Finn would make me terminate the pregnancy.
I knew he would.
The car pulled up and, still dazed, I drifted forward and didn’t wait for John to open the door for me. Just clambered in with all the elegance of a giraffe eating grass and immediately hit the button for the privacy screen.
I stayed upright only for as long as it took for the screen to separate John and me, then I slumped on the back seat, staring blindly at the ceiling, not even caring that I wasn’t wearing a seatbelt.
The words ‘not viable’ rang around and around in my head until I thought they’d drive me crazy.
The twenty-minute car ride might have taken an hour or ten seconds for as much as I processed the journey.
The lunch I’d had with Jen could have taken place ten years ago and breakfast with my two favorite men might have been two weeks earlier.
Time was irrelevant.
Time was a void.
I managed to keep it together until I got into the elevator and made my way to the penthouse.
The second I did, I heard Jake’s happy laugh and it triggered me. I had no idea why, but the relief that he was okay, that he was viable, hit me at the same time as the sorrow that I’d never hear this baby’s joyous laughter, that I’d never hear him or her cry, that I’d never go through the myriad things a mother did in a day.
A single day.
I wouldn’t have any of that if I had a termination.
I crumpled in on myself. Leaning back against the wall, I pressed into it, sliding down until I was sitting on the floor, my face buried in my hands.
That was where Lena found me.
She curved her arms around me, pulled me close, and hugged me.
I needed that.
I needed that so badly.
No judgment, no questions, just affection. Just care.
God, I missed my mom at that moment. Lena’s arms were comforting, but nothing was like her hug.
She tried though. She rocked me like I was Jake’s age, and I needed that too.
My tears were loaded with my pain, and the raw sounds that flooded the room sounded like an animal’s. I didn’t even know I was capable of making that noise.
I’d lost babies before, but this one… I’d been so cautious about not getting excited until the end of the first trimester.
Until things were supposed to be safer.
“Shhh, shhh, shhh,” Lena soothed me, but I heard the tears in her voice.
She didn’t know what was wrong with me, but maybe she didn’t have to know to know.
“Not viable,” I gasped out on a sob, turning my face into her throat and hugging her back.
“I’m sorry, Aoife. I’m so sorry.”
And she was.
And she got it.
Like someone who’d gone through this too.
Maybe not the exact same specifics, but someone who’d been handed these shitty cards and had had to deal with them.
As sorry as I was for her, I felt like I was in a safe space with someone who understood.
With someone who’d been there, who had a uterus and had dealt with childbirth, and who didn’t have a penis and who could make decisions about my body for me.
Right then, that mattered.
More than she could ever know.
Twenty-Four
Finn
When Conor sent me a video link, I knew my lies were coming to a head.
I was sitting at my desk when I received the email.
For a second, I ignored it because I received a thousand emails a day that needed my attention and I was in the middle of reading some R&D reports that were quite interesting, but Conor never emailed—he texted or called.
So when I saw his email address in my inbox, surprise and curiosity had me opening the link.
The second I saw where he was and what he was doing, I closed the site, ran the program on my computer that shredded anything that could be construed as evidence if the Feds ever decided to confiscate my hard drive, and as it ran, grabbed my phone and AirPods.
Tucking them in, I moved away from the windows and toward the corner of my office where there were no cameras.
My back to the wall so no one could peer over my shoulders, I tucked the earphones into my ears and opened the link on my phone.
Michael was on the table. Lena’s favorite guard. I knew he was sick, but he clearly wasn’t in any hospital I’d like to be treated in.
Grunge and grime laced every surface, and Michael was strapped down to the worst of it—a wooden board that had more stains on it than an artist’s palette.
Conor didn’t often get his hands wet, and we all knew why.
His creativity was beyond disturbing.
A buzz of electricity made the hairs at the back of my neck stand up.
Michael yelped then sobbed, “NO MORE! Please. No more.”
“Then start talking. I don’t have all day.”
Michael’s sobs turned into sniffles. “Michelle Keegan’s death wasn’t an accident.”
Tension clutched at my spine.
“Ma told me that you were the one who informed her Michelle Keegan was my father’s mistress. Is that right?”
He groaned in pain. “Y-Yes.”
“Why? Why would you do that?” Conor huffed. “And don’t tell me that bullshit about you cozying up to the Old Wives' Club. I spoke with them. Nobody had ever even heard a whisper of my father and Michelle Keegan together.
“You fed my mother that poison. Why?”
The buzz of electricity soared through the air. As Michael screamed, Conor’s voice was indefatigable, untiring: “Why?”
“BECAUSE I NEEDED TO HAVE SOMETHING ON HER!” he screeched hoarsely.
“You wanted to blackmail her?”
“Y-Yes.” He sobbed. “Let me die. Just let me die!”
“Why would I do that when you still have answers for me?”
“I don’t, I don’t!”
“Liar,” Conor grated out. “Why did you want to blackmail my mother?”
“B-Because Eamonn had gone soft,” he groaned. “We’ve been quiet, too quiet. With Britain leaving the EU, now’s our chance to gain our freedom. I needed a way to tip the scales in our favor, and your father gave us that.”
Senior had been a part of this?
“Eamonn? As in Eamonn Keegan? The leader of the ECD?”
As Michael nodded, my brow furrowed in consternation. Keegan? As in Aoife’s maiden name?
“She was off her meds,” he rasped. “A bullet just waiting to be aimed at someone. A ticking time bomb about to go off.
“I directed her at the target and just waited for it to happen.” He started coughing, great hacking coughs that had him tensing against his restraints. “If she didn’t do it, I was prepared to jump in,” he croaked out, “but I was pretty sure she would. Your ma’s violent. It doesn’t come out often, but when it does, she’s just as bad as any of us.”
Hadn’t I seen that with my own eyes?
Hadn’t I seen her stamp her fucking heel into the Archbishop’s eye before Christmas?
There was no denying Lena had it in her to do shit like that. No denying it whatsoever.
“Was Elizabeth Davidson involved?” Conor asked.
The First Lady?
“N-No, of course not. Why would you ask that?”