Da was there, and he was looming in the corner.
There was an unspoken rule in our household.
Never piss Ma off. If you did? You invoked Da’s wrath, and no fucker wanted that. Christ.
Irony being, of course, aside from the psychopathy, he’d been a good father. Hard on me, but I’d needed the direction because it had stopped me from getting killed before I was twenty. I just wasn’t sure if I wanted to emulate him.
I looked like him, and while I wasn’t the baby of the family, that was Eoghan, I knew Ma tended to give me a bit of leverage, some room for maneuvering she didn’t necessarily give to Aidan and Brennan, my older brothers. Conor got more leeway because he was a genius and he was weird with it. Eoghan was the baby, so that justified her trying to coddle him. Me? I was in the middle and should have been ignored. It was a curse and a blessing that I looked like Da, I guessed.
There were shadows under both their eyes, a fatigue that came from fear. There was never denying how much we were loved. Funny how I thought that now, when it’d never have been a blip on my radar before. Not because I’d almost died, because fuck, whenever we left the house, almost dying was a distinct possibility, but because I had a son. She was right.
A son whom I had to somehow help raise.
Care for.
Not get killed.
My jaw worked as I saw their fear for me entwined with a kind of concern I wasn’t accustomed to seeing.
From her tone, which had been carefully free of all expression, I’d anticipated her anger. I thought they’d be pissed at me, but they weren’t.
In fact, as I tried to read Ma’s expression and then Da’s, I realized they were both keeping things on the down low.
Was that a positive or a negative?
I had no way of knowing until I answered their question.
“Looks like it,” I muttered, staring at my feet, which were peeping through the standard-issue hospital blanket—it was half paper, half cotton, and with all those tiny holes in it.
Christ, I was looking forward to going home to get a real bed that didn’t come with a remote.
“Looks like it? You didn’t know?”
I scowled at Da, pissed he’d think that. His eyes were concerned, I saw, as he stepped toward me. I didn’t want to say trouble was brewing in them, more like he was worried. For who though? Me? The kid?
Shrugging set off a tidal wave of aches in my body. “I didn’t know.”
“I told you he wouldn’t have kept the lad from us, Lena,” Da cooed, and I watched, confused, as Ma’s shoulders sagged like that was the best news she’d heard all year.
“You thought I’d kept a kid from you?” I muttered, mostly bewildered, but a little pissed off too. After all, who the fuck did they think I was?
Family was everything.
Jesus.
That was the first rule, wasn’t it? The first of a million, granted, but that was at the top of the agenda.
“I wasn’t sure,” she rasped, and when her eyes started to gleam with tears, I groaned.
“Ah, hell, Ma. Don’t cry.”
Brennan was right. I did somehow upset her more than most of my brothers, and I didn’t have a clue why. It wasn’t like I was particularly bad—bad in our world was relative—or that I pulled stunts to break her heart, but it didn’t stop her from getting weepy over me.
I was used to it, but even so, it pissed me off because the last thing I wanted was her to get upset and for Da to blame those tears on me.
We had a working theory as a family that every tear Ma shed, Da would go out and kill some of our enemies to that exact number.
Sure, sounded lofty and romantic, impossible even. Only it wasn’t.
Da was just that much of a psycho.
I pinched the bridge of my nose, and muttered, “You know how things ended with Deirdre, Ma.”
“I do.”
When Da didn’t give me shit for swearing in front of her, I figured getting shot came with some perks. “Well then, you know that what happened with Aela was—”
“Was that why Deirdre was down at the docks that day? Following you around? Because she thought you were cheating on her…and she was right.”
I was well aware that it made me a dick, but I shrugged. “She shouldn’t have been there.”
Ma frowned at me, her hands pleating a handkerchief on her lap.
The weirdest thing about my family?
We all looked like the Kennedys. I didn’t mean we shared facial features. I meant that we looked like a political dynasty. Here I was, in the middle of a makeshift ER/ICU unit in a warehouse probably in Queens, but Ma looked like Jackie O with her pearls and neatly coiffed hair. She even wore a pencil skirt and had a blouse tucked into her trim waist. She wore makeup, perfectly applied, and could have graced any magazine with ease.
As for Da, his suits were expensive, and it showed. The pair of them looked after themselves, and though they were nearly seventy, they didn’t really look it. Da had let his hair go gray, but Ma hadn’t. She was still a redhead, just with more silver sparkles shining through.
So as I looked at them, seeing how picture perfect they both were, I had to shake my head because here I was, talking about a girlfriend who’d been murdered.
A girlfriend who I was glad had died.
A woman who my entire family thought I loved and had mourned for over a decade.
I pursed my lips, wondering what I could even say to explain all this because there wasn’t much to say anymore. I’d thought that part of my life was over and done with, and I’d been mostly happy about that.
Except for one thing.
One not so small thing.
Aela O’Neill.
Was it fate that brought her back into my life?
Fate or just God laughing at me?
Maybe a bit of both considering what I did for a living.
My jaw worked as I said, “Aela was a good girl.”
I’d admit that whatever I thought I was going to say? It definitely wasn’t that.
I knew they hadn’t expected it either, because their shoulders straightened and they jerked back like I’d slapped them.
Couldn’t blame them.
Aela had denied us access to my kid and to their grandson for, what? Fourteen years? Was that how old the kid would be? Maybe fifteen? I blew out a breath.
I had a fourteen-year-old son.
What the actual fuck?
As much as it surprised me, the fact was that in my entire lifetime, there’d only been one woman I could ever see carrying my baby.
Aela O’Neill.
So maybe fate really was with me, because I’d never, ever, have allowed my father to trap me into marriage like he’d done with Eoghan. I didn’t give a fuck that Inessa was good people, that I thought she’d make my brother really happy. No one could make the decision over who’d be my bride because I’d already gone through that years ago. Not that they knew that, but Deirdre had been my fiancée because I’d had no choice but to tie myself to her. I hadn’t wanted her. I sure as fuck hadn’t needed her in my life. I’d put up with her and dealt with her because I had no alternative. I’d made the best of a bad situation, and I’d done it well.
Until I’d met Aela.
I sucked in a breath and I murmured, “When you meet her, I don’t want you giving her any shit.”
Da scowled at me, his shoulders hitching up by his ears as his temper started to soar. “You watch your feckin’ mouth, boy.”
I gritted my teeth at the Irish in his voice. The fucker had never even set foot on a plane, never mind visited the homeland, so where the Irish came from was beyond me.
Still, I glared at him. “I won’t. I’m in a hospital bed, and I’ve just learned that I have a son, a son with the only woman I ever loved, and somehow, she’s come into my life again. You won’t make her life miserable, either of you, because if you do—” I swallowed, suddenly feeling like I had a chasm edging at my feet, one that was eithe
r going to swallow me whole or throw me out the other side like it was a black hole.
“If you do, what, son?” Ma asked softly, her head tipped to the side, her shock clear, but her voice was modulated because she was good at hiding her emotions, at tempering them.
“You’ll never get to know your grandchild.”
Silence fell at my words, at my declaration.
The aftermath was like I’d just unpacked the notch from a hand grenade. Time was ticking away, just waiting on the grenade to explode, and I felt my heartbeat starting to pound, my pulse starting to soar—something that made itself known on the monitors.
I was pretty sure I’d never been so stressed in all my life, then Da scoffed, “You can’t be serious?”
Shooting him a look, I dipped my chin. “I am. Deadly.”
“I’m confused,” Ma whispered. “I thought you loved Deirdre—”
“I hated her,” I snapped, but before I could say another word, the doctors came rushing in, and they started to shoo my folks out of the ward.
Neither of them wanted to go, but when my chest started to scream blue bloody murder, and sweat dripped from my pores, drenching me?
I knew something wasn’t right with my body.
Maybe before, I’d have just gone with the flow. I’d have just let shit lie, because if it was my time to go, it was my time to go.
But things were different now.
I had a son.
And there was Aela.
With or without me, she was coming into the life again. No way would my da let her get away with not bringing Seamus into the fold. She needed me.
More than she could ever know.
So when the doctors started slapping a ton of crap on me, talking in loud, rushed voices as they started prepping gear I didn’t understand and squirting meds across the room as they prepped shots, I grabbed the guy I thought was the head honcho by the wrist.
He squealed in surprise at my firm hold, but it took more than a cardiac arrest to take me down. So when I drew him to me, my eyes were fixed on his as I ordered, “You fix me. You fix me or my father will make your entire family pay for it.”
It wasn’t a fair command, but I’d gone past the point of fairness.
Fairness had left the building.
Aela and my son needed me, and now was not my time to die.
Four
Aela
“Seamus?” I called out, as I hauled a bag from my room and dumped it in the hall.
The trouble with packing up all my stuff was that there was a lot of it.
I mean, I knew that. I had to pack everything sporadically anyway when we moved, because we moved a lot.
Intentionally.
I never liked to stay in one place longer than necessary. Sometimes, I’d stay only long enough to do a course or to teach one. Sometimes, it was for as long as it took to craft a particular project. But Rhode Island? I’d gotten soft.
I’d been stupid.
Instead of changing scenery a few years ago, I’d stayed here because Seamus had said he was sick of moving, so I’d gotten a job teaching at one of the best art schools in the world. I’d loved my role there, loved my position and the way I could create and help propagate more creations in the seeds I helped sow in students.
So I’d stuck around, let us get some roots, and I’d seen how Seamus had flourished. It figured he’d be like his da in that. His father who’d never lived anywhere other than Hell’s Kitchen. His father who practically thought New York was an island all of its own.
I’d monitored him over the years. I’d been compelled to.
Not only to make sure that we were under the radar, but also because it was a sick, bittersweet need to check in. To see what he was doing. To make sure the life hadn’t killed him.
Even while I’d run, far and wide from him, I’d never stopped caring.
Couldn’t stop.
This kind of love didn’t just die. Didn’t just burn away.
It stayed there, pretty much like the Olympic goddamn flame—
“Mom?”
Seamus’s voice was a little squeaky, but I was getting used to that. He had zits on his chin that he moaned over in the mirror too, and when I said he stank at the end of every day? I wasn’t joking.
Hormones weren’t only a bitch for him.
“What is it?” I called, moving toward his voice because he sounded a little on edge.
Sure, he was randomly squeaky, but at moments of high pressure, it stayed that way.
As I trudged down the hall, with its tribal red and white rug that I’d picked up on a job in Dubai, where Seamus and I had lived with a Bedouin tribe for three months, I stared at all the trinkets I’d picked up over the years.
I couldn’t take everything with me even if I wanted to.
And want I did.
These things were my past. Each item had a memory.
Like the massive seashell on the stand from when Seamus and I had gone out to collect sea glass in Devon over in the UK. Then there was the wooden mask from the Zulu tribe we’d interacted with when Seamus was about four.
He didn’t remember it, but I did. They’d painted him up like he was one of their own and he’d run around, wild and free, more wild and free than most kids could ever imagine.
He’d had more opportunities with my career than any boy could hope for. Had seen things, done things, lived more in his fourteen years than most did in a lifetime.
I had to believe—
No, I hadn’t done wrong by him.
I hadn’t.
I refused to believe I had.
So when I found him standing by the window, peering out into the yard in the dark, I wondered what he was doing.
We were vigilant by nature. I had two alarm systems that worked simultaneously, and I had two guns. One that went in my nightstand, and one that I stored in a cupboard on the wall in the hallway.
Seamus knew about that one.
He also knew that I’d kill him if he took it out and used it.
Guns were supposed to be stored in a safe place, locked away and secured. And this one most definitely wasn’t. But Seamus was a good shot too. He knew how to lock and load a pistol, knew how to clean a weapon and strip it down—because with his heritage, I had to train him. I had to make sure he knew what he was doing, just in case this ever happened.
Just in case we were back in the life.
I bit my lip, on edge to see that he had the gun in his hand, and rasped, “What are you doing with that, son? And why are you in the dark?”
He cut me a look over his shoulder, and at that moment, it was more than just a similarity to Declan.
It was like I was looking at him that first day I’d met him.
Fuck.
They’d been similar ages, only Declan had been lucky. He’d somehow turned into a jock from a teen rom-com movie. Not a zit in sight, and I don’t remember his voice ever squeaking once.
I was pretty sure it had, and maybe he’d used foundation, or maybe his hormones were controlled to the extent where he never even had to worry about zits because he had them under his domination.
Either way, aside from the few differences, it took me back to my youth seeing him standing there. One occasion, I could easily remember Declan getting a gun out of nowhere and using it to protect Deirdre and me. I’d been so shocked that, to be honest, I couldn’t even remember why he had to get his weapon out. What I did remember?
Being jealous.
After Declan had kept us safe, she’d clung to him like a limpet, making an octopus look like she had fewer arms as she stuck to his side, all arms and legs around him, tangled up in him.
Me? I’d been out in the cold.
All while over her shoulder, he’d stared at me with the deepest look. A look that still made my skin heat, my blood rush. God, I could remember that so well. The way my adolescent body, one filled with urges I’d never experienced before, had responded to his, to that fire.
I’d b
een too young to know what that felt like, and yet, I was one of the lucky ones.
Even if Declan was my end, even if it brought me back into a fold I wanted nothing to do with, I could never regret knowing what those emotions felt like.
I considered it my superpower.
Nothing could ever replicate the magnitude of what I’d felt, so I never looked for it. I just had a few hookups, discreet so it would never inflict an ‘uncle’ on Seamus, and I’d even messed around with some clients while I was working on projects for them.
Why not?
I was young, free, and single. I could do whatever the hell I wanted with my body, but I never wanted my heart to be engaged again.
Why would I?
It was the sweetest torture. The most devastating torment.
Love was pain.
Love was pure.
It hurt.
If it was done right.
And because I’d experienced that so young, I knew what it felt like, knew that it wasn’t for me anymore and that I didn’t have to go out there and find something to replicate it. You couldn’t replicate the un-replicable, and to be honest, I had no desire to ever find myself feeling like I’d once felt. It was an insidious weakness, and I hated being weak.
I liked being strong.
I’d taught my son that too. I’d taught him to be independent, resilient, but seeing him armed with an intent to use the weapon I’d instructed him with set my nerves on edge.
“Look at the car on the street.”
Scowling, I stepped forward. His tone had me hugging the wall, moving over to him on the other side of the window so I could peer out. His gaze was intent, his concentration absolute—so absolute, in fact, that I wished he could be that dedicated to his frickin’ math homework so I didn’t get any bullshit from his teacher. I peered out onto the street, trying to see what he was seeing.
We lived in the city, but it was a good part of town. I hated driving, hated commuting even more so I made sure that, wherever we lived, it was near where I worked. I only had to walk a few blocks to hit the college campus, which made this neighborhood incredibly expensive, but I could afford it.
I’d long since stopped caring about how much things cost, and only instilled a sense of value in objects so that Seamus wouldn’t grow up to be a precocious spoiled brat.
Filthy Dark: A SECOND CHANCE/SECRET BABY, MAFIA ROMANCE (THE FIVE POINTS' MOB COLLECTION Book 3) Page 5