I didn’t give a shit if Declan married me, didn’t give a crap about anyone’s respect apart from Seamus’s. And the O’Donnellys needed to come to terms with that.
“Now, if you’ll see yourselves out. I’d prefer for us to meet again with Declan at my side and Seamus fully apprised of who and what you are to him.” I went to turn around, to stalk out of the kitchen and back to the living room that was blasting with cartoon sounds—I had to figure that was the teenage equivalent of ducking your head under the covers because Shay had doubled the volume on the TV—but I stopped.
Paused at Lena’s whisper.
“Are you going to take him away?”
“I’m brave but I’m not that brave, Lena. I know full well the reach your family has. I’m not willing to do a damn thing that will compromise my relationship with him. That will make you tear us apart—”
“We’d never do that!” Lena gasped.
I peered at her over my shoulder. “Don’t be naive. You might never do that, because you’re a mother.” I cast a derisive glance at Aidan. “He’d do it in a heartbeat. But if you treat my son right, we have no reason to leave.”
And with that, I returned to the living room.
Maybe I’d made things a thousand times worse for myself, maybe I’d caused a war within the family, but I needed to lay down the law from the start.
I wasn’t a kid anymore. Wasn’t an ingenue. I was a woman. A mother. A successful artist. Wealthy in my own right.
I’d consider the conversation a solid check that would lead to a stalemate. And they were odds that I’d never have envisaged having over the O’Donnellys.
DECLAN
When Conor helped me out of the car, I wanted to shove him away. I wanted to get out on my own two feet, because the last thing I wanted was Seamus and Aela to see me acting weak.
Strength was everything in my world.
That was why Conor had blacked out the cameras in my building during the ride into the garage, and my parking area was blockaded by our most trusted men so that no one would see me and think less of me.
If I was weak, someone could try to attack, thinking to hit me when I was down.
The only problem? I was weak.
Very weak.
I felt like shit, and if I was in another world, I’d still be in the hospital. But that wasn’t going to happen.
I had some downtime coming to me as I recuperated, but the second I was better, I’d be back on the job. Vacation time? Sick pay? Ha. What were they?
So, while I was off, I fully intended on getting to know my son. This was the perfect moment for it, while I had patience and a lot of time on my hands. When he could get to know me without me coming in at two AM with blood on my face after a beatdown, or as I strode in for dinner with the stench of gunpowder still in my nostrils after I’d shown some punk what it felt like to get on the wrong side of the O’Donnelly clan.
“Jesus, you’ve put on weight.”
I scowled at him. “Maybe you need to work on your arms more, pussy,” I groused.
Conor sniffed, but Brennan, rounding the car, countered, “It’s the ten tons of crap they’ve been pumping into his system. Plus, you need to work out more.”
His grin was sly, wicked, and fast, and Conor frowned at both of us. When I was standing, no longer relying on him for support, I watched him cock his arm up and test his biceps. He couldn’t see shit, not through his suit jacket, but it didn’t stop him from kissing the muscle.
“Don’t listen to them. You’re growing nice and big.”
“You taking steroids? Or just buying miracle creams?” Brennan asked, but his eyes were twinkling.
One of the family’s favorite pastimes, Brennan included, was winding Conor up. Mostly because it was so easy to do. Kid was on cloud cuckoo land. And yeah, I called him Kid when I was two years younger than him.
That was just Conor.
A perpetual teenager with the body of a thirty-four-year-old, the sex drive of a post-pubescent kid, and the mind of a genius.
“Miracle creams,” Conor said drolly. “Already got one addict in the family. Don’t need another.”
Bren scowled. “Stop giving him such a hard time.”
“Aidan isn’t here so he can’t hear me being mean,” Conor retorted with a sniff. “The way you all tiptoe around him, it’s no wonder the dipshit can’t accept what he is and what he’s going through.”
“Fuck, he’s turning into Dr. Phil,” I mumbled.
“Well, save the pseudoscience for someone who wants to hear it,” Bren groused, shoving Conor in the side.
Deciding a change of subject was necessary, I muttered, “How do I look?”
Conor blinked. “Like you’ve just been shot, been in surgery, stuck in a ward for a week, and have signed yourself out of the hospital early.”
“Gee, thanks. You say the sweetest things to me.”
“I’m known for my sugar tongue,” Conor remarked, his eyes alight with amusement.
At my expense.
I heaved a sigh. “I know I look as bad as I feel, but still, am I passable?”
Brennan’s hand came to my shoulder. “Seamus has never seen you before. He’ll just be glad to get to know you.”
“Unless he hates you at first sight.”
Brennan punched Conor in the arm. “Don’t say that, fuckwit.”
Scowling, Conor rubbed his arm where Brennan hadn’t held his punch and muttered, “Look, I don’t know what it is with this family, but we’re not in a fairy tale. It’s highly likely Seamus isn’t going to appreciate having a man around the place.
“Not only is he fourteen—and we all remember what it was like to be fourteen—but he was the man around the house. He isn’t used to sharing his mom and he isn’t used to being bossed around by guys. And Dec, no matter what you do, you’re going to end up bossing him around.
“Statistically, women are far more patient with their children than men. And those are ordinary men. Regular ones. Nothing regular or ordinary about you.”
“What the fuck am I? Ground beef?”
He scoffed. “You’re a high-ranking mobster. Someone gives you lip, you shoot their kneecaps off—”
“No, Eoghan does that,” Brennan interjected wryly, and I shot him a swift smirk because baby bro had done that. And recently. It was technically why I was looking like a walking corpse, and why Seamus was about to meet Jack Skellington instead of the Declan of before.
“I know it’s going to be a learning curve.”
Conor hooted. “More than that.”
“Look, someone gives me shit, I don’t immediately get my gun out. I’m not going to shoot my kid,” I grumbled.
“Reassuring words,” Brennan countered with a laugh.
Fucker had laughed more during this conversation than he had in weeks.
I heaved a sigh. “Come on. Neither of you are much use in making me feel better about this situation.”
“Didn’t realize that was my job,” was all Conor said, and I glared at him harder even as Brennan passed me the two canes that I loathed but needed if I was going to walk toward the elevator.
I refused to use a wheelchair, even if it made me a dumbfuck. My heart had been under enough strain, but there was only so low I’d sink. No way in fuck was I about to meet my kid in a wheelchair.
I mean, there was nothing wrong with wheelchairs, and I was all about equal opportunities, but my kid needed to know who I was. What I was.
I wasn’t going to lie to him.
Not from the start.
He’d live and he’d learn, and he’d see what he came from so that when the time came and Da pressured him, he could make his own choices. Make his own decisions.
That was important to me, and it was something I’d been thinking about while I lay in that nightmare hospital room, surrounded by cellophane and plastic wrap, beeps every which way, and blinded by a light so sharp I’d had a constant migraine since I woke up.
Da was going
to push the issue. By fourteen, we’d all been versed in the life, so Seamus was prime for him to pump, but I wasn’t about to have that happen.
As I staggered forward, I ignored Conor and Brennan who were bickering like old hens and headed toward the elevator.
The shiny concrete floor held skid marks from where, over time, I’d driven around the corners too fast, leaving black tire tracks here and there, and the low-level fluorescent light fucked with my head some more. To get to the doors, I had to pass my four sports cars. Vehicles that had once been my pride and joy.
Funny how almost dying changed my perspective. How it made me see through all the crap to what really mattered.
I’d lived life on the edge for so long, and I’d seen nothing wrong with it.
But if I’d died from my own stupidity, Seamus would never get to meet his old man. And even if he didn’t want to, even if Conor was right and he hated me on sight, everyone needed to know their roots.
The elevator felt like a thousand miles away, but I made it. Nor was I blind to how my brothers moved behind me, just waiting for me to topple over. They did so in silence, knowing I was grateful, just as they knew how much I needed them for backup.
That was how we worked.
My brothers and I were tight. It was why we were pissed off at Aidan Jr. He was changing dynamics by being all secretive about his habit. Which was why Conor, who liked change the least out of all of us, had started giving him crap.
I didn’t blame him, but neither did I think it was wise to piss off a tiger who was limping around half doped up on Oxy.
The second I was in the elevator, the second it was moving, I felt like I could drop to my knees. The gravitational pressure was minimal, but it felt like I had a ten-ton weight on my back.
“Dumbass,” Conor muttered, when he carefully raised my arm and hooked it over his shoulder.
I didn’t argue, which was probably clue enough as to my status. I just stared up at the moving counter above the doors, and waited, fucking waited, to reach the penthouse.
There was silence in the elevator, like my brothers knew I was focused on standing upright, and when we were one floor from reaching my apartment, without even asking, Conor moved away just in time.
The doors opened.
To nothing.
As I struggled out of the elevator, I heard sounds.
My apartment had been empty since the day I’d moved in. No girlfriend, mistress, or one-night stand had stayed here. Not even my brothers if they’d come over here and gotten drunk.
The sounds were enough to make my heart tick over, simply because I wasn’t used to it. But when I heard footsteps, it stopped pounding, and instead took up a shit ton of space in my throat.
He looked like me.
That was my first thought.
He was smaller, leaner, and so youthful that I wasn’t sure I’d ever looked as young as him. His eyes were innocent, but they were haunted, and after what he’d been through, after a quiet childhood, I could understand that.
By his age, I’d been to drug dens, strip joints, and had seen men tortured.
The worst thing Seamus had probably done was get into an argument with some kid in class, maybe not pick up his dirty laundry, and get into shit with his mom over back talk.
Fuck, I wanted that for him.
I wanted that for him so much that my mouth worked as I tried to get my thoughts in gear. Tried to figure out what the fuck I should say or do.
He was me. Just miniaturized. With his blacker than black hair, pale skin that gleamed gold in the sun, high cheekbones, narrow blue eyes. Everything about him was me, apart from one thing.
His chin.
I knew that sounded crazy, but it was true nonetheless. His chin was his mom’s. I’d kissed that chin enough to know where the little crevice came from.
He stood there looking at me, just as long as I stood there looking at him, and my brothers didn’t give me shit over it. If anything, they slipped back into the elevator, and as the doors slid closed, they left me alone with my son.
My boy.
I gritted my teeth as the urge to cry fucking hit me, but before I unmanned myself, before the big, hard ass mobster motherfucker wept like a goddamn baby, I heard the faintest of noises.
For the first time, my gaze moved off my boy’s, and I found her.
Watching me.
I remembered her, ironically enough, from just before I’d passed out in the makeshift hospital ward where I’d been patched up. She had blue hair now where before, when she was younger, it had been black as pitch, but the rest of her was the same. Maybe a little older—mostly in her eyes. I could see she’d lived a life. She was no longer my innocent, naive ingenue. She was harder, but that wasn’t a bad thing. Not in this world.
Her body had always been banging, but it was better now. Impossibly. Was it weird that I wanted to see her stomach? See if she had stretch marks? Physical proof that she’d held my boy inside her? I wanted to know her, wanted to know every inch of the woman I’d initiated into sex, but more than that, I wanted to know her.
I’d never stopped wanting to know her. To learn her. To be taught everything there was about her.
Her elfin face hadn’t changed. It was still delicate, still oddly fragile when I knew she was capable of such strength. Her hair was the same shade of blue as her eyes, and along her earlobes, she had gold studs that I wanted to feel against my lips. Her brows arched high, paving the way for killer bone structure that led down to a butt-indent in her chin. She had a pouty mouth that was made to take my dick, and a stubborn jaw that declared to the world she was obstinate.
Even with all these years apart, I knew that.
“Declan,” she breathed, and her voice, fuck. Sweet fuck. If my body wasn’t hardwired for survival mode, my dick would be at full mast.
Just seeing her, hearing her, breathing in the same fucking air as her—a miracle. Something I never thought I’d have again.
“Aela.”
Her eyes shuttered, cutting off those rich sapphire orbs from me, and though there was a lot I wanted to say to her, I was speechless.
Both of them were a rainbow of color, a florid fall of hues that invaded my harmonious living space. I’d controlled every aspect of the decoration, from the colors to the layout, had brought peace into my home because outside these walls, there was no peace for an O’Donnelly.
But they didn’t fit in. They weren’t peaceful. They brought chaos.
And I’d never been happier for the mayhem that was facing me.
Never been happier in my fucking life.
AELA
“Declan!”
Fear hit me the second his knees crumpled, and I could no more stop myself from calling out his name than I could stop myself from rushing over to him, getting to him with just a handful of seconds to spare.
Who helped me get him back on his feet?
My son.
Our son.
He’d darted over just as fast, just as hard. We both lugged him up even though he was fucking heavy, and our panting breaths merged as we managed to heft him on our shoulders and prop him up.
He wasn’t deadweight, but he was almost there.
“Where to, Mom?” Seamus rasped, and I knew he couldn’t take the weight that much longer.
When Declan didn’t speak, I had to assume that he didn’t have the strength to. The stubborn ass had come home far too soon, but it didn’t take a genius to figure out why.
I was looking at him.
Speaking with him.
“Living room.” The bedroom would be wiser, but nothing about this man was wise. I knew, just knew that he wouldn’t want to be in bed around Seamus.
He’d want him to think he was the Big. I. Am.
Men. Stupid men and their pride.
But I’d denied him so much of Shay thus far that I couldn’t deny him this.
Declan would soon figure out that Shay wasn’t like him. Wasn’t like any kids he knew from
our world.
He wasn’t ashamed to feel, wasn’t ashamed to be affectionate even if he was going through a phase where it was uncool. I’d done a good job. And no, I wasn’t being bigheaded. I’d raised him well, raised him to accept that to be weak, to be vulnerable, wasn’t a crime.
Even though I knew that crossed paths with his father’s family’s ethos.
The pair of us struggled with Declan’s deadweight, and for the first time, I appreciated the whacko minimalism because we didn’t have to steer around much furniture to reach the futon.
Both of us tried hard not to jolt him as we helped him onto it, and when I tried to rearrange his legs, shaking my head at his stupidity, I muttered, “Shay, turn off the TV, please?”
“Sure.” He did as asked, then twisted around to look down at his father. I wasn’t altogether surprised when he took a seat on the edge of the low coffee table, his eyes wide as he whispered, “He’s still ill, isn’t he?”
“Yes.”
He cut me a look. “Why isn’t he at a hospital then?”
“Because he’s pigheaded.”
Shay’s lips twitched. “Like me?”
“Worse. You get it from him,” I said dryly.
“Because you were never stubborn?” Declan rasped, his voice kind of puny. Totally unlike the man I knew.
And, frankly, how I’d pay not to have to hear him.
Declan was a force of nature. Ebullient, strong. Fierce. Ferocious.
He wasn’t, and never had been puny.
“Nope. Never. Obstinacy isn’t one of my virtues,” I teased, but I heard the tears in my words, and hid them behind a dry smile I shot my son’s way.
He snorted, like predicted, but focused on his father.
The eagerness, the curiosity, neither came as a surprise but I was glad. Really, I was. When I’d told him about having to move, about having to come to Hell’s Kitchen, Shay had taken it on the chin. He’d actually taken it better than I’d expected because he was sick of moving around.
One of the major reasons I’d settled in Rhode Island, taken the position as a professor, was because he was tired of being a nomad. He’d even had a tantrum when I’d tried to pick us up and move down to Argentina where Luis Morales, the famous sculptor, was based. He’d wanted to mentor me, and when Luis Morales had you in his contacts, when he asked you if you wanted to study under him, you just didn’t say no.
Filthy Dark: A SECOND CHANCE/SECRET BABY, MAFIA ROMANCE (THE FIVE POINTS' MOB COLLECTION Book 3) Page 14