Broken Vow
Broken Vow
A Dark Mafia Romance
Sophie Lark
Contents
Soundtrack
1. Riona
2. Raylan
3. Riona
4. Raylan
5. Riona
6. Raylan
7. Riona
8. Raylan
9. Riona
10. Raylan
11. Riona
12. Raylan
13. Riona
14. Raylan
15. Riona
16. Raylan
17. Riona
18. Raylan
19. Riona
20. Raylan
21. Riona
22. Raylan
23. Riona
24. Raylan
25. Riona
26. Raylan
27. Riona
28. Raylan
Epilogue
Sebastian
Yelena
Heavy Crown Teaser
Missed Brutal Prince?
Colors of Crime Series
Thanks For Reading!
Meet Sophie
This one is for all my sexy, brilliant lawyer ladies, especially Jeanne and Tia. I know you will catch all my mistakes and I love you for it ;)
Xoxoxo
–Sophie
The Official Broken Vow Soundtrack
Spotify
Apple Music
- Boss Bitch – Doja Cat
- California Dreamin' – The Mamas & The Papas
- Please Mr. Postman – The Marvelettes
- Devil's Advocate – The Neighbourhood
- My Truck – BRELAND
- She's Country – Jason Aldean
- Dirt On My Boots – Jon Pardi
- Maniac – Conan Gray
- Sunday Best – Surfaces
- Say Something – Justin Timberlake
- All of Me – Brooklyn Duo
- First Day Of My Life – Bright Eyes
- Electric Love – BØRNS
* * *
1
Riona
I’m sitting in my corner office, working on land purchase documents for the South Shore Development. People think that being a lawyer is all about arguing, but in fact you only spend a tiny percentage of your time in court or in settlement negotiations. The vast majority of my hours pass by right here in this room, writing, reading, or editing.
I don’t mind being alone in here. It’s my sanctuary. I have control over everything inside these doors. I have my desk set up just the way I like it, facing the two-sided view of the Marina City Towers, Michigan Ave, and the Chicago River spread out below me.
Everything in my office is pewter, brass, cream, and blue—shades I find soothing.
I’ve got three watercolors by Shutian Xue on the walls, and a sculpture by Jean Fourier in the corner. It’s his piece called Building Blocks, which is supposed to represent the interior of an atom. To me, it looks more like a model of a solar system.
I watch most everyone else finish their work and leave for the night. A couple of my colleagues poked their heads in my door on the way out to give me a message—some work-related, and some just nonsense. My paralegal Lucy lets me know she’ll finish the stack of lease agreements I gave her as soon as she gets back in the morning. And Josh Hale tells me I came in second in last week’s Pick‘em league, which means I won a whopping twenty dollars.
“I didn’t think you even liked football,” he says with a condescending smile.
“I don’t,” I say sweetly. “I just like winning your money.”
Josh and I are not friends. In fact, we’re direct rivals. The eldest of the firm partners is about to retire. When Victor Weiss leaves, either Josh is, or I am is the most likely choice to replace him. And we both know it.
Even if we weren’t in competition for the partnership position, I’d still detest him. I’ve never liked the kind of person who pretends to be friendly, while scavenging for information they can use to hurt you. I’d respect him more if he were an honest asshole, instead of a fake nice guy.
Everything about him annoys me, from his too-tight suits to his aggressive cologne. He reminds me of a TV show host. In looks, maybe a Ryan Seacrest. In personality, more like a Tucker Carlson—always thinking he’s twice as smart as he actually is.
Taking the opportunity to snoop, I see him scanning my office, trying to read the headings on the documents spread out on my desk. He’s relentless.
“Okay, bye,” I say to him, pointedly. Telling him to leave.
“‘Don’t work too hard,” he replies, shooting a little finger gun in my direction.
After he leaves, his cologne lingers twenty minutes longer. Ugh.
The last to depart is Uncle Oran. He’s the managing partner of the firm and my father’s half-brother. He’s always been my favorite relative. In fact, he’s the reason I became a lawyer in the first place.
At family parties I’d corner him and demand to hear another story of odd and interesting legal cases, like the man who sued Pepsi for refusing to provide him with a $23 million dollar fighter jet in exchange for Pepsi Points, or the time that Proctor & Gamble tried to argue in a court of law that their own Pringles were not, in fact, potato chips.
Uncle Oran is an excellent storyteller, well able to milk drama out of even the most convoluted cases. He’d explain to me precedent and statutes, and how important even the tiniest of details could be . . . how even a comma in the wrong place could invalidate an entire contract.
I found Uncle Oran fascinating not only because he’s funny and charming, but because he’s so similar and yet so different from my father.
They both dress well, in fitted suits, but Uncle Oran’s look like something a Trinity professor would wear—always tweed or wool, with wooden buttons and elbow patches—while my father looks like an American businessman. They’re both tall with the same thick graying hair, and long, lean faces, but Uncle Oran has the coloring they call “Black Irish”—dark eyes, and an olive tone to his skin. My father’s eyes are cornflower blue.
Oran’s accent fascinated me the most. He’d lost some of it, living in America for years. But you can still hear it gilding the edges of his words. And he loves a good Irish saying:
“Forgetting a debt doesn’t mean it’s paid.” Or, “There’s no such thing as bad publicity, except your own obituary.”
He’s a version of my father who grew up in Ireland—an alternate reality, if we’d all been raised there instead of Chicago.
Tonight he knocks on my doorframe, saying, “You know we don’t pay you by the hour, Riona. You can go home once in a while and still have plenty of money for those fancy shoes.”
The shoes in question are a pair of oxblood Nomasei pumps, set neatly to the side under my desk. I take them off when I know I’ll be sitting a while, so they don’t get creases across the toes.
I smile up at Uncle Oran. “I knew you’d notice those,” I say.
“I notice everything,” he says. “Like the fact that you’ve got all the South Shore land purchase agreements in front of you. I told you Josh was going to handle those.”
“I had already started them,” I say, shrugging. “I figured I might as well finish.”
Oran shakes his head. “You work too hard, Riona,” he says seriously. “You’re young. You should be out with friends and boyfriends. Once in a while, at least.”
“I have a boyfriend,” I say.
“Yeah? Where is he?”
“About five miles that way.” I nod my head toward the window. “At Mercy Hospital.”
“Oh, the surgeon?” Oran sniffs. “He’s still around?”
“Yes,” I laugh. “What’s wrong with Dean?”
“Well . . . ” Oran sighs. “I wasn’t going to say anything. But I saw he sent you roses the other day. Red roses.”
“So?”
“Not very imaginative, is he?”
I shrug. “Some people like the classics.”
“Some people are intellectually lazy.”
“What’s the right flowers to send a woman?”
Oran grins. “I always send whiskey. You send a woman a bottle of Bunnahabhain Forty-Year Single Malt . . . then she knows you’re serious.”
“Well, we’re not,” I tell him. “Not serious.”
Oran strides into my office and scoops up the stack of folders off my desk.
“Hey!” I protest.
“This is for your own good,” he says. “Go home. Put on a nice dress. Go get your man from the hospital. Enjoy a night out. Josh will find these on his desk tomorrow morning, the lazy shite.”
“Fine,” I say, just to placate him.
I let Oran carry the folders away, and then I watch him head over to the elevators, leather satchel slung over his shoulder in place of a briefcase. But I have no intention of actually leaving. I’ve got a million other projects to work on, with or without the purchase agreements.
And this is my favorite time to do it—after everyone else had left and the lights have automatically dimmed across the floor. In total silence, the rest of the office dark, and only the city lights sparkling below me. No interruptions.
Well—almost none.
My cell phone buzzes on the desk next to me, where it lays face-down. I flip it over, seeing Dean’s name.
You still at it? Want to come meet me for a drink at Rosie’s?
I consider. Rosie’s is only a couple of blocks away. I could easily stop for a drink on my way home.
But I’m tired. My shoulders are stiff. And I haven’t had a chance to exercise yet today. I think about a glass of wine in the trendy, noisy bar, compared to a glass of wine drunk in my own bathtub, listening to a podcast instead of a recap of Dean’s day.
I know which one sounds more appealing to me.
Sorry, I text back. Going to be working late. Then I’ll just head home.
Alright, Dean replies. Dinner tomorrow?
I hesitate.
Sure, I say. 6:30 tomorrow.
Dean and I have been dating for three months. He’s a thoracic surgeon—intelligent, successful, handsome. Competent in bed (I would guess all surgeons are—they understand the human body and they’re in full control of their hands).
I should want to go to dinner tomorrow. I should be excited about it.
But I’m just . . . indifferent.
It’s nothing to do with Dean. It’s a problem I seem to have again and again. I get to know someone, and I start picking away at all their flaws. I notice inconsistencies in their statements. Holes in logic in their arguments. I wish I could turn off that part of my brain, but I can’t.
My father would say that I expect too much from people.
“No one’s perfect, Riona. Least of all yourself.”
I know that.
I notice my own flaws more than anyone’s—I can be cold and unwelcoming. Obsessive. Quick to get angry and slow to forgive.
Worst of all, I’m easily annoyed. Like when a man becomes repetitive.
It’s only been a few months, and already Dean’s told me three times about how he thinks the anesthesiologists in his department are conspiring against him, after he refused to hire one of their friends.
“It’s these South Africans,” he complained, last time we went to lunch. “You hire one, and then they want you to hire their cousin or their brother-in-law, and all of a sudden the surgical unit is overrun with them.”
Plus, he seems to think that now, at the three-month mark, he’s owed a greater portion of my time. Instead of asking if I’m free Friday or Saturday night, he assumes it. He makes plans for us, and I have to tell him I’m busy with work or a family dinner.
“You know, you could invite me to dinner with your family,” he said in a sulky tone.
“It’s not a social dinner,” I told him. “We’re going over plans for phase two of the South Shore Development.”
Most dinners with my family are working dinners, one way or another. Our business and our personal ties are so deeply intertwined that I would hardly know my father, mother, or siblings outside of “work.”
The fate of our business is the fate of our family. That’s how it works in the Irish mafia.
Dean has some idea about the Griffins’ criminal ties—it would be impossible not to. We’ve been one of the largest Irish mafia families in Chicago for two hundred years.
But he doesn’t get it. Not really. He thinks of it like an interesting backstory, like people who say they’re descended from Henry the Eighth. He has no idea how current and ongoing organized crime is in Chicago.
It’s always a dilemma in my dating life. Do I want a boyfriend who’s ignorant of the dark underside of this city? Who could never really understand my entrenchment in my family? Or do I want one of the “made men” who work for my father, cracking heads and burying bodies, with blood under his fingernails and a gun perpetually concealed on his person?
Neither, really.
And not just for those reasons.
I don’t believe in love.
I’m not denying it exists—I’ve seen it happen for other people. I just don’t believe it will ever happen for me.
My love for my family is like the roots of an oak tree. A part of the tree, necessary for life. It’s always been there, and it always will be.
But romantic love . . . I’ve never experienced it. Maybe I’m just too selfish. I can’t imagine loving somebody more than I love my own comfort and having my own way.
The idea of being controlled by someone else, doing things for their convenience instead of mine . . . no thanks. I barely tolerate that for my family. Why would I want to center my life around a man?
I pack up my briefcase. Before I leave, I sneak into Josh’s filthy, cluttered office and steal back the purchase agreements off his desk. I started them, and I plan to finish them, regardless of what Uncle Oran says. He won’t notice—I’ll be done with them before Josh would even have looked at them. With my briefcase satisfyingly heavy, I head out of the office tower on East Wacker Drive. I walk home, because my condo is only four blocks away from work.
I bought the condo just this summer. It’s in a brand-new building with a gorgeous fitness center and swimming pool. There’s a doorman, and a fantastic view from my living room up on the twenty-eighth floor.
It was past time. I’d been living in my parents’ mansion on the Gold Coast. Their house is so huge that there was plenty of space for everyone—no real reason to leave. Plus it was convenient to all be in the same house together, whenever we needed to go over business-related material.
But then Cal got married, and he and Aida found their own place. And Nessa left too, to be with Mikolaj. Then it was just me alone with my parents, with the distasteful sensation of having been left behind by my siblings.
I have no interest in getting married like they did, but I could certainly move out.
So that’s what I did. I got the condo. And I love it. I love the quiet and the space. The feeling of being on my own for the first time in my life.