She raises her eyebrows. I notice a faint sparkle in her eye. As though she’s thrilled to have stumbled across a sore point in my past. “And you resent him for it?”
I glare at her. “Stop foaming at the mouth. Cillian is my brother. I love him and I respect him.”
“That doesn’t answer my question.”
“Maybe, at first, I did resent him a little,” I admit. “But he had his reasons for asking me to stay here. And I understand them now.”
“What changed?”
“Nothing,” I reply. “I grew up. I matured. I realized that Cillian had looked far ahead. I was just fixed in the present. He didn’t want to be my don. He wanted me to lead in my own right.”
She looks surprised by that. “And you… didn’t want to lead?”
I frown. “Hell fucking no. Do you know what it feels like to be don? To have the weight of the world on your shoulders? For a long time, I was groomed to be don after my father.”
“But that changed when Cillian entered the picture,” she infers.
I shake my head. “Not exactly. Like I said, it’s a long story. And parts of it aren’t mine,” I explain. “But the point is that, when it became clear that Cillian was not only don material, but he also happened to want the job, I was happy to step aside.”
She looks at me searchingly.
It makes me pause. “What?”
She shrugs. “I just haven’t heard that very often. A man who actually wanted to step back and give control to someone else.”
I smile. “It runs in the family. Cillian’s not the oldest brother.”
“You have another brother?”
“Sean’s the oldest, but he abdicated the throne, so to speak, a long time ago. So the torch passed to Cillian. But shit went down and he was forced into exile. I stepped up. Until Cillian appeared thirteen years later and took back what was his.”
She stares at me with wide eyes. “You weren’t kidding about things being complicated.”
I smile. “I wasn’t happy about leaving Ireland for good. Dublin has always been my home. But Cillian was right. I’m better off here. Doesn’t mean I don’t still struggle with it.”
“Do you go back to Dublin often?”
“Not as often as I would like,” I admit. “My last visit was three years ago. Life here keeps me busy.”
She nods slowly. We sink into silence for a few moments, and as we do, I realize that this may be the first real conversation we’ve had.
Which is probably not the best thing. Conversations tend to humanize people. I’m not sure that would benefit either one of us. Especially not with the dynamic we’ve got going. It’s a double-edged sword. No matter which way we swing it, someone’s going to get cut.
“What was it like, being raised by your brother?” I ask.
She spares me a cursory glance, but I know it’s because she’s trying to keep the emotions from her face. “It was hell,” she says bluntly. “Did you expect anything different?”
“I am surprised he kept you with him.”
“Yeah, well, so am I. At least, I was—before I realized why,” she says. Then she sighs deeply, and I see her shoulders sag under the weight of the nightmares she’s survived. “I was never a person to him. Never a sister. I was just something that he could use. He was only fifteen when Papa died…”
I notice the way she phrases it. Papa died. Not Papa was killed.
“Papa’s allies opened their homes to both of us. We traveled from place to place, relying on the kindness of others. It wasn’t until I was older that I realized it wasn’t kindness at all. They wanted to use us, just like Drago wanted to use me. He was bitter and filled with rage. He felt like he had been robbed of everything that was his. He hated having to ask for help. Hated having to live off other people. No doubt my father’s so-called ‘allies’ took advantage of his youth and inexperience. Sometimes, I don’t even know how we survived.”
“How did you?”
She shrugs. “Dumb luck,” she suggests, as though she herself isn’t sure. “And hatred. Hatred of you.”