For my kid, I’d said no.
If I’d forced the issue, just packed us up and taken off, of course, I wouldn’t be here. Seamus wouldn’t be looking at his father like the way he eyed his first GI Joe as a kid.
When I’d stopped fussing around Declan, I took a seat beside Shay, and realized that even though Declan had been relatively quiet, his gaze was fixed firmly on Seamus.
That he was falling in love with our kid came as a relief to me.
I’d never known how he’d take it—if he’d hurl abuse at me, if he’d try to poison Shay against me—but here he was, looking at him like I knew I’d looked at Shay when I’d just given birth. My heart in my eyes, the need to protect this child from everything and anything just as ferocious as the fire I had to create art. Which, back then, in the aftermath of our break up, had been all I lived and breathed for.
That look gave me hope for the future. For the upcoming days.
I swallowed, nerves hitting me when I hadn’t been nervous since that day when I’d thought he was going to die. I’d taken all the other punches as they came, accepted Caro’s betrayal and the subsequent investigation into my finances and business operations—facilitated by the fancy ass lawyer Brennan had hired for me—and had settled into a new home I loathed.
I’d dealt with the matriarch and patriarch of the clan, had stuck my fingers in their face and told them where to go, and I’d begun to come to terms with my new reality, as well as what beckoned. While I was still finding my way, seeing Declan cemented things somehow.
The house no longer felt like a strange hybrid, it was no longer cold and clinical, and I no longer felt like I was an unwanted guest, shoved away here.
With him in the penthouse now, it was like what I’d wanted when we were together. A home. Our home.
“Shay?” I prompted softly when the staring looked set to carry on for a while. And I got it—they were learning each other, but I guessed an introduction was needed. “This is your father, Declan. Declan O’Donnelly.”
Seamus surprised me by sticking out his hand, and Declan accepted it, taking it in his callused one and shaking it with a strength that I knew would have Seamus cringing if he wasn’t trying to look manly.
“It’s a pleasure to meet you, son,” Declan rumbled, and when he gulped, his emotions on full display, I’d admit to being stunned.
Maybe it was because he’d been so close to death, maybe it was because he was still weak, but Declan revealed more in that moment than I thought he’d ever revealed to me before.
Unsure what to do with that knowledge, of what to say and how to act, I just sat there, feeling like a third wheel who was somehow pivotal. I figured I was the only thing keeping Shay in place, but I knew Declan wanted to talk to him as well.
Because it was awkward, and because I had to start things off, I decided to be candid. Maybe Declan wouldn’t like it, but it was time he learned a few things.
One, I kept very little back from Seamus.
Two, I wasn’t the same timid mouse I’d been when I was a kid, when he’d first known me, and when we’d first broken up.
“Seamus, I left your father because of a few misunderstandings and a desire to give you the best I could.” Shay twisted to look at me. “You can be angry at me, you can be resentful at your father, but the decisions we both made are in the past. We can’t undo them. We can’t even rectify them. What we can do is move on from this point.
“We’re all here. We’re a family. I’m certain there will be a transitional period where things are a little on edge, but you can see your father is sick. He needs rest, some R and R time, and we’ll give him that.”
Shay nodded, but Declan’s confusion was clear. I figured I knew why too, because I couldn’t see Aidan Sr. and Lena having this kind of discussion in front of their kid. I couldn’t imagine them telling him what I’d just shared with Shay.
I hadn’t gone into the gruesome details, hadn’t discussed the minutiae behind the breakup and my fleeing the States for Ireland, but he didn’t need to know those things. At least not today.
In time, I knew he’d have questions, and I’d give him answers. When he was ready.
Now was not the time for raking up the past. It was for celebrating the future.
It surprised me when Declan seemed to read my mind, because he simply asked, “You like sports, son?”
And that was how I ended up watching a football game.
Even though I hated the sport, I sat through it, wedged at the edge of the sofa by Declan’s feet, sandwiched between him and Shay who, for the first time in years, was glued to my side.
It wasn’t how I’d expected the day to roll, not with Declan almost collapsing or with the football game, but it was better than a shouting match, that was for damn sure.
It gave me hope that we could make the transition easy on Shay… but then again, hope had always fucked me over in the past.
I just prayed that this time, that wasn’t the case.
Eleven
Declan
The days after my arrival at home, I slept a lot.
More than I’d like.
I moved from the sofa to the bed and back again, trudging like a zombie from one to another.
As I pulled my best Walking Dead impression, an impression that would usually impress only my bonsai tree unless Ma barged her way in with Da at her back blustering over how I made her worry, and a few of my brothers trickling in through the day to make sure I was on the mend, they were there.
Constantly.
Maybe it was stupid of me not to anticipate that, but it came as a severe shock.
What stunned the hell out of me even more?
That I liked it.
She made coffee in the morning.
I woke up, trudged into the living room, and there was a steaming cup there waiting for me.
She wasn’t there with the cup, which I’d have preferred, but her presence registered with me.
A little while later, Shay would wander in. He was quiet, not as talkative as I heard him be with his mom when they were in the kitchen together, but he stuck around. We watched cartoons and shit on the box, not really talking all that much until a live game came on and then we argued stats.
Throughout the day, when I wandered out to take a leak, I’d return to find a steaming cup there, a sandwich, and some healthy snacks.
It was such a ‘mom’ thing to do that it took me a while to recognize that she was mothering me, and the last thing I wanted from Aela O’Neill was to be mothered. Even if, right now, I fucking needed it.
Even my balls ached—and not in a way I was used to—and getting over the surgery, the health issues, as well as adapting to the many drugs I had to take… no bueno. Beside every steaming mug? A little dish with pills on it.
Definitely mothered.
Shay didn’t think anything of it, which told me he was lucky. It told me she doted on him, and I knew that because as a kid, my ma had doted on me. Sure, that had been offset with my father turning me into a career criminal before my pubes even fully grew out, but hell, from one spoiled kid to another, I got it.
What I also saw?
He appreciated her.
And that made me appreciate him even more.
He was a good kid. A solid one. Respectable.
Everything I wasn’t.
Sure, I could hide it right now. I did nothing but zombie walk across my apartment, moving from room to room as the hours of the day and my body required. But when I was back in full working order, things would change. They had to. They couldn’t not.
I’d used my TV more in the past five days than I had in five years. My office was in whichever warehouse contained the gear I was trafficking, and my cell phone didn’t contain apps for fun, but for work.
Every hour of my life was focused on the job. On the family. On making us richer, shoring up our power. That came with blood, sweat, and tears. Preferably, some fucker else’s.
“You didn’t ta
ke your meds.”
I cut him a look, surprised he was talking to me. Not only because we were watching cartoons and not sports, but because he’d just woken up. It was twelve PM, he’d been awake twenty or so minutes, and I didn’t mind. I was just surprised Aela didn’t give him shit about it.
Ma had given us a lot of leeway, but it was either get up with the rooster or have her vacuuming outside our doors to wake us up.
A bitch move, sure, but it saved us from getting our ears clipped by Da.
“They give me an upset stomach,” I told him.
He frowned at that, perturbed enough to study me, before he swiveled his focus back to this show he was watching—that I didn’t mind—called The Umbrella Academy. I figured I was lucky that I got him at the age where he at least didn’t want to watch Dora the fucking Explorer.
If boys even watched that.
Hell, were boys even supposed to watch certain things, and girls too? I knew that new age shit about boys being able to wear pink and girls being allowed to play with toy cars was a ‘thing’ now… the thought of him wearing pink in front of Da did make me want to laugh though. He’d thought I was gay because I liked classical music and appreciated the arts. If I’d worn pink, his attempts to scare me straight would have transmogrified, worsening a thousandfold.
I reached up and rubbed my eyes, just to hide my reaction in case Shay misunderstood, and thought I was laughing at him or something, when I wasn’t. It was the kind of laughter that’d lead to tears.
For all he was young, Seamus had a habit of reading into stuff, was quite perceptive for a kid his age. At fourteen, I’d been concerned about my dick, the pussy I could shove it in, and how fast I could come. In between that, I’d worried about learning the ropes, figuring out how to throat punch someone to death—and never quite managing to do it—and trying to avoid Da’s fists. All in all, fourteen had been a good year. Things had gone to shit around twelve months or so later.
He cleared his throat, dragging me from my memories. “Mom will make you a sandwich if you ask.”
For someone who hovered around all the time, I rarely saw her. Even if I felt her presence.
“Where is she?”
“The kitchen.” His lips twitched. “It’s the only room she says is normal.”
My brows rose. “What’s abnormal about the rest of the place?”
“I mean, I don’t care. It’s pretty neat. Well, apart from the fact that I keep bumping into shit.”
“That’s why your shins are all bruised?” I asked, eying his legs which were bare thanks to his basketball shorts.
“Yup.”
“You mean she doesn’t like the decor?” I queried when he didn’t carry on, his focus reverting to the plot on TV.
He watched the shows with the subtitles on, which was strangely addictive. It had annoyed the shit out of me at first, but now I spent more time reading the damn subtitles than watching the show.
And when he switched between Mandarin and Russian? I wasn’t sure whether to be impressed or annoyed—annoyed because I couldn’t understand those subtitles.
“Nah. It’s not her thing. Plus…”
“Plus, what?” I prompted, when he fell silent.
“She likes having all her stuff around her, you know? It’s like her collection. She’s spent a long time building it up.”
“An art collection?”
My boy hummed as he scratched his chest with the remote. He was a little scrawny, but the definition in his arms and chest told me he’d been working out some. From all the football games we watched, I’d learned he’d made it onto his team at his old school, but not in the position he wanted.
I knew that had something to do with a love for the game and a desire for cheerleader pussy.
Not that he’d said as much, but I read between the lines—as well as his blush.
Amusement filtered through me, because I liked this shit. It was like learning a new language or something, trying to figure out what my kid was actually saying without saying it.
I didn’t think he was aware of what I picked up on about him without him really telling me that much.
“It’s like an art collection, but it’s more like the stuff she picked up along the way.”
“Along the way where?”
“Here and there,” he said, then his grin turned wicked. “Guess how many countries I’ve visited?”
I smiled. “How many?”
“Forty-eight.”
My brows lifted. “Seriously?”
His grin deepened. “Seriously. Mom likes to travel.” He crinkled his nose. “She only stopped because of me.”
“What do you mean?”
“I got sick of always moving around. I just wanted things to be regular for when I hit high school, you know?” He heaved a sigh, but it didn’t flow right. Hitched, somehow, in the middle, in a way that had me studying him until he mumbled, “Just didn’t realize that high school was so slow.”
“Explain,” I demanded.
He arched a brow at my brusque command, but as I chided myself because he wasn’t a soldier, but my son, he murmured, “I had a tutor/nanny. Her name was Nina.” He smiled. “She was cool. Really smart. She taught me until I was ready for school, but she taught me too much. It’s too easy now, so it’s boring.”
I hummed. “You’re like Conor.”
He perked up at that. “I am?”
“Yeah. He was always an overachiever. Got bored all the fuc—” I cleared my throat. “Got bored all the time. Used to get into a lot of crap. Hacked into NASA one time.” I tapped my nose. “Don’t tell your mom. I told her Conor didn’t manage to gain access to it.”
Shay’s mouth rounded. “Huh? NASA? Like the space agency?”
Laughing, I told him, “Only one space agency in the U.S., isn’t there?”
“Well, it depends if you count SpaceX.”
“I don’t.” I winked at him. “Although Conor might have hacked into there by now.”
“That’s so cool!”
“Is it?” I grunted. “We jerked his chain something fierce for that.”
“Why?”
“Because he did it because he could. Little show off.”
“How much younger than you is he?”
I shook my head. “He’s older. By two years.”
“I met Conor. He brought us here. No way he’s older than you.”
This time, I chuckled freely. “Trust me. Everyone says that.”
He eyed my grin a little oddly, his head tipping to the side as he stared at me. “You really love your brothers, don’t you?”
“Of course.” When he didn’t automatically reply, I pressed, “That surprises you?”
“No. I just… I’ve never really been around a family like that before.”
“What do you mean?” I questioned, sitting up slightly. He eyed my grimace knowingly as my body protested the move, and when his gaze cut to the drugs on the table, I heaved a sigh, reached for the water Aela had placed there earlier, and grabbed both.
When I’d taken the meds, his reward was to respond. “The only family I’ve known isn’t like that.”
“What family do you know?” He said it like he meant people in particular, not the family of friends.
He hummed, his attention turning to the TV. “My great-grandparents. They used to live in Ireland.”
“They moved?”
“No. They’re dead now.”
“I’m sorry.”
“Did you kill them?”
Jesus, this kid had my eyebrows doing the Macarena. “They were murdered?”
“Yes.” He cut me another look. “Did you kill them?”
Slowly, feeling like I was out of the loop in more ways than one, I shook my head. “No. I didn’t. Why would you think that?”
“Because I know what the O’Donnellys do. You can try to hide everything, but there’s always something somewhere.”
Warily, I inquired, “Whatever you think you know, you
probably don’t.”
“You’re not one of the biggest crime families in the tristate area then?” His smile didn’t hit his eyes. “Did Mom ever tell you I’m really good at detecting when people lie?”
“No. She never told me. How did you pick that up?”
“We lived with a circus for a while when she was there taking photos for research. There was a magician, he taught me how to hot read people.”
Hearing my teenager talking about ‘hot reading’ floored me more than if he told me Aela had taken him to a strip joint.
“So, I know when you’re lying is all I’m saying.”
“Have I lied to you so far?” I asked, curious about his skill level at hot reading. He was a shrewd little shit, so I wouldn’t put it past him. And he had a way with game theory that would make Conor a happy bunny if the two of them ever thought about pulling a gambling con.
Yeah, I knew he was fourteen and I was thinking about illegal shit, but hell, that was my world.
We monetized everything.
“You lie about how much you’re in pain. Usually every time we ask.” His gaze darted over my face. “But I think that’s a pride thing. That’s it so far.”
I hadn’t had much to lie about.
His final words were pivotal however.
So far.
I cleared my throat. “Well, you read I didn’t kill your great-grandparents then?”
“I did. That doesn’t mean someone else didn’t.”
“Had no reason to kill them,” I replied. “I didn’t know you existed until your mom came back into my life.”
His gaze was intent, and I sensed he wanted to know if that was the truth. He wanted to read whether or not that was a lie.
And I got it.
In his situation, I’d want to know if my father was a deadbeat too.
“Why did she come back into your life?”
“I can’t talk about that.”
His eyes narrowed. “Is it to do with your being injured?”
Filthy Dark: A SECOND CHANCE/SECRET BABY, MAFIA ROMANCE (THE FIVE POINTS' MOB COLLECTION Book 3) Page 15
