Chapter 14
Nora
The penthouse is quiet in a way it never is when Cillian is here. He fills spaces without trying. His presence has weight and temperature. Without him, the penthouse is just a beautiful box thirty-two floors above the city.
I shower, dress, make coffee I don’t drink, and stand at the kitchen counter staring at nothing.
Aoife Sullivan’s face keeps surfacing. The photograph she showed me. Cillian in black tie, Aoife in a gorgeous burgundy gown, both of them looking like the perfect power couple.
I look at my hands wrapped around the mug. Bitten nails, still. A callus on my right palm that won’t fade. I’ve gained a little weight—I’ve tried to anyway—but I still look like someone who’s been hungry for a long time. Someone assembled from shortage.
Nothing about Aoife Sullivan resembles shortage.
I set the mug in the sink and start cleaning.
The kitchen doesn’t need it. The cleaning service came two days ago and the place gleams. It doesn’t matter. My hands need something to do, and scrubbing gives my brain permission to go quiet.
I move through the kitchen, opening cabinets, reorganizing what’s already organized.
The spices were alphabetical. Now I sort them by color, then change my mind and sort by frequency of use—the ones I reach for most are pushed to the front.
I count them as I go. Forty-one. That’s a prime number. I count them again to be sure.
Forty-one.
When the kitchen runs out of things to rearrange, I drift.
His office door is open. Partially. The way he sometimes leaves it.
I stand in the doorway for a full minute before I go in.
His desk is exactly as it always is—neat, everything at right angles, the surface clear except for a stack of newspapers and a leather portfolio. The newspapers I’ve seen before. The portfolio is new.
The tab on the side reads Sullivan Development—Correspondence.
I shouldn’t. I know I shouldn’t. But I can’t resist. I have to do it. I open it.
The documents inside are organized chronologically. Months of correspondence. Projected revenue charts. A partnership structure that spans four pages of legal language that I have to read through twice. I sit in his chair and work through it, page by page.
Twenty million dollars. That’s the projection over five years. Twenty million, built on the O’Rourke name and the Sullivan family’s real estate holdings and a handshake between families that went back a generation.
Then, a letter from Sullivan’s lawyer, dated three days after my wedding.
“In light of recent developments, the Sullivan family wishes to formally withdraw from the proposed partnership outlined in the letter of intent dated…”
Recent developments.
I am the recent development.
I read the letter twice. Then I close the portfolio and set it where I found it, at the same angle. I remain in Cillian’s chair. Sitting very still.
Twenty million dollars. That must be the “cost to the business” Ronan was talking about. Wow. That’s quite a big cost.
I think about Aoife’s comment at the charity luncheon, “The Sullivan-O’Rourke alliance would have been so beneficial.” It carried with it all the weight she intended it to carry.
I think about Declan’s voice through the door, when I was bringing Cillian his coffee and stopped because I heard my own name. “This is because you married the Murphy girl.”
I set both palms flat on the desk.
Cillian sits here every morning. Reviews financials. Plans. Controls everything he can control, which is most things—except the fact that he married me and it cost him twenty million dollars and his family’s respect and his mother’s goodwill and whatever else I don’t have the documents to prove.
After a long time, I get up and leave his office exactly as I found it.
In the kitchen, I pull up recipes on my phone.
If I can’t bring money or connections, I’ll be useful. I’ll make dinner. Something real, not takeout, not the simple meals I’ve been making. Something that takes time and proves I have a purpose here beyond being a charity case in an expensive dress.
I find a recipe for beef bourguignon. It takes three hours to prepare.
I order groceries from the delivery app like Cillian showed me, feeling the weight of guilt with every item I add to the basket—the good wine for the braise, the fresh herbs, the quality of beef that costs more than I used to earn in an entire diner shift.
I stare at the screen, calculating whether I could make it work with something cheaper.
I can’t. The recipe is specific.
I buy what the recipe requires and wait an hour and ten minutes for the groceries to be delivered.
The cooking takes the rest of the afternoon. I lose myself in it—the rhythm of chopping, the smell of wine reducing, the satisfaction of something coming together the way it’s supposed to. I hum under my breath and let the work absorb the part of my brain that keeps returning to that portfolio.
By the time I hear his key in the door, the apartment smells extraordinary, and I’ve set the table the way I observed at both the O’Roarke estate and at the country club.
I arrange myself on the couch. Casual. As though I hadn’t rehearsed this.
He comes in and stops. Takes in the smell, then the table, then me.
“Hello, wife.” An enormous grin spreads over his face. “What smells so amazing?”
“I cooked something special.” I stand, smoothing my dress—one of the ones he said was his favorite. “I hope you’re hungry.”
He looks at me like he’s ready to devour me. “Very.”
The food is delicious. I know it is. He says so twice, and Cillian doesn’t offer empty compliments.
But I barely taste mine. I’m watching him—watching for the reaction that tells me whether I’ve succeeded, whether I’ve earned tonight, whether I’ve justified the cost of the ingredients and the afternoon and the whole arrangement.
“You’re not eating,” he says.
“I’m not very hungry.”
He sets down his fork. “Nora.”
“I’m fine. I just wanted it to be good for you.”
“It’s excellent. But you cooked all this and you’re not eating.”
“I tasted as I went.”
He doesn’t push. But he watches me the way he does when he’s decided something.
After dinner I’m on my feet before he finishes his last bite, stacking plates, moving to the kitchen.
“Leave it.” His voice, from the table.
“I’ll just—”
“Nora. Leave it and come sit with me.”
I set the plates in the sink. A compromise. I come back to the living room and sit beside him on the couch, and he pulls me in, and for a moment it’s fine—his arm around me, the warmth of him, the specific safety of his body.
“Talk to me,” he says.
“About what?”
“About whatever you’ve been carrying all day.”
“I’ve just been home. Cooking.”
“And before that?”
I press my face against his shoulder. “Nothing. I cleaned. I reorganized the pantry.”
“Is that the fifth or sixth time this week?”
I pull back. “You’re counting?”
“I’m worried about my wife.” His voice isn’t accusing.
Just matter-of-fact. “Something’s wrong.
You’ve been off since dinner with my family, and that damn luncheon made it worse.
Tonight, you cooked an elaborate dinner you didn’t eat and set the table like you’re auditioning for something. So talk to me.”
I look at the table I set with such care. The candles. The folded napkins.
Auditioning.
He’s right. I hate that he’s right.
“I’m trying to be a good wife.”
“You are a good wife.”
“I don’t bring anything to this marriage.” The words come out flat, factual. “No money, no connections, no education. The least I can do is—”
“The least you can do is what?” He turns toward me, and his voice has an edge I don’t usually hear directed at me. “Cook and clean and make yourself useful so I don’t notice you’re not worth keeping?”
The accuracy of it hits hard. “That’s not—”
“Isn’t it?”
“I just want to contribute—”
“You think I married you so I’d have a live-in cook and housekeeper?”
“No. I think you married me because you felt sorry for me.” The words land between us, and I watch him go very still. I should stop now. I should shut up. But I don’t. “And I’m trying to make sure you don’t regret it.”
The silence that follows is the wrong kind.
“I don’t regret it,” he says.
“I met Aoife Sullivan. She was at the luncheon. Your mother introduced us.”
“What did she say to you?”
“Nothing terrible. She showed me a picture of you two. At last year’s gala. You looked right together.”
“Nora. Look at me.” His words are stern, and I obey.
“I was never with Aoife like that—romantically, I mean. There was talk of an arrangement—on her family’s side and my mother’s. I never agreed to it.”
“I know about the business deal that—”
“Has nothing to do with you.”
My voice stays level. I made a decision to say this, and I’m saying it. “I know the deal that fell through was worth twenty million dollars.”
His jaw tightens.
He stands. Moves to the window and back, pacing. It’s a contained stride, every movement deliberate, and it spikes my pulse.
“That deal is not your fault.”
“It fell apart because you married me instead of Aoife Sullivan.”
“It fell apart because the Sullivans are petty and vindictive.”
“But if you’d married her—”
“I never would have married her! I didn’t fucking want to marry her!” His voice rises. It’s the first time I’ve heard it raised at me, and every muscle in my body locks.
He sees it and stops immediately.
“Nora.” Quieter now, but the control sounds like effort. “I’m not angry with you.”
“You shouted.”
“I know. I’m sorry.” He runs a hand through his hair. Then he crouches in front of me, getting down to my level. His eyes hold mine. “I’m not angry with you. I’m angry at the situation. At my mother, at the Sullivans, at everyone who’s made you feel like you’re not enough.”
“Everyone thinks I’m not enough.” The words leave my lips before I can stop them.
“Everyone? Who’s everyone?”
“Your brothers think I’m a distraction. Your mother thinks I’m a stray. Aoife Sullivan thinks I’m an inconvenience. And…and…” I look at him directly. “Twenty million dollars is not nothing, Cillian.”
“No. It’s not nothing.” He doesn’t pretend it is, and I’m grateful for that. “But it’s also not everything. Money is replaceable. Deals can be remade.”
“What happens when you realize the costs are too much?”
He processes that. I watch the slight tightening around his eyes, the way his hands go still on his thighs.
“You’re asking when I’m going to throw in the towel,” he says. “When I’m going to say that this marriage isn’t worth the trouble. That’s what you’re actually asking.”
My throat closes. I don’t answer, which is its own answer.
“It’s not going to happen.” Flat. Absolute. “Not for twenty million. Not for a hundred million. Not for my mother’s approval or my brothers’ respect or any deal in this city.”
It’s the right thing to say. I know it’s the right thing to say. But there’s something sitting in the middle of my chest that his words can’t reach, some cold and certain part of me that has been tallying the evidence, and it won’t be reasoned away.
I look at his face. He means it. I can see he means it.
“I’m tired,” I whisper. The word doesn’t cover it. I’m tired of trying so hard. Tired of calculating my worth. Tired of the math never adding up.
“Then let’s go to bed.” He stands, drawing me up with him.
He leads me to the bedroom, finds one of his t-shirts and hands it over, then pulls back the covers and waits until I’m settled before climbing in beside me.
He pulls me against him, his arm heavy across my waist, and I lie there in the dark while his breathing evens out.
I lay there in the quiet listening to all the voices: Declan’s voice. Ronan’s voice. Aoife’s voice. Kathleen’s voice. My own little, nagging voice in the back of my head.
I have a feeling that this is how relationships crumble. With little cracks that progressively widen. You care for someone—love them, because I’m sure that’s what I feel for Cillian. I love him. But you hurt them, and you keep hurting them until the love isn’t enough to cover the damage anymore.
Maybe the kindest thing I could do—the only genuinely unselfish thing I’ve done since I walked through his door—would be to stop making him pay for me.