Chapter Twenty-Five
After we’d been shown our rooms and the rest of the penthouse, Cillian had taken us into the city for what amounted to nothing more than a shopping spree.
We’d first headed to a department store to get accessories for our rooms and bathrooms. I had been fine to keep what was already there, but Ciara had been so excited to be able to make her room her own, and without the same financial budget restraints that we’d faced back in New York City.
As I had always known just from his enrollment at Summit Crest Preparatory, Cillian came from money, and still had a lot of it, as his willingness to slap down credit card after credit card at various stores with ease all but confirmed.
“You don’t have to try to buy her affection,” I’d said to him once or twice, but he would look over at me and essentially roll his eyes.
He’d been very short on words when it came to me, which was for the best. I couldn’t see myself actually carrying on a conversation with him as if the last seven years had never happened.
For him, that might’ve been true, but my entire world had been devastated.
I wanted to appease myself of my own guilt by admitting that my mother was no longer so tired and could finally rest in peace, while my sister was no longer sick and suffering.
The latter had been the hardest to get over because with her death, a part of me had literally died.
We were identical twins, and the bond we’d had made her death even worse.
As did the brutal nature in which both had been slain.
And it was supposed to be me.
Had I been there, the others still would’ve died, but I would have as well.
The three of us would’ve been together in the afterlife, but there wouldn’t have been Ciara.
The last six years with her had filled a part of my heart that had been empty and broken for so long.
My daughter had healed me in ways that no one or anything else ever could.
And now, Cillian was determined to break me all over again.
And he would likely be successful if anything were to happen to my only reason to go on living.
After our shopping spree, which felt like something ripped out of Pretty Woman itself, we stopped to eat at a charming Irish café.
After taking our seats in the corner, Cillian made sure to seat us strategically to where he could see everyone around us, and be the first to react if something went down.
While most New Yorkers lived with the fear that they could be pick-pocketed or worse on the streets, it had nothing on what I felt in this place. And what Cillian also felt.
But we weren’t alone. While the three of us were the only ones at this table, I could feel the watchful eyes of his men all around us, even though I couldn’t see them.
I knew they were there, but thankfully, that paranoia hadn’t spilled onto our child.
Ciara was all smiles and had been the entire day.
Her own life had been uprooted in the dead of the night, but you would never know by looking at her.
And look at her, I did. While she had the same red hair I did, the shade of her blue eyes was even different from mine.
They were her father’s eyes, in both shape and color.
She also had his nose and the lips of someone I’d spotted in photographs around his Irish penthouse.
I assumed it was his mother, but I didn’t ask because the less I knew about him and his life, the better off I would be.
All I wanted was to come up with a way to flee from him, so the less I knew about him, the less I would need to forget at a later date.
“What would you like to eat, Ciara?” he said to her, and his question jolted me back to the present.
Ciara couldn’t read this menu so well, and as she looked up at me, I scrolled to the section where the kids’ choices would be. “She’ll take the chicken and chip basket.”
I had never met a child who didn’t love chicken tenders and potatoes. Mine was no exception to that rule. Whenever we would go anywhere in New York City to eat, if it wasn’t spaghetti or pizza, it was chicken and fries. This seemed to be the closest to that.
“And you’ll be having?” I was asked by the server.
I glanced down at the menu and while so many selections looked good, I could already feel my stomach churning at the thought of eating.
I knew I had to eat something if for no other reason than to keep my strength up.
The last thing I needed during a great escape was to be weakened by hunger and low blood sugar.
“I’ll take the chicken Caesar salad,” I mumbled.
Cillian had never been one to turn down a meal, as were most boys his age.
I could still remember hearing my mother complaining about the student meals and how they were going to eat her out of house and home.
Our food arrived not long after, and I could see my mother once more as she clucked her tongue and shook her head at his selection alone.
Cillian had ordered a burger, a fish and chip basket, and a half order of wings.
I doubted that he had an inch of fat on his entire body, so I wasn’t sure where he put it all, but he’d scarfed most of it down before I even had a chance to push what was left of my salad toward the center of the table.
Ciara had eaten one of the three chicken tenders because she seemed to enjoy the fish sticks on his plate more.
Watching the two of them share their meals together and laugh pierced my chest. The moment I had decided to keep our child and not go through with an abortion, these type of scenes were what I had imagined between us.
“It’s not real,” I mumbled.
“What isn’t real?” Cillian asked, and I nervously bit down on my bottom lip once I realized I had said that loud enough for him to hear.
“Nothing. It’s not important.”
His expression gave off ‘whatever’ vibes, but he quickly dismissed me and ordered a bread pudding, apple crumble, and Ciara’s favorite type of cake– chocolate –to go before settling the tab and escorting us outside.
The skies had darkened considerably since we had been inside, and I doubted it was due to the time of day. I saw a few pedestrians on the streets with umbrellas, and that made me think a storm was looming. “May we go back to your place. Ciara’s scared of thunderstorms, and I think one is coming.”
“Like mother. Like daughter,” he said, and as I glanced at Cillian, he was staring down at me. Our eyes met, and it was as if we were thinking the same thing for once. He must’ve felt what I did in that moment, because he turned abruptly. “Sure, let’s go.”
He said nothing else to me, and I said nothing else to him all the way back to his place.
I said that as if it was more than a twenty-minute or so drive, but every second with him felt like an eternity.
The panic over being this close to him once more was fucking with me, and I kept reminding myself that I needed to hold everything together.
I helped Ciara put her things away in her closet and dresser before we took a seat on her window bench. This type of bedroom was so different than the two and a half walled one she had in our loft, and I knew as she got older, she would welcome the privacy this girly oasis would provide.
Only, this is temporary.
Everything in life was, which was a lesson Cillian and his family goons had me learn much sooner than I had ever thought I would.
Every girl dreamed of getting married and having children, and both of those things were ones I’d never been able to share with my mother or sister.
I didn’t have my twin as my maid of honor, or the honor of walking down the aisle toward my future husband on my mother’s arm.
And I never got to see the look of pure joy on their faces when they met Ciara for the very first time.
I’d been robbed of what should’ve been such irreplaceable memories by the man who now kept us captive.
Imprisoned felt like the perfect word, and not something I just threw out there as a result of an overactive imagination.
Cillian had armed men nearby, and ones he kept in constant contact with.
I almost wondered if his powerful grandfather even knew we were here, and if not, if that was why he seemed more paranoid than even me at times.
“Mommy, I’m tired,” Ciara finally said.
I could see the slight redness of her eyes from her constant rubbing of them, and I smiled down at her.
After arriving back here, nighttime did set in just as the storm arrived.
Frequent cloud to ground lightning raced across the darkened skies, and the thunder roared even louder above us as we had no additional units and nothing keeping us from Mother Nature’s fury other than the roof itself.
“Let’s go ahead and do our nighttime routine first,” I said to her.
A half hour later, Ciara had taken her bath, brushed her teeth and hair, and was now in one of the nightgowns Cillian had bought her earlier as she lay in my arms in her bed.
Her long hair was still damp against my chest, but the moisture I felt on my cheeks as tears rolled down them bothered me more.
I clutched my daughter against me as she fell into a deep slumber.
At home in New York, this would’ve been when I slowly untangled myself from her and went downstairs to wind down myself.
I could even do that here and go to my own room, but the very thought of leaving my daughter tonight wasn’t one I would even entertain.
Once sure she was knocked out completely, I reached to the side of me and turned off the light, encasing the room in darkness, except for the brief moments of light caused by the vicious lightning outside.
It wasn’t long before I forced myself to go to sleep.
When I woke up several hours later, it was fully light outside.
I stretched my long legs and rolled over, expecting to feel Ciara, but felt nothing but a small warm spot on the cool sheets.
I bolted upright in bed and had hoped to have seen her on the window bench, which seemed to be her favorite thing about this room.
It was empty. Quickly sitting up, I checked the bathroom, my own room with the unslept in bed, and finally the open living room and kitchen combination. The place was completely empty.
“Ciara,” I called out, only to be greeted by silence. “Ciara!” I said a bit more loudly.
I moved to my purse which had my cell phone and after opening the lock screen, I paused as I had no idea what to call.
Back home, it would be 9-1-1. Panic filled me as I had no idea what it was here in Ireland, and really anything to give them other than my daughter being missing.
She was with Cillian. I knew that for sure, and as I paced back and forth, the minutes ticked by.
This was what I’d been so afraid of. Had Cillian abducted our daughter?
With no other alternatives coming to mind, I got as far as typing in 9-1- when the front door opened and my daughter came rushing through.
I’d never been more relieved, yet more pissed off about anything in my entire life.
I dropped my cell phone onto the carpet and pulled my daughter into my arms.
“Where have you been?”
“Getting donuts, Mommy. I even got your favorite kind,” she said.
“Thank you,” I said to her before turning my dark gaze on Cillian. “Can you give me and Mr. Brannington a few minutes alone?”
“Just take them into the kitchen,” Cillian said to her, before moving to the hallway.