by Fox, Nicole
I move around the table, taking in the chaos surrounding my brother. There’s a thick sheen of sweat layering his face and his hands tremble every now and again.
But he’s strong. He can handle the pain.
“Cillian?”
I turn to the man standing beside me. He’s tall, almost as tall as I am. His dark eyes are bright and his features have evolved, but they’re still familiar.
“Jesus, is that you, Rory?”
He smiles. “Aye, mate. It’s been a long time.”
I pull him towards me and he claps my back hard. Seeing him brings back several old memories.
Memories of a time when I’d been poised to enter the clan in an official capacity.
Before Saoirse. Before Brody. Before Sean left.
Back when I wasn’t going to be don, but rather, the don’s brother.
And in so many ways, that was better.
In those days, Rory, Collin, and I had been practically inseparable. It’s a trip to see him now. He’s a man, bearded and wary.
“Fucking hell,” I breathe as I release him.
“It’s good to see you.”
“And you,” I agree. “Where’s Collin?”
“He’s still around,” Rory replies. “He’s scoping out the gardens now. You’ll see him soon.”
I nod, but I’m aware that we don’t have the luxury of a good catch-up over a pint.
“How bad is it?” I ask.
“They came prepared tonight,” Rory tells me with a sigh. “At least fifty men. All heavily armed and in tactical gear. And they had warrants.”
“Fuck me,” I mutter.
“I think they were expecting resistance,” he continues.
Kian shouts in pain from the table. I want to go to him, to help. But I hold my ground. There’s nothing I can do for him at the moment.
“Why was there no resistance?” I ask, trying to contain my anger. “No one even tried to stop those assholes. Surely, you aren’t scared of a fucking warrant. We own the judges in this goddamn city.”
Rory gives me a strange look. “Cillian, we were following orders.”
“Whose?”
“Your father’s,” he explains softly. “We were told that if this ever happened, we were to adhere to the warrants and step aside.”
I frown. “Da was expecting to be arrested?”
“He was prepared for it.”
“Prepared?” I scoff. “He strolled away with the fucking enemy!”
“Your da has never entered a fight he couldn’t win,” Rory says delicately. “I think in this case, he knew he wouldn’t be able to win like that.”
I grit my teeth. “Just how powerful are the Kinahans now?”
“Significantly more since you left,” Rory admits. “Brian Murtagh has built them up to something they never were back in the day. The man’s far more ambitious than any of us realized.”
“And Brody Murtagh?” I ask.
Rory’s expression clouds over instantly. “We only learned about it this past week,” he says guiltily.
I knot my hands into fists. “Tell me.”
“As far as we all knew, Brody Murtagh was a fucking vegetable. But Brian Murtagh had the power and the resources to keep him on life support. He wasn’t willing to let his only son slip away. No one thought he’d wake up.”
“And this is the week he chose to turn into Sleeping fucking Beauty?”
Behind me, Kian is thrashing around on the table while a few men hold him down so Dr. Doyle can do his work.
“You always had good timing, didn’t ya?”
“Fuck,” I breathe.
“The rumor is that Brian Murtagh’s health is failing,” Rory tells me. “And if he dies, Brody will inherit the kingdom that Brian built.”
“We can handle one fucking cripple,” I snarl.
But Rory looks uncertain. I’m glad to see that I can still read my old friend.
“What is it? What else?”
“The boy you pushed off the roof of the Free Canary is not the same one today, Cillian,” Rory warns in a measured voice. “Neither is the father. They both want the O’Sullivans eradicated.”
I nearly laugh. I refuse to be threatened by that.
“Yeah? Well, I’m not the same boy who pushed him off that roof either,” I counter. “I lost years of my life, same as he did. I was stripped of everything and everyone I knew and I was forced to re-build myself. From the ground up.”
I take a step back and make sure everyone in the room is listening to me.
“I can take Brody Murtagh. I can take the Kinahans. I can take on the whole fucking world if I have to.”
Rory looks at me with awe, mingled with new hope.
“I didn’t come back from the dead for nothing,” I finish.
Rory’s eyebrows rise. “Sounds like a story.”
“It is,” I reply, clapping him on the back. “And I’ll tell you about it one day.”
Then I move towards the table to check on Kian. Dr. Doyle has just finished setting his leg and Kian’s now slumped over, exhausted but done with the worst of it.
“Well,” I say, giving him the once-over, “no doubt about it: I’m definitely the better-looking brother now.”
“Fuck you,” Kian seethes as a burst of pained laughter escapes his lips.
Everyone clears the table to give the two of us some space. I move to Kian’s left shoulder and sit down right in front of him. He twists his head to the side so he can see me better.
“How do you feel?” I ask.
“Like I’ve just had my fucking leg broken.”
“Perceptive.”
“Learned from the best.”
I smirk. A moment later, though, it fades. “Why’d you do it?” I ask softly. “Why take that for me?”
His bright eyes meet mine. Despite the obvious pain swimming there, he’s still determined. Still fierce.
Still an O’Sullivan, through and through.
“It wouldn’t have made a very inspiring story if you’d come all the way back home just to die here quick as all that,” he says with a wry grin.
“No,” I agree sadly. “I suppose it wouldn’t.”
“Story’s just beginning, I’d say.”
“This isn’t a fucking story,” I rebut. “It’s an errand. Da’s gone. Ma, too,” I point out. “We have to get them back.”
“I’ll do what I can,” Kian says. “But this one’s on you, big brother.”
I frown. “You—”
“I can’t walk, Cil,” he reminds me, jutting his chin towards his swaddled leg. “I can’t fight or lead men or even drive a fucking car. You’re the only one who can do it.”
I stare at him for a long moment. “Kian…”
“I’m serious,” he interrupts. “It has to be you. There’s no one else.”
I don’t argue.
He’s right.
“Jesus,” I breathe as it all sinks in.
Kian smiles. “Welcome home, big brother.”
“You little shit,” I say. “You’re enjoying this too much.”
Kian makes an attempt at a shrug. “I appreciate karma.”
“Is that what this is?”
“What else would you call it?”
“A fucking shitshow.”
Kian smiles. “You can do this, Cillian. Maybe that’s what the last thirteen years were about. Everyone loves a comeback story.”
“I’m no hero,” I insist.
“Good. Can’t stand those smarmy hero types,” Kian laughs. “But you’re the kind of man that people can rally behind.”
I stand up slowly, trying to ward off that oppressive sense of responsibility threatening to swallow me whole.
I put my hand on his shoulder gently. “Get some rest,” I tell him. “I’m going to go… get my bearings.”
“You do that,” Kian replies with a knowing smile. “I’ll be… shit—here, probably.”
We both laugh. Then I slip away.
I ventu
re out through the patio and into the garden. Rory gives me a look, but I wave him off. He seems to understand that I need some alone time.
The moment I’m alone, though, there’s only one face that dominates my mind.
Her face.
Those startling blue eyes.
That wild red hair.
It can’t have been her at the airport. What are the fucking chances I’d run into Saoirse my first ten seconds on Irish soil?
It’s just too fucking insane.
In any case, the woman I saw—the glimpse of the woman I saw—was clearly troubled.
There’d been fear in her eyes. The kind of cataclysmic sadness that makes you think of tragedies unfolding again and again and again, like a never-ending fireworks display.
I refuse to believe that’s the fate that Saoirse chose over me.
I’ll find her, I promise myself.
But first, I need to save my family.
* * *
I meander over to a dark patch of the garden. More thoughts pass through my head sporadically, but for the most part, I just try to breathe and think of nothing.
I’m successful, more or less.
Until, in the shadows, I notice something.
Nestled between a pair of rose bushes, I see two glinting eyes trained on me. I squint into the thick undergrowth and squat down to the grass.
“Hey, there,” I murmur, clicking my fingers.
A thin purr reaches me before the cat does. I recognize the dappled ginger and white fur.
Its malnourished body of thirteen years ago is gone. This cat is sleek, but massive. Well-fed and obviously well-looked after.
There’s even a collar around his neck, for fuck’s sake.
It’s the little runt I found the night Sean left.
“They kept you,” I laugh in disbelief. “That sentimental bastard kept you.”
He purrs loudly, greeting me like an old friend as he butts his head against my waiting fingers. I check the collar and read the name engraved there.
“Ghost,” I whisper. I wonder who gave him his name.
I pick him up and walk deeper into the garden, headed nowhere in particular.
“Sometimes,” I say—and yeah, I’m talking to the fucking cat—"it feels like I’ve lived several lifetimes.”
Ghost purrs in response. He doesn’t sound awfully sympathetic to my dilemmas.
As I approach, I see a low fence I don’t recognize, wrapped around the perimeter of a makeshift courtyard area.
I step over it and walk towards the tree that marks the center.
To my surprise, as I round the tree, I see something. Two somethings, actually.
A pair of gravestones.
I kneel down in the grass and squint in the faint moonlight to make out the engravings. Ghost jumps out of my arms and immediately starts scratching himself on the right headstone.
That’s the one that reads, Cillian O’Sullivan.
“Jesus.”
The headstone on the left is much the same. Simple. Unadorned.
Except, instead of my name, it bears the words Sean O’Sullivan.
That’s it. Just our names.
No birthdate. No death date. No line commemorating our lives, the things we did, the places we went, the people we loved.
Why would there be?
Our lives are still being lived.
Just not in Da’s head, apparently. The man is hard, but I never imagined he’d go this far. He buried his own fucking sons—the idea of us, at least.
The message is clear. We’re dead to him. Dead to this family.
I don’t know whether to laugh or cry.
Maybe, at this stage, both responses are appropriate.
“That’s twice now, Ghost,” I tell the cat. “Twice that I’ve come back from the dead.”
The cat stares back at me. His eyes are filmy with age, but he seems to understand.
I’ve survived for a reason. I may not have wanted to be don of the O’Sullivan clan, but that’s exactly what I am now.
Time to fucking embrace it.
The Kinahans want to pluck my parents out of our own goddamn home? They want to break my brother’s leg? To start a fucking war?
Bring it on, motherfuckers.
Because apparently, I have nine fucking lives.
And I’m not afraid to use them.
30
Saoirse
A Jail Cell In Dublin
Tristan’s face glows with satisfaction.
The very act of throwing me into this cell is giving him that heady sense of power that he’s always craving.
He wants me to cry.
He wants me to whimper.
But I won’t let him see my fear.
“This is where you belong,” he snarls at me through the bars. “This is where I should have kept you from the beginning.”
I cross my arms over my chest because I know he hates that. “I’d rather be in here than in that house with you,” I reply coldly. “Prisons come in all different forms, Tristan.”
“How fucking poetic.”
Two police officers walk into the cell area from the side. Tristan gestures for one of them to come over.
“Open it up for me,” he instructs the cop.
I back up, moving to the farthest wall of my cell as the cop does Tristan’s bidding. Keys rattle. The gate clangs open.
And my husband steps into the small, claustrophobic space with me.
My plan to look tough is slowly unravelling.
He keeps his eyes trained on me as he speaks to the officer behind him. “I don’t want to be disturbed.”
“Yes, sir.”
Both men disappear immediately. I’m left standing with the one man I was hoping I’d never have to see again.
I blink and in the split second that my eyes are closed, I see Cillian.
He hadn’t recognized me amidst all the madness at the airport. Not that I can blame him.
But that’s the thing.
I do.
I know I’m being unfair. I know I’m being unreasonable. I know he has no reason to remember me after how I stomped on his heart and turned him away at my door.
But somehow, I’m angry.
Because he believed me so easily.
“Oi!” Tristan grunts, grabbing my jaw and pulling it close to his seething grey eyes. “Where the fuck did you go? Drifting off into little escape fantasies, eh?”
He noticed. I’m surprised.
But then, he’s never liked being ignored.
“You are fucking mine,” he rasps. “You stupid bitch, did you really think you could just leave and I’d let you go?”
“I didn’t think you’d let me go anywhere,” I fire back. “Which is why I didn’t ask permission.”
“I’d have chased you to the ends of the world.”
All his words sound romantic. They sound like the kind of thing every woman dreams of hearing from a man.
Obsession. Devotion.
But the menace in them, the threat of punishment, twists them into something dark and ugly.
I shake my head. “You don’t even love me. What is the point?”
“Where were you going?” He’s pressing down on my flesh with his fingers, trying to force my mouth into forming words.
I stay silent.
“I asked where the fuck you were going, you little whore!” he demands again.
Fury unfurls in his eyes. He’s close to breaking. And when Tristan break, pain follows.
I’ve seen that look in his eyes only a handful of times in our married life.
They never ended well.
Once, I’d been hospitalized because I’d “fallen down the stairs.”
Another time, he cut my arms up and then committed me to a psychiatric ward for two weeks.
I don’t know if I’ll live through another episode like that.
But then again, I survived the others. I’ve survived thirteen years of him.
Maybe I’m more
resilient than I realize.
He leans closer, pressing his sweaty, foul forehead to mine. “Where. Were. You. Going?”
“I don’t know,” I say coldly. “I hadn’t thought that far.”
“Fuck that. You planned this.”
“I dreamed about it,” I say. “I prayed for it. I fantasized about it.”
“Same fucking thing,” he spits. “But if you were a smarter woman, you’d know by now: there’s no escaping me. I am your fucking master. ‘Til death do us part, baby, remember?”
He backs me up until my back hits the cold concrete wall.
“Do you remember, my pet?” he asks so softly that it’s almost a purr. “Do you remember the vows we exchanged the day we got married?”
“Not if I can help it.”
He grinds me into the wall. I wince from the pain of his nails digging into my skin.
“I gave you everything,” he hisses. “A great fucking life. You had a roof over your head, clothes on your back, food on the table. You never wanted for anything.”
“Except happiness,” I reply.
I should stop talking.
But something inside me has snapped, too. Maybe it’s even enough to rival the fury inside Tristan.
I tasted freedom today. I saw Cillian. I got as far as the airport.
It may not seem like much. But somehow, to me, it is everything.
“Everything except freedom,” I add. “Everything except love.”
“Love.” Tristan’s tone cracks on the word as though it’s made of poison.
To my surprise, he releases his grip on me. He backs away a little as though he’s just realizing something.
“Love,” he says again, testing it on his lips. “All this time… Has this been about him?”
Him.
He spits out the word.
My expression doesn’t change. “I don’t know what you’re talking about.”
His eyes seem to glow in the dark. I know it’s my imagination, but right now, it looks real.
“Cillian O’Sullivan,” he says in a dangerously low voice. “Is he the son of a bitch you were running to?”
“I haven’t heard that name in thirteen years,” I stammer, trying to pretend like it has no effect on me.
“Answer me.”
“I have no idea where he is.”
“Maybe not,” Tristan acknowledges. Then his face splits into a sickly smile. “But I do.”