he’s not a complete bastard, he’ll take the hint and back the fuck off. I’ll get my girl to bring her to the bar. Once at the Irish, you can take it from there.”