Chapter 15
Cillian
We have a meeting with the Romano’s at nine.
I arrive to find Declan and Ronan already seated, the Romano representatives across from them. The deal is good—better than the Sullivan arrangement, cleaner, fewer political strings.
I should be focused. I attempt to run the numbers in my head while the lawyers talk, but my mind keeps wandering to the image of Nora wearing that hollow smile.
I check my phone during a break. Nothing from her.
Declan pulls me aside near the window. “You’re distracted.”
“I’m fine.” I lie.
I’m not fine. I can’t figure out how to get through to my wife. She wears so much armor. There are so many walls surrounding her. How do I even start chipping away at them? I don’t suppose being away from her from dusk till dawn is helping. I need to spend more time with her.
“You keep checking your phone.”
“Drop it.”
He crosses his arms. “Domestic bliss not all it’s cracked up to be?”
“I said drop it.”
He holds up his hands. “I’m not trying to start a fight. I’m saying I can see the tension you’re carrying.”
“Then stop looking.”
I should have taken my wife on a honeymoon.
Sure, business has been breathing down my neck, but I plan to make this marriage work till death do us part, which I hope will be a very long time. Business deals will come and go. Priorities. It’s about priorities.
There’s no time right now for a vacation to Paris or a European cruise, but I can schedule a short getaway for a few days. Somewhere local.
We go back into the meeting, and the deal closes by noon with handshakes, preliminary agreements, and lawyers promising documents by the end of next week.
Ronan looks pleased. Even Declan looks satisfied.
“This solves our problem,” Declan says. “Proves we don’t need the Sullivans.”
“Good.” I’m already reaching for my jacket. “I’m heading home.”
“We should celebrate.”
“Celebrate without me. I have some matters to attend to.”
Ronan catches my eye as I pass him and silently mouths, “Fix it.”
I place a call to my mother while I’m in the elevator.
It rings twice before she answers. “Cillian, I’m quite busy—”
“What the fuck were you trying to do to my wife?”
A pause. “I don’t know what you mean. I invited her to a charity luncheon—”
“With Aoife Sullivan. You orchestrated that.”
She doesn’t deny it.
“You let her show Nora photographs. You let her talk about the deal we lost.” My voice is level. It’s always level when I’m this angry. “You told me you were trying, yet you pull a stunt like this. Why?” I rage. “What were you trying to accomplish?”
“I was showing her reality. That girl is not suited to be an O’Rourke.”
“That girl is my wife.”
“A wife you married out of some misguided savior complex or something.”
“It doesn’t matter why I married her. She’s my wife and I love her.”
The words land before I fully process saying them aloud. Fuck, I can’t believe I just said that to my mother. I’ve thought it. I’ve felt it. But this is the first time I’ve admitted it to anyone, including myself, and it sits there between us. Undeniable and irreversible.
Ma clucks her tongue as though she’s disgusted. Her laugh is short and dismissive. “You sound like a child.”
“I sound like a man who knows what he wants.”
“I raised you to think strategically. To put family first.”
“I am putting family first. My wife.”
“That girl is not your family. She’s a stray you picked up because you felt responsible—”
“You will stop calling her that.”
Her voice sharpens. “What else should I call her? She has no education, no connections, no family of her own. She brings nothing to this marriage except need.”
“She brings me peace.” My voice comes out low. “She brings me joy. She makes me want to be better than the monster you and Dad raised me to be.”
Ma goes very quiet. “Your father would be ashamed—”
“My father was a brutal, violent man who died alone and unloved because he pushed everyone away. I won’t become him.”
The words hit their mark. I take a breath and keep going.
“Here’s what’s going to happen. You’re going to apologize to Nora. Sincerely. Not a performance—an actual apology. And you’re going to accept her as my wife and treat her with respect.”
“Or what?” She’s testing me. She wants to know if I mean it.
“Or you don’t see me. You don’t see her. You don’t see any children we have in the future. We go completely non-contact. You know me. You know I don’t make idle threats. I mean what I say, and you know I’ll do it. Your choice, Ma.”
She inhales sharply. “You wouldn’t.”
“Try me.”
Silence stretches.
“She’s made you weak,” she says.
“She’s made me human. There’s a difference.”
“I won’t apologize for trying to protect you from a mistake.”
“Then we’re done here.”
“Cillian—”
I hang up before she can feed me more of her bullshit and stare down at the blank phone screen.
I’ve just threatened to cut off my mother. Drew a line in the sand. I’d do it again without hesitation—but that doesn’t mean it costs nothing.
Family is everything in this world. I know that.
“That got heated.” Finn’s voice comes from just beyond the elevator doors, which I didn’t even realize had opened.
“You were listening.”
“Hard not to.”
“She’s wrong.”
“She’s scared.” He steps in and presses the button for the first floor. “You’re her favorite. Always have been. And now there’s someone you love more than you love her. I don’t imagine a woman like Kathleen knows how to deal with that.”
I turn it over. Ma, who held this family together through all of my father’s cheating, his lies, his violence, who scraped and sacrificed and made the O’Rourkes into what we are today.
I hadn’t considered her position from the angle of a woman losing her place in her son’s life.
“Doesn’t excuse what she did,” I say.
“No. Doesn’t excuse it. Just explains it.”
“I’m not changing my mind.”
“Didn’t think you were.”
I stop at a flower shop on the way home.
I’ve passed it a hundred times without registering it existed. The florist looks up when I walk in, mildly startled.
“A bouquet of…” I scratch my head. “Whatever’s best.”
“Any special occasion?”
I think about Nora—the garbage bag, about her sleeping on the closet floor, about the way she soundlessly cried in the back of my car after her father just sold her to me.
“Yeah, the occasion is…” I pause for a moment. “I love my wife.”
Nora is in the bedroom when I get home, folding laundry. Always working. Always doing.
She turns when she hears me, and her eyes go straight to the red roses. The reaction moves across her face in layers—surprise, delight, then the quick shuttering—the instinct to close off before a good thing can be snatched away.
I hand them over. “For my lovely wife.”
She buries her face in the blooms, and something in her shoulders releases. “They’re beautiful.”
“So are you.”
The blush moves up her neck. She’s not used to compliments, and I make a mental note to increase their frequency.
“Pack a bag,” I tell her. “We leave tomorrow morning.”
She looks up. “Where are we going?”
“Somewhere quiet. Just us.”
The wariness flickers in. “But don’t you have work—”
“Work can wait. You’re more important.”
She opens her mouth to argue. Closes it. Studies my face.
“Okay,” she says. “If you want to.”
If you want to. She’s still framing everything through my desires, not her own. Still positioning herself as the one who accommodates.
I cross to her. Cup her face in my hands.
“I want you to stop trying to be perfect. Stop trying to earn your place here.”
“I’m not—”
“You are. And I need you to stop. Because you already have your place. It’s secure.”
She holds very still under my hands.
“Can you try to believe that?”
“I’ll try,” she says.
It’s not the confident yes I want. But it’s something. And she’s looking at me with eyes that, while wide and uncertain, are so goddamn gorgeous. I remind myself that patience isn’t weakness. With her, patience is the whole fight.
I pull her in and kiss her, slow and thorough, until her hands slide up to my chest and she relaxes and melts into me.
We order takeout. She picks the movie—something with subtitles she’s embarrassed about, which means I watch it with my full attention and find I don’t mind at all. She curls into my side. The tension she’s been carrying doesn’t disappear, but it loosens.
When the credits roll, I glance over to see her sound asleep.
“I love you,” I tell her. I carry her to the bedroom and tuck her in. She doesn’t hear me, but I’ll show her. I’ll show her.
I’ve effectively cut off my mother. My brothers think I’m distracted. The business is in transition. And my wife is still not fully convinced she deserves to be here.
Fix it, Ronan told me.
I’m trying, but I certainly have my work cut out for me.