This Life II

by Dee, Cara

  She’d leave me; I was sure of it. She’d left when she’d found out I had lied when we first met. When I’d pushed Kellan into her life as an FBI agent. She’d left me then, after the negotiation with our lawyers.

  This was worse. This time, I couldn’t be sure she’d return.

  “I dug for info on Gio and any kids he might have,” I went on. “I knew that if he had a son, it might pose a threat to me one day. But I didn’t find one. Or, rather, Aunt Viv sent my requests to Pop, and he didn’t find any son. He found a daughter instead.” Holy shit. Almost there. “Stepdaughter,” I corrected. “His new wife had a daughter. So I looked into things further, and I found out that the daughter lived in the US.”

  Emilia straightened and raised a brow.

  I came to a stop, as tired as if I’d run a marathon, and I cracked my knuckles to keep from fidgeting. “Aunt Viv sent me a picture when I got out. The daughter—she was around sixteen at the time, and the picture was of her when she was maybe twelve or thirteen.”

  That should be enough for Emilia to know where I was going with this. She knew I’d arrived in her shitty little town with a picture and a name.

  “What’re you trying to say?” she asked, frustrated. “You told me you stopped outside the diner. You said…”

  “I told you I saw you there,” I said with a nod. “I did. I saw you and thought you were fucking beautiful. And then I compared the girl in the photo with you, and I realized it was you I was there for.”

  She took a deep breath and clasped her hands in her lap. “My mom’s dead, Finnegan. You know that. So…whatever you’re trying to say—what? I’m that daughter? Gio’s stepdaughter? No.”

  “You’re not his stepdaughter,” I agreed quietly. “There’s more to this story.” I paused and drew in a breath through my nose. “We learned a couple days ago that the woman we thought was his wife is his sister. She lives with him.”

  “Okay…?” She widened her eyes, waiting for the punch line. “What does that have to do with me?”

  I hung my head, out of time. “Her name is Elena, princess.” I forced my gaze off the floor and met her blank expression. “She used to live in the US but left after giving birth to a girl—to you. You’re Gio’s niece.”

  Emilia let out a choking sound, then shook her head. “My mom’s dead,” she repeated.

  “She’s not,” I murmured. “And when you and I had dinner the first time in Gettysburg, I was surprised when you said she’d died.”

  She shook her head again, in disbelief.

  “Your dad lied to you,” I said. “Maybe he couldn’t cope with being left by her…” Something I could suddenly relate to more than I’d ever thought possible. “But she didn’t die giving birth to you. She moved back to Italy.”

  For a long moment, Emilia merely stared at me. But the way she stared at me—it made me feel like a stranger. Like I was a stranger to my own wife.

  “You knew?” she asked unsteadily.

  The nausea made a swift return, and I inclined my head. “Before feelings got involved, I was only thinking about the future—about what all this could mean. And then… I was a coward, Emilia. I fell for you and decided to tell you after the wedding—once you were tied to me.”

  She flinched and looked away. Her arms came around her middle, as if she were hugging herself—protecting herself.

  “Then Ma and Ian were murdered, and everything was put on hold,” I finished.

  Her chin wrinkled, and I could tell she quickly tried to push down her emotions, but she couldn’t stop her eyes from welling up. “You were in her house. Outside of Rome—you saw her. You knew she was there…? I was less than an hour away from my mother. You were in her house. Oh God.” She went through a wide range of emotions in the span of a few seconds, the one lingering being the disbelief. “No—no, no, she died!”

  The sheer desperation to cling to what she’d been told broke my fucking heart, and I carefully walked over to the bed and sat down next to her. Then I pulled out the picture of Elena from my pocket and showed it to her.

  “Is this her?” I asked softly.

  Emilia wiped her eyes and peered at the photo for less than a second before crumpling. Her face fell into her hands, and she broke down. Sobs racked her body. My own vision blurred, and it killed me to be so unsure of what to do. Would she reject my comfort?

  “Tell me what to do, baby,” I whispered.

  “You knew,” she cried into her hands. “All this t-time—before we met—you knew my mom was alive?”

  I clenched my jaw and sniffled, nodding once even though she couldn’t see me.

  Saying sorry would just be a slap in her face. I’d fucked up. I’d done this.

  “Oh God.” She rose from the bed, shaking, and clenched and unclenched her fists along her sides. “You used this, didn’t you?” she croaked. She wouldn’t face me directly. “You knew that if I’d known she was alive, chances were I’d never marry you. I’d go off to find her instead—so you kept it to yourself.” She gave me a fleeting glance, perhaps waiting for my denial. One I couldn’t give her. She sniffled and whimpered. “My mom’s actually alive?”

  “She is.”

  It shattered me to watch her. The hurt I’d caused was already embedding itself in her heart, but she kept going back; she had that voice in her head that was stuck on the fact that her mother was alive.

  Another sob broke free, and she covered her face with her hands. “You had me exactly where you wanted. Alone, stuck with a deadbeat dad I couldn’t wait to escape from. It was perfect for you.” She let out a choked laugh and shook her head. “Finnegan O’Shea, a fucking puppet master, and…and I fell for it.” The gut-wrenching wail that left her shook me to the core, and the guilt had never weighed heavier.

  I sat there, frozen. Two seconds away from throwing up. Holy shit, what had I done?

  What the fuck had I done?

  I couldn’t argue with a single thing she’d said, because she was right on the money.

  “I’m such a fucking idiot,” she groaned through her sobs. “How could I be so stupid—”

  “Princess, you’re not s—”

  “Don’t call me that!” she screamed. The sound made me flinch back, as did the murderous, wild, frantic glare she shot me. Jesus Christ, I’d never seen her so mad before. “You goddamn fraud,” she whispered furiously. “All this—I don’t know what was real. I don’t know how you’ve manipulated me, and it kills me. I-I can’t trust you. I will never be able to trust you, Finnegan.”

  I gnashed my teeth and stayed quiet. Anything I said now would only make shit worse. All I could do was wait for her to tell me to get the hell away from her, because there was no way she’d have me close anytime soon.

  “I can’t believe you knew all along,” she whimpered. “Oh God—in Italy…holy shit. You referred to her as the wife and said you had no further intel on her. All the motherfucking lies!” She hiccupped on a sob and pointed at the door. “Get out of my sight.”

  “Emilia, I—”

  “Get out!”

  Fuck. I cleared my throat and stood up, my stomach churning. “I’ll leave you alone. But just so you know, everything is real to me.”

  She scoffed at that.

  I left the room and instantly expected a fit of rage to hit me. I could practically see myself driving a fist into the wall, but nothing came. There was just a massive void. Dread, resignation, and emptiness.

  Had I lost her? Could I ever make this right again?

  The truth had tumbled out so fast that I hadn’t begun to process. And if I was struggling, I couldn’t imagine what Emilia was thinking.

  13

  Emilia O’Shea

  Liam entered the apartment and sighed at the sight of me. “I see you haven’t moved since this morning, darlin’.”

  He was wrong. So very wrong.

  “I’ve peed a couple times.” My voice was scratchy from disuse and the umpteenth sobfest. I hugged my pillow a little harder and pr
etended to watch the movie on the flat screen.

  I hadn’t been able to stay upstairs with Finnegan, so I’d demanded to stay in the studio apartment on the second floor. At which my lying sack of shit husband had gone ballistic. It wasn’t safe enough to have me so close to the ground floor all alone or whatever. And I didn’t want to live with Kellan. He was Finnegan’s little lapdog.

  I’d been forced to choose between Liam and Colm, and the latter was too obedient too. He followed Finnegan’s orders to a tee, leaving me no choice but to ask Liam to crash here with me.

  He slept on the bed, in the little nook in one corner, and I had made the couch my home.

  Sparsely decorated, the opposite of homey, no Christmas decorations anywhere…it was perfect.

  It didn’t smell like Finnegan’s shower products or cologne either.

  “Have ye eaten?” Liam walked over to the kitchenette and opened the fridge.

  “I’m not hungry.” I had everything I needed on the coffee table. A bottle of water, two boxes of tissues, and my phone. I’d blocked Finnegan’s number just in case, but I wanted to keep the line, so to speak, open for the girls. They’d stopped by yesterday after I’d “moved in.”

  Luna and Sarah could not be more different, and their arguments had forced me to ask them to leave me alone for now. They came at things very differently. Luna was seething just like Sarah, but…there was another perspective, according to her. She was used to the lies. She could already see Finnegan and me moving past this.

  Sarah wanted the two of us to go home and leave this shit behind.

  I hadn’t been surprised to hear her say that.

  While I’d been on a Christmas high and embracing the life Finnegan had given me, Sarah had spent the past few months with regrets that kept building up.

  Considering how things had worked out for me, I couldn’t call her a fool or be sad that she wasn’t able to accept Patrick.

  I was the fool.

  Gullible and unwanted, what a great combination.

  The emotions surged forward again and made me weepy. I reached for a tissue and tried to muffle my cries in my pillow. God, I felt worthless. Not to mention embarrassed beyond words. They all knew. Everyone who worked for Finnegan had known that my mother was alive. Even Shannon.

  “Fuck,” I heard Liam mutter. “Want me to get Luna, darlin’?”

  I shook my head and sniffled into the pillow.

  My mom was alive, but the image I’d created of her had shattered.

  She hadn’t died. She’d left me.

  Dad hated my guts, always had, and he hadn’t answered the phone yesterday when I’d tried to call him. And Mom… Christ.

  Over the past twenty-four hours, I’d seen several pictures of her. Eric had shown me. Yet, the one I kept seeing in my head was the one I’d studied for years. The one in my baby book, where she was pregnant with me and wearing the happiest of smiles while holding her rounded belly.

  How could she have abandoned me?

  Last night, when I’d been so upset I’d literally vomited, I’d desperately tried to bargain with reason. Maybe she’d been forced to leave. Maybe she’d wanted to protect me by keeping me a secret from the Avellinos. Then I’d crashed and burned at the memory of Eric telling me they’d found school pictures of me in Gio’s office. I hadn’t been a secret at all. He knew of me. My mom had kept track of me. She’d somehow gotten her hands on pictures—every motherfucking year.

  And nothing. Not a goddamn word. They’d let me live with my dad.

  I couldn’t imagine a scenario where she obtained photos of me and didn’t check in on how I lived, what the house looked like, perhaps what Dad looked like now. The signs of neglect and his decline had been etched into the foundation of the house. Impossible to miss. It was there in the front yard, the broken fence, the inside of the house where the wallpaper was peeling off the walls, and it was there in the wrinkles on his face, the clothes I’d worn before meeting Finnegan, and in the beer cans and cheap whiskey bottles on the stoop outside the front door.

  The following morning, I woke myself up crying.

  I’d relived moments with Finnegan all night. Glimpses of our past that’d come rushing back to me as reminders of all the times he’d played me.

  Just a few months ago, when we’d arrived in Italy, we’d talked about my mom in the car.

  “Did you know I’m part Italian?”

  He cleared his throat and checked the rearview. “Yeah?”

  I nodded. “My mom was half Italian or something. I wanted to research her family in school once, but you know how my dad is. He wouldn’t hear a word of it.”

  “So I’m married to a little Italian principessa, huh? Do you know anything else about your ma?”

  “Afraid not.”

  Moments later, I found myself with my head in the toilet, emptying my already empty stomach. The acid churned in my stomach and up my throat.

  Finnegan had bought me jewelry with personal alarms, but he hadn’t told me my mother was alive. He hadn’t wanted me away from my father’s house unless it was into his own arms. It had to be his. My safety was everything, so long as it was he who gave it to me.

  I flushed the toilet and planted my forehead on the seat, exhausted in every way imaginable.

  “I’m puttin’ me foot down, Emilia.”

  I jumped at the sound of Liam’s voice, and I scrambled to my feet so I could brush my teeth.

  “I didn’t know you were awake,” I mumbled.

  “I wasn’t.” He leaned against the doorframe and scratched his bicep absently. “Yer retchin’ woke me up.”

  I ducked my gaze and stuffed the toothbrush into my mouth. “Shorry.”

  He shook his head and yawned. “Don’t be. But this can’t go on. I don’t know who’s a sadder sight—you or Finn. He can’t sleep in his bed ’cause it ‘smells like you,’ apparently he can’t shower either, he lives on crisps and Jameson, and if we have to hear another song by Adele, I’ll feckin’ shoot him in the arse.”

  My mouth twitched, and the foam from my toothpaste dribbled down my chin.

  Short-lived as the second of mirth had been, it gave me a slight boost of energy. My stomach snarled in hunger too, which I supposed wasn’t weird. I hadn’t eaten since the day before yesterday.

  Good. Finnegan was suffering. I was pissed enough to take an ounce of pleasure from it.

  “I’m hungwwry,” I managed to get out before I spat the toothpaste into the sink.

  “About time,” he replied. “No reaction on how Finn’s faring?”

  I rinsed out my mouth before I turned off the sink and reached for a towel. “I’d feel better if he’d cried his eyes out.”

  Liam sighed at my sort-of, sort-of-not joke. “He’s done that too. That was why I was late last night. I kept him company. He claimed it was an animal rescue commercial he’d seen a couple hours earlier that still made him mushy.”

  Oh. Well, good.

  “He misses the piss outta ye, Emilia.”

  I returned the towel to the hook and felt myself shut down. “I don’t give a flying fuck.” I walked past him and went on a food hunt in our little fridge.

  Sarah stopped by with an early dinner around five, effectively putting a stop to my marathon of watching crappy Lifetime movies.

  She set two Styrofoam containers on the coffee table, revealing a big salad in one, and fries and chicken tenders in the other. There were plastic forks, sodas, and napkins too.

  I hadn’t explored the takeout places in the area, but I knew they were dominated by a lot of Indian and general junk food. The guys had dumped their fair share of food containers in our trash can after bringing their meals over when Finnegan called for meetings.

  The chicken didn’t look appealing, quite the opposite, so I stuck a fork into the salad and snatched up a couple fries.

  “Have you thought about what I said the other day?” Sarah asked.

  “No.” I chewed on the fries, perfectly crisp and fuck
ing delicious.

  “Why?” she wondered. “I told you. I have enough so we can start over.” She’d been abundantly clear. She’d hidden away jewelry, high-end clothing, and cash worth more than fifty thousand dollars. “We could find an apartment together, get jobs… It’s not like we’re going back to our families.”

  I didn’t have a fucking family.

  Fuck.

  Don’t cry.

  I swallowed hard, and the food went down like a chunk of charcoal.

  I hesitated and glanced at her. “You’re really not marrying Patrick?”

  “I can’t.” She lowered her gaze and shook her head slowly. “I thought I could—I like Patrick, but…after seeing Grace and Ian get murdered right before my eyes…” She took a deep breath and made eye contact again. “I can’t, Emilia. I can’t be part of this. I’ll lose myself.”

  I wished I couldn’t relate, but this last straw had been a rude awakening. I didn’t know who I was anymore.

  The O’Sheas were lethal and highly skilled. They didn’t move in and claim you right on the spot. They worked the flanks and took an inch here and an ounce there. Even Shannon—Christ, he was too good. He’d called me yesterday, and it’d been a short conversation. His kind voice had made me want to confide in him; more than that, I’d instinctively trusted his worry about me. But then he’d uttered one sentence that’d slapped me right back to reality.

  “It wasn’t my business to tell you the truth.”

  My reply had come out cold.

  “Right. I’m your family, your daughter-in-law, you walked me down the fucking aisle, but I’m not your business. Got it.”

  I’d been so manipulated.

  I’d been so played…by my own husband.

  “How much more can you take, hon?” Sarah asked me. “How much is too much? Every time he hurts you, every time he lies, he’s gonna scrape away a bit more of your resolve.”