The only thing with a cloth over it was a small crate at the end of a rumpled, unmade bed. The room reminded Patrick of the squalid place he’d lived when he first got off the boat. It had a table with two chairs, a chest, and a bed with a thin mattress. All washing and cooking took place in a communal room down the hall.

Mick took a seat on the cloth-covered crate and dragged Ruby onto his lap. “It looks like we’re already making the Blackstones jumpy, love,” he said, then told her about Mrs. Kellerman’s offer.

Ruby seemed offended by the suggestion. “A thousand dollars? When those people live in palaces? Tell her to fling it in the sea.”

“Are you sure?” Mick asked. “We could get the money right now. Think of it, love. A thousand dollars will buy you some new clothes and restock the pantry.”

“You mean it would restock the wine cellar,” she corrected. “We didn’t flee Ireland to be those people’s lapdogs. You did eighteen months in jail waiting for that trial. A jury found you not guilty, and those people never even said they were sorry. Tell them to take their thousand dollars and stick it where the sun doesn’t shine.”

The words sparked something in Mick, and he stood, tossing Ruby to her feet. “That’s my girl,” he boomed and swept her up into a hug. He tried to twirl her, but his gangly frame couldn’t manage it, and they both went crashing to the floor. They howled in a combination of pain and hilarity.

Patrick looked away. Mick and Ruby were both thoroughly disreputable, but he envied their closeness. Going through life alone was hard. He wanted what they had. He wanted a woman in his life, not the lonely existence of a bachelor still living with his mother.

In the ruckus, Mick’s boot dragged the cloth from the crate, and Patrick’s eyes widened as he stared at it.

Ruby was hiding something “hot,” all right. It looked like a stack of incendiary broadsheets. He couldn’t read much through the slats, but the words Blackstone and Injustice printed in large, bold-faced type were easy to see.

Mick peeled himself up from the floor and grinned as he saw where Patrick was looking. He popped the lid from the crate and handed him one of the flyers. “I thought I’d stoke up a little advanced publicity for my book,” he said proudly.

It didn’t take long to scan the page. This was going to be a problem. The ghostwriter who penned the memoir had carefully avoided outright slander, but this screed was a direct assault on the Blackstones, their bank, and the businesses they funded.