Chapter Fifty-Six Tiernan
CHAPTER FIFTY-SIX
TIERNAN
Lila went into labor at our new house surrounded by enough medical staff to open a field hospital.
There were four nurses, one doula, two OB-GYNs, one pediatrician, and an ambulance on standby.
Some would have called it deranged. I called it adequately cautious.
“Is she giving birth or being exorcised?” Enzo followed the trail of personnel when the staff filed inside. Imma and Chiara were with Lila in the next room, yelling hysterically at her to take deep, calming breaths.
“A lot of shit can go sideways during birth.” I led us into my office. Not that I needed to explain myself to him. His biggest responsibility was not shitting his pants.
Enzo gave me a whatever-you-say-little-princess look, lighting a cigarette and flicking the match out my office window with a knowing smirk.
“Now you can’t go anywhere near her for the next month.” I pointed at the cigarette.
“Fuck off. She’s my sister.”
“That’s unfortunate. I’m sure our kid will still be bright.”
“No thanks to you, Carrot Top.”
I tsked. “Is that all you’ve got?”
“You’re right.” He rubbed his chin absentmindedly. “I need to work on my material, now that you’re about to become the most insufferable, overprotective dad that has ever disgraced this universe.”
“You mean graced.”
He smiled breezily. “I don’t remember stuttering.”
I heard the crunch of gravel beneath my office window, signaling that a car was approaching. I glanced out the window. A catering truck parked across the street, so as not to block the way to the other vehicles.
“What’s that?” Enzo stuck his head next to mine, looking down.
“She missed prosciutto during the pregnancy.”
“Let me guess, so you bought an entire drove of pigs?”
I wondered how mad she’d be if I relieved her brother of a few of his organs.
“No.” I glowered at the idiot. “But I did order seventeen different types from Parma to make sure she has variety.”
“Man, you’re so whipped all you need is a cherry on your head.”
“Keep running your mouth and the room will turn red,” I warned.
Enzo snorted. “Stop seducing me, bro. I’m into chicks.”
The lies people told themselves were too much sometimes. Not that I gave enough shit to put a mirror in his face.
“Tiernan.” My mother-in-law pushed the door open without knocking, out of breath. “She’s asking for you.” Her gaze flicked to her son. “Sfacciato! Put that cigarette down before I burn a hole through your forehead.”
“What cigarette, Mama?” he asked with smoke skulking out of his mouth, tossing the thing out the window and smiling angelically.
I sauntered to the next room, finding Lila sulking on a big bed in a very small babydoll dress and no underwear.
She was covered in sweat head to toe and looked exhausted.
Her water broke almost two hours ago. The first hour, she was her sweet, perky self.
The last thirty minutes, though, I had to clear all the sharp objects from our bedroom.
“Gealach,” I greeted. “Did you change your mind about me being here?”
She had asked me to evacuate her bedside until the baby was out.
Not because she felt uncomfortable with me witnessing the birth.
Apparently, threatening the medical staff and trying to blackmail the baby while still in the womb to make his exit quickly and painlessly was considered “unbecoming,” or, as Imma put it, screanzato. Unhinged.
“No,” Lila signed. “I still don’t think you have the stomach for it.”
Ridiculous. I had killed hundreds of people with my bare hands.
“What’s the issue, then?”
“I need you to get rid of Mama and Imma.”
I stared at her like she asked me to carve Wyoming out of the map and drag it into the Black Sea.
“Are they bothering you?”
“My mother already panic-vomited twice, and Imma bursts into tears every time I have a contraction. The woman is a nurse. They’ve both completely lost it.”
“You are loved, darlin’.” I leaned down to kiss her forehead.
“Love is overrated.” She swatted me away. “Get rid of them.”
“I’ll have them go down to the living room until this is over.”
“No.” Lila shook her head adamantly. “I don’t want them in this zip code, Tiernan.”
I shot her a flat stare. “I’m a murderer, not a magician. I only know one way to extract people by force.”
A contraction shuddered Lila’s entire body, making her arch and spit out a string of words in Italian I was sure wasn’t a love poem. In the hall beyond the closed door, I heard Imma breaking down in a sob. Chiara moaned like she was delivering the child.
“FIND A WAY,” my wife signed.
I scurried my ass out before she made herself a widower and kicked the two women out.
_______
Four hours later, my son ripped into the world like a lion. With a victorious roar, fists curled in anger, legs kicking and thrashing, protesting the invasion of his perfect bubble.
Earlier, Lila allowed me to stay with her if I promised to be on my best behavior.
I held my wife’s hand and watched as he appeared between her legs in all of his purple-white flesh glory. New and wrinkly, unfocused, his ribs tightening each time he took a greedy breath to resume his screaming.
There was nothing particularly noteworthy about his scrunched, long-suffering face. It was full of white stuff.
It was his head that confirmed the suspicion I’d had for the past few weeks, since Lila killed the wrong guy.
More specifically, the shocking thick mane of hair covering his entire skull.
The unmistakable, rare, and familiar shade of dark red. Burgundy.
Of the Callaghans.
Red. All I saw was red. Rage took over my entire fucking being.
Fintan.
Fintan was the rapist.
It all made sense.
His name was on Sam Brennan’s list. In plain sight all along.
It had never occurred to me to look into him as a suspect before the warehouse incident because…
Because you’re a fucking gobshite who spent your entire life assuming the best about him.
I’d ignored his name because he disappeared often to get drunk or make illegal bets. Him not being by my side on that night was nothing special.
He had a girlfriend, but that meant very little to men of our trade; he had substance abuse issues, so it was likely he wasn’t on his best behavior that night. And while Fintan was a scaredy-cat not accustomed to violence, he certainly possessed a mean streak.
He’d taken one look at Raffaella, concluded she wasn’t going to fight back, rat him out, or complicate his life—and decided to destroy hers.
The writing was on the wall. How he protested the marriage from the get-go. How angry he was when it went ahead. And how concerned he’d been when he first heard Lila was sentient.
The last nine months rushed into the forefront of my mind.
He’d sent her a letter, had likely slipped it under the door himself. Why?
The answer was simple—he wanted her alone so he could kill her and get rid of both her and the baby. Bury his secret with them.
He tried twice—once when he crashed into her and Tierney in that intersection, after which he panicked and tried to pin it on Angelo—and a second time when he arranged a time to meet her at the dock, but I showed up instead.
He was the one who sent that Roger prick to the port and ordered him to kill whoever showed up, Lila or me. Because once I was gone, there’d be no one to retaliate.
He thought he could get away with it.
Until the very last moment.
The red flowers at Fermanagh’s…
My jaw locked. They were unevenly red. Old.
He kept her blood-soaked tiara of roses.
Made her live under the same roof with it.
My heart thrashed so hard it nearly cracked my fucking ribs.
I couldn’t make a stink about it. Not here, not now. With Lila writhing and aching as the doctor stitched up the sore place between her legs. A nurse dabbed her temples with a cloth, and my wife’s arms stretched open, waiting to be filled with the baby she just birthed.
My baby.
He was fucking mine.
I would raise him as my own, and he’d look exactly like me.
No one would question his origin.
“Gealach, he is beautiful,” I praised, pressing my lips to her sweat-coated forehead. She shuddered under my lips. I pulled back and caressed the damp hair away from her face.
One of the nurses placed a much drier, slightly less sullen version of our newborn in her arms.
His hair.
I couldn’t stop staring.
Did Lila know?
I couldn’t stomach what it must do to her.
She sniffled, looking up at me through glittering eyes, waiting for my words. She couldn’t offer me any of her own, seeing as her hands were busy cradling our baby to her chest.
“You did so good. I’m proud of you.” I kissed her mouth, then leaned down to kiss the crown of my son’s head. I looked back at her so she could read my lips, speaking as slowly as I could.
“I love you, sweetheart. You fractured my soul and dug so deep into it, you are now ingrained in all that I am, and all that I ever will be. As for our son.” I placed a hand on his tiny shoulder, smiling down at him. “I already love him more than I do anyone else in the world.”
But you.
She would always come first.
Before our son. Before myself.
I stayed for twenty more minutes, fussing and cooing over them, feeding her prosciutto and watching as she nursed the baby for the first time.
Finally, when the baby was napping, she turned and told me, “You haven’t had a second for yourself. Why don’t you go take a shower and a nap?”
“It’s fine,” I said, even though every fiber of my body itched to go to Fintan. “I’m happy to stay.”
He was probably halfway across the continent by now. Not that it’d help him.
She shook her head, smiling.
“Mama and Imma should be here any minute in case I need anything. And now that he is napping, it’s smart if I do the same. Please. Go rest. For me.”
“Does he have a name?” I rubbed my thumb across her flushed cheek.
She looked down at the pink scowling thing sleeping in the bassinet next to her. “Gennaro, I think.” A tender smile touched her pink lips. “He looks like a Gennaro, right?”
He looked mostly like a Fintan to me.