“Liam Donnghal—” I paused, corrected, “Liam, he’s been gone a few weeks, hasn’t he?”
“I couldn’t get the money together. They sent me his fucking ear.” Tears welled in his eyes, great big drops that poured over his cheeks. One thing could be said about the old generations—they weren’t afraid to show their emotions. “That’s why I came here. I knew Acuig was doing well, and I knew Aidan would help if it was for family.”
I stepped back and away from him, Junior did too, pretty much at the same time.
Warily, though, I said, “You should come inside.”
“Da’s private office is on the compound, but I haven’t heard the golf carts so he must still be in the house,” Aidan reasoned, prompting me to nod my head in agreement.
Heading inside first, I looked around, half expecting to find an audience, but the foyer was eerily quiet.
In fact, I couldn’t hear voices from any part of the house, not even the kitchen where the women tended to congregate.
Either Lena had disappeared and gone to her room or Aoife was hiding out somewhere else.
Concerned, I turned to Aidan and I muttered, “I’ll be five minutes.”
“Where are you going?”
“I need to find Aoife.”
“Why?” he argued.
“I just do.”
I didn’t wait for a discussion or his goddamn approval because I needed neither. I headed to the kitchen, only to find that my assumption was right—Aoife wasn’t in there. No one was aside from Lena who was cooking on her own.
She must have heard my shoes against the tiles because she looked up and shot me a sad smile. “It’s okay, son.”
Her words had my jaw clenching. “Nothing is fucking okay, Lena.” I wanted to hurl at her that I wasn’t her son, but that was my anger talking. For all intents and purposes, I goddamn was. Emotions battling inside me, I rasped, “Where’s Aoife?”
“They’re all in the conservatory.” She pressed her hand to her throat. “I didn’t expect you to come today.”
“Neither did I. I won’t apologize for the flowerbeds.”
“After what I did, I deserve worse. I’ll…” Lena swallowed. “I don’t know what to do, Finn.”
“You think I do? She made me promise not to put the family before her again. I intend to stick to that promise, Lena, but this is her family too now. How the hell—” I shook my head. “How am I supposed to make this right?”
She stared down at the potatoes in her hands. “If I had the answers, I’d give them to you.”
Mouth tight, I stepped back.
I wished it were different.
I wished she hadn’t done what she’d done and that things could revert to how they’d been, but… “I choose her, Lena. I’ll always choose her.”
This was her punishment.
The only punishment she’d ever get, and she should have endured it sooner.
It was on my shoulders that she hadn’t.
“As you should,” she whispered, her gaze darting to mine. “Go on with you now, son. Be the husband she needs and the man she loves. She deserves to have both.”
Agitated by her understanding, and needing to see with my own eyes that my woman was okay, I slinked away and headed over to the conservatory to check on her.
Lena’s grief hit me hard, and as guilty as I felt, it was nothing to the abyss growing larger inside me. Something that made whatever Lena was feeling seem inconsequential.
Out of nowhere, I felt the ticking of a clock start to rumble in the back of my mind.
It had been fainter before, but now, it was like tinnitus.
The countdown to when Aoife left me.
It was, I knew, only a matter of time.
Striding down the hall, trying to tune out that goddamn noise, along the way, I saw Victoria and Shay hanging out in the family room, watching an MCU movie.
The volume was so loud that they might not have even heard the racket going on outside.
As I heard their laughter, I found myself jealous—had my life ever been that simple? I didn’t think so. But I prayed theirs stayed like that.
Wasn’t that what I was striving for?
An easier path for the next generation—not just my own kids, but my brothers’ too?
When I made it to the greenhouse, I found Aoife surrounded by her sisters-in-law.
Inessa cooed over Jake, all while they drank coffee and kept their heads together, a motley crew of women who were clearly discussing what had just gone down in the yard.
Aoife sat there, straight-backed, her face tense, but her eyes clear. She didn’t see me because I retreated once I saw she was safe, once I realized she wasn’t upset or crying.
Destroying the flowerbeds had clearly brightened her mood, but that was only a temporary fix.
Destructive behavior only derailed and grew more erratic.
That was what scared me the most.
Preferring to deal with Paddy’s bullshit, I escaped to the office but found there was more of that eerie fucking silence.
When I headed inside, Senior was turned away from the room, his gaze on the wrecked yard as he drank from a tumbler that was sloshing around the brim with whiskey.
The rest of my brothers were dotted around the office-cum-library, each of them nursing a whiskey of their own, all while staring at Paddy who was the only man standing.
I headed in, poured myself a good measure of whiskey, did the same for Paddy, and as I passed it to him, I leaned on the edge of Senior’s desk.
After I took a sip, I drawled, “You should start at the beginning, Paddy. Maybe that’ll help us make sense of it.”
Thirty-Eight
Finn
The silence changed at my words. Went from tense stillness into buzzing curiosity.
I much preferred that.
Paddy cleared his throat after he shot me a grateful look then rattled off, “After all these years, Finn, I still don’t know if I can make sense of it, but things are plenty clearer now. Remember that year when Alan Davidson came to us, Aidan?”
My ears pricked up at that. “Alan Davidson? The president?”
Padraig corrected, “His father. Alan Sr.”
“What is it with the fucking fathers in New York?” Conor muttered. “Junior, Senior… there are millions of other names out there.”
“He’s got a point,” Junior agreed, his lips twitching as he sank back into the chair, one hand curved around a tumbler, the other absentmindedly rubbing his fucked-up knee.
Conor smirked. “You know when you’re called Junior… your mom has probably moaned your name during sex.”
Eoghan groaned. “Jesus, you filthy feck—”
“Takes one to know one,” Conor interrupted, snickering all the while.
“Think I give a shit about first names?” Senior snapped, twisting around to glower at his brother. “You’re dead. So why are you standing here, gracing my office, and drinking my whiskey?”
“Because I need your help, Aidan.”
Senior’s nostrils flared, but he cut through the BS like usual. “You need cash.” It wasn’t a question.
“Not because I’m broke.”