Declan made to speak, but Fallyn stood, holding up her hand. “I didn’t come for a discussion, and it’s too late for apologies – not that I assume any of you were going to do that.” She displayed her hand to them, closing her eyes as two of her brothers looked away from the sight as if it was a blight on their family. “I came here to tell you that I didn’t want to wait for you to try to talk me out of it, or beat on Vince some more. So last month we went to the Justice of the Peace and got married. We’ve been on our honeymoon in Italy since then. Just got back last night, actually.”
There was stunned silence. The men stared at her with varying degrees of shock, hurt, anger and betrayal, all except her father, who had a glazed over expression due to his meds. No one spoke for an entire minute, so Fallyn wrapped up her speech she’d practiced far too many times in anticipation of this very reaction. “I’ll thank you all to leave my husband alone. I don’t want to see a scratch on him. In fact, if he so much as breaks a nail, I’m coming for each of you.” She straightened, throwing her hair over her shoulder. “I’m Fallyn D’Amato now, so I know I’m not allowed in O’Keefe territory anymore, because of the stupid turf wars that you all insist need to keep happening. I just thought you should hear it from me. Now that you know, I’ll be going.” She turned and walked toward the foyer of the home she had a feeling she might never see again. “Oh, and Carrigan? I stole the starter to your car. It was my ‘something borrowed’ on my wedding day. I’ll leave it on the porch.”
“Stop!” Declan shouted. “Stop her! Fallyn get back here right now!”
Carrigan trotted to Fallyn, standing in front of the door. “We’re not finished.”
“Really?” Fallyn looked up at the brother she couldn’t have felt more betrayed by. “You taught me how to fight. This is how you want to do this?”
Carrigan leaned against the door and punched his fist into the wood at his back. Then he pounded his fist to his heart with a pained expression that told her without words or violence just how much she’d hurt him. “How could you do this to us?”
“How could you make me?” she spat, confused when Declan’s arms surrounded her in a hug she had not anticipated. “What are you doing?”
“This is a hug,” Declan clarified. “I need it, and you will too after I tell you what’s coming next. Sit back down. I have to talk to you.” He released her and held up his hands. “I’ll talk, not yell. I promise.” It was only because his hands were shaking that Fallyn consented to return to the lion’s den. Declan sat her back down at the table before resuming his seat, his hands covering his face. “I’ve got the floor, so just everyone shut up for a minute.” He breathed like he might start hyperventilating into his hands. “Killian, Keenan and I have a secret.”
The men turned with curious stares that broke up the fuming they’d all been doing amid their plans for Vince’s destruction. “What?” Killian asked, confused that the focus seemed to have shifted. “What secret?”
“When I…” Declan cleared his throat, starting over. “When we were younger before Fally was born, do you all remember when Mama left Dad for that bit?”
“A little,” Carrigan admitted.
Killian stiffened. “Why are you bringing that up now?”
Declan’s voice was trembling, a grown man shooting uneasy glances toward his father as if the patriarch might fly off the handle and punish him. He called the nurse in to take Patrick out for a walk, and refused to say a word until he was out of the house.
Then the secret tumbled out of Declan’s mouth – an ancient confession to a darkness he’d been carrying around for far too long. “I saw something I shouldn’t have. I saw Mama kissing Papa D Christmas Eve when they thought we were all in bed. I never told anyone, but Dad walked in on them. Mama told him she was having an affair, and the day after Christmas, she took Killian and left.” Declan hung his head. “Then she came back a year later with Killian and a little baby girl. The math’s there. The rest of you were too young to think the nine months through at the time. Except Killian and Keenan, of course. I asked Dad about it, and he made me swear to keep it to myself. He was going to raise you as his, even though he knew you couldn’t be. Fally, I’m so sorry. I never wanted to tell you. I was going to take it to the grave, I swear! Keenan didn’t know about the kiss, but Kill, Keenan and I knew you couldn’t be Dad’s. I didn’t want you to find out ever, but I didn’t think you’d go and marry a D’Amato! I didn’t know!”
Fallyn tried to work out Declan’s words to mean something other than the awful implications that hung in the air around her. “You’re saying Daddy’s not my father?”
“I’m saying there’s no way he could be.” Declan’s face was covered with his hands, so he didn’t have to look on his sister’s face to see her heart breaking in plain sight. “Mama was having an affair with Papa D.”
Fallyn heard nothing else but white noise as her brothers erupted in outrage and confusion, trying to make sense of the puzzle that just couldn’t be. Nearly five minutes passed of their questions and groanings before they realized Fallyn hadn’t said a word. She was frozen to her chair, hands in her lap, eyes wide in shock.
“Fal? Honey, it’s okay. We can get it annulled, no problem,” Danny assured her, his hand shaking on her back as he tried to rub feeling into her spine.
Despair and depression ripped through Fallyn. She’d wanted to escape her brothers, but she ended up marrying one of them instead. The things they’d done washed through her brain under a new filter that didn’t see their honeymooning as beautiful and perfect. Now it was filthy and illegal.
No, she mouthed, unable to get the word to come out. “You’re lying, Declan.”
Declan moved around the table and leaned over in front of her so he was looking straight into her eyes. “I wish I was lying, sweetie. There are a million other reasons I could give you not to be with Vince. This is the worst one, and I wouldn’t use it if we weren’t in this situation.” His eyes turned sad with ripe pain. “You married him, Fal. You married your brother. If you’d just waited and heard me out, I would’ve told you.”
“But… But…”
Declan slowly shook his head, his ruling absolute. “I’m sure Vince doesn’t know. He’s a bad guy, but he’s not a sick one. I can tell him, if you want.”
The verdict churned over and over inside of her, tumbling her guts and slicing her heart through with the worst thing she could hear about the man she loved. “No, I…” Fallyn made to stand, but collapsed when her knees went out from under her. Declan caught her before she hit the ground, but Fallyn had checked out, her eyes blank as she stared at the ceiling when Declan carried her out of the kitchen and lowered her to the couch in the living room.
Fallyn knew that no matter how much she loved Vince, nothing would be the same ever again.
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Book Three in The O’Keefe Family Collection
One.
The Silence of Sadness
Fallyn stared up at the ceiling, not sure how she’d found herself in Declan’s house. She didn’t recall who’d driven her there or if she’d answered their many questions that had been shouted at her. She couldn’t feel anything, couldn’t speak, couldn’t move. She simply stared at the white ceiling and pictured the angels she’d made love underneath in Italy.
Made love to her half-brother.
Fallyn went back to the land of no words and no thoughts. She ignored Declan, who held her hand and whispered his apology over and over again. She ignored Killian, who could barely lift his head to look at her as he sat at the foot of the bed. She ignored Danny, Finn and Seamus, who asked her key questions she knew she should be answering. The only thing she did that showed any life at all was when Carrigan brought her a shot of whiskey, and she launched it across the room, not blinking as the glass shattered all over Declan’s wall and hardwood floor.
She loved Vince beyond words, beyond reason. She�
��d chosen him, and still it hadn’t been enough. Patrick O’Keefe wasn’t her father, which was the thing he’d been trying to tell her all along. She’d thought he was being forgetful, but he was trying to warn her in his own broken way. Papa D had been her father, which explained why Papa D had never hesitated to treat her like a daughter.
The sun went down, and Fallyn only moved from the bed to throw up and use the restroom. She only allowed Killian to touch her, trusting him to be silent and not look on her face as he led her back to the bed. She drank only when he brought her water, but ignored the others. It wasn’t out of spite. It was that when they spoke, she couldn’t understand a word of what they said to her. It was all white noise. Even Killian couldn’t be understood, but she was so lost, she knew she needed at least one beacon to hold to as her world crashed down around her.
Learning that her mother had an affair before she was born was traumatic enough. The story had been that her parents had split up for half a year for untold reasons, with Mama leaving with Killian when she found out she was pregnant. She came back with a baby, and the boys being boys didn’t stop to count the months, or that Fallyn was the only blue-eyed one among them. Patrick O’Keefe had known his wife stepped out on him with his best friend, but when he’d seen Fallyn, the girl he’d always wanted in a sea of boys, all was forgotten. Fallyn had been raised as his daughter, though the patriarch of the D’Amatos – their family’s rival – had been the last one to sleep with Mrs. O’Keefe before she left the home.
Fallyn hadn’t known when it was exactly that she’d fallen hard for the cold and distant Vince D’Amato. No one had an inkling about the affair except for Declan, who had wanted to warn his sister privately, but hadn’t known she would elope so quickly.
Now Fallyn was awash in pain and depression, secretly suspecting she might be pregnant, and unwilling to talk or eat. She simply stared at the ceiling, ignoring the world as it bustled around her, prodding her to wakefulness she simply could not accept.
Days passed, but Fallyn didn’t care. She drank water only when her eldest brother Killian propped her up in his arms and fed her little sips, but he was unable to look at her, so deep was the shame she’d dove headfirst into.
So Killian held his little sister, the fifteen years between their births feeling like a minute between twins. He felt her pain but wouldn’t ease it, keeping his lips shut out of respect for her breakdown. He delegated the upkeep of her business to Danny, who took Fallyn’s phone and ignored all of Vince’s desperate calls.
Though Fallyn and Carrigan had no closure to their months-long fight, Carrigan pushed all the animosity and disappointment aside by day two. After his shift serving his community with his police badge, he drove straight to Declan’s house to give Killian and Declan a break. His sister had been his best friend, and no matter what broken state that friendship had devolved to, Carrigan couldn’t bear her suffering alone. “I’m here, Fally.”
She didn’t acknowledge he’d spoken, or that Killian had left the room for the first time in hours. She blinked up at the ceiling, unshowered and unaware. Even as her body shifted when Carrigan slid into Declan’s bed beside her, she paid him no mind. She was lost in her agony.
Carrigan wrapped his arms around her, his eyes shut tight as he held his sister in her utter defeat. “I’m sorry,” he whispered. “I shouldn’t have beaten Vince so bad that day I found out. There are a million other ways I could’ve handled that. I don’t want to hurt you; I only wanted to hurt him. But I saw only after the fact that when I beat on him, it only broke you away from me. I don’t want that. I don’t want you going through all this crap without me.” He kissed her forehead. “So I’m here. I’m here until you feel like talking about it.”
Carrigan recalled their many long silent walks together after their mother had died. They kept close to each other – the only two who didn’t want to discuss the horrors they felt. In that silence, they helped each other heal. None of the others understood it. They all wanted to talk and reminisce, which only made Fallyn and Carrigan withdraw further into their shells of depression. They’d saved each other through their quiet companionship, and Carrigan was determined not to abandon his sister to her silence this time.
“When you were a little girl, you used to get so afraid of thunderstorms. Mom and Dad would send you back to your bed, but you used to sneak in with Killian or me instead.” He brushed her auburn tangles away from her face. “I remember holding you while you freaked out, and singing you songs until you fell asleep.” He rolled on his side to cradle her in his arms. “Would that help now?”
Fallyn shook her head slowly, which was the first communicating she’d managed since she’d shut down.
“Okay. I’ll just stay with you, then – storm or not.” So Carrigan held his sister, kissing her cheek and clutching her like a teddy bear until they both fell asleep.
A hush fell over the O’Keefes as the days stretched on. Declan’s house became the place they flowed in and out of, having family meetings without Fallyn being cognizant of anything around her, save for Carrigan when he came home from work every evening to hold her. Carrigan rubbed feeling into her arms and tried to press life into her heart, but she remained in her silent depression. Eventually her arms allowed themselves to cling to Carrigan when he was there, but she drifted back to oblivion when he was not.
It was a week later before Killian moved her. “I’ve got you. Don’t you worry. We’re just going on a little drive.” He lifted his sister who felt too thin and frail. He worried that he’d not been strict enough and forced her somehow to eat something. Killian slowly carried her through the dark of night to his car and buckled her in. “You have to see Vince and set him straight,” Killian explained, taking each turn from Declan’s house to his father’s with care. “He’s lost it, Fal. I think we all thought he was using you to bait us, but he’s a man possessed.” He wiped his nose on his sleeve. “It’s out of hand now. When Danny went to help Jen with the inventory at your bakery, Vince and Tony jumped him. He’s demanding we give you up to get Danny back.” When this garnered no reaction, Killian continued without looking at Fallyn. “Don’t worry. We won’t give you up, but if he just sees you and lets us explain things to him, then we can get Danny back and Vince will probably leave you with us.” He glanced over to see the same glazed eyes that had not registered emotion in over a week. “Nothing? You’re still gone? Come on, Fal. Vince kidnapped your brother! Say something!”
Fallyn couldn’t find words. She hadn’t bathed or changed her clothes or eaten in too many days. All she wanted to do was sleep, but the restlessness kept her from even that kindness. She simply stared ahead of her, lost to the world.
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Liberating Mr. Gable
Unraveling Molly
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The Saga of the Spheres
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The Volumes of the Vemreaux
The Way
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Jack and Yani Love Harry Potter
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Escaping: A Mafia Romance (The O'Keefe Family Collection #2) Page 13
