But the second I’d known he might be dying?
I’d had no alternative but to come and see for myself.
Thanks to a few misspoken words when I thought the love of my life, the father of my son, was about to leave this world forever, my kid’s future was in jeopardy. I’d hate myself for it if I hadn’t been traumatized by the sight of Declan as a bunch of surgeons, in this illegal hospital, gathered around him and started to cut his chest wide open.
No one should have to see that.
No one.
“I don’t think you’re scared of anyone, Brennan,” I told him carefully, well aware that was true.
Some might say I was still a dreamer, unrealistic, but I knew how to read people. More than when I was a kid.
I knew what Brennan was and wondered if he knew it too.
He was Aidan Sr. reincarnate.
The thought made a shiver rush down my spine, because that meant he was a psychopath, but Brennan had a self-awareness that was very uncomfortable, and made his kindness all the more perplexing and my trust in him all the more concerning and bewildering.
When Eoghan, Declan’s younger brother, had discovered I’d been hiding a son from the family, he’d gone apeshit.
Brennan?
He’d dealt with me—there was that word again—kindly.
I gulped, and whispered, “Will you do everything in your power to protect my boy?”
He patted my shoulder. “He’sourboy,” he corrected me, making me shudder. “And you know we will. You should go get him. Bring him here. Not for Declan. We don’t want the boy to see his da like this for the first meeting, but the family will want to get to know him.”
My stomach twisted, turning sour at the prospect. “I-I have responsibilities up there.”
He shrugged once more, and I knew he was about to dismiss a decade’s worth of hard work as if it was nothing. “You know they mean shit now.”
I gritted my teeth with fury. “I’m a professor at the Rhode Island School of Art, Brennan. Do you know how difficult it was to obtain that position? Do you know what I had to sacrifice—”
He snorted. “Use that argument on Declan, and I’m pretty sure he’ll blow his top.” Another pat. All the more discomforting. “Your life’s been in New York ever since you got pregnant. You’ve just been procrastinating.”
I wanted to wail that I had a life, that I had plans that had nothing to do with the many and various crimes the family committed. That that wasn’t my future anymore.
But when I looked at him, I knew what I was seeing.
The stonewalling that would make it so that if I didn’t do as I was told, Seamus would be taken from me.
Was it weak to concede defeat?
Or strong to accept it? Because for my boy, I’d kill. And in this world, those words held real-life consequences.
I bit my lip, grinding my teeth hard as I shoved away from him, and when I walked toward the door, he called out softly, so softly that I felt the threat worse than if he’d pressed a knife to my throat. “Don’t think to run, Aela. If you do, the consequences will be a thousand times worse.”
The statement, and that he’d felt he had to repeat the warning, had me shoving the Velcro-ed sheets that acted as a doorway open, dashing out of the freaky clinic I was sitting in, and running to the bathroom so I could puke my guts out.
The place was beyond weird.
Situated in the middle of a warehouse, clear, see-through plastic had been rigged up to create a sterile space within a space.
Inside, there were two hospital beds surrounded by all the equipment you’d expect in an ER or ICU.
That was the clout the O’Donnellys had.