Chapter 2
Chapter Two
Erin
“Well, then,” I say with forced cheerfulness. “At least your lunch is sort of a game, isn't it?”
Bridget tries to smile, but it twists into something closer to pain, the kind she's gotten too good at hiding.
“Aye? What do you mean?”
I poke at the white sauce over some no-name meat and shrug. “You have to guess what it is.”
My younger sister giggles, and my heart warms. It’s a good day when I can make her smile.
“Tell you what,” I say, pushing to my feet. “I’ll fetch you something better than this, alright?”
Standard caretaker script. It works eighty-nine percent of the time.
“Would you?” Her eyes have gone pale blue under the latest dose of meds, and her lips are the softest blush of pink. Pupil dilation suggests the prednisone dose increased. Blue-gray sclera indicates—
Stop it, Erin.
My stomach plummets when she turns, her hospital gown falling over her shoulder. I can see her bones poking through her skin. “I’d kill for a proper sausage roll. Can you get one, for real?”
Darling, I’ll give you the moon.
I reach for her too-thin hand and find it cold as ice. I tuck the blanket tighter around her. “Course I will,” I say softly.
I don’t want to leave her though. When she’s here at St. Vincent’s, I don’t even like to go home to sleep because I live in deadly fear that tomorrow might be the day I get the call that she’s gone.
Aplastic anemia, they call it, bone marrow failure.
I call it injustice.
Before I leave, I quickly check the color-coded notes I left for the nursing staff, double-check the locks on all her windows, and pat my pocket four times to make sure I didn’t lose my mobile or keys.
I kiss her wan cheek and tuck a stray strand of hair behind her ear. “Mam’ll be in soon, after her meeting,” I whisper.
“Yay,” Bridget deadpans. “Can’t wait.”
I stifle a grimace. Bridget was her golden child, the beautiful angel of a girl with auburn hair, bright blue eyes, and rosy cheeks. My mother toted her around with her like a prize, dressed her in the prettiest dresses and frilliest bonnets. I was too awkward for any parading, and we all knew it.
Then Bridget got sick, and Mam won’t forgive her for it.
“Don’t fret, love. I’ll be back long before that.”
Bridget rolls her eyes. “I’m not fretting. Jesus, Erin, you sound like an old lady.”
I huff out a breath and roll my eyes. “There are worse things. At least men leave old ladies alone.” She laughs as the door shuts behind me.
Twice. I made her laugh twice. Sometimes it happens without me even trying. My chest loosens just a fraction.
I walk to the door with my head held high, shoulders back, chin up. People don't bother you when you look like you know where you're going.
My god, it reeks in here. Who the fuck decided that cabbage was a good idea for dinner? In a hospital?
I tug my cardigan tighter, pressing my lips into a hard line.
Outside Bridget’s room, leaning against the wall, arms crossed like some eternal sentinel, stands the ever-watchful shadow I can’t shake.
“Evening, Miss Erin.”
Darragh smiles and straightens, broad as a doorframe.
He's been with us for years—long enough to know why he's really here. Not just to protect us from outside threats, but to keep Bridget hidden when she’s here.
To make sure no one sees her wheeled to radiation appointments, no one asks why Padraic Kavanagh's youngest daughter hasn't been seen in public for months.
Can't let people know the golden child is tarnished.
“Have you been standing here the whole time?” I arch a brow.
“Where else would I be?” he says.
I sigh and push past him toward the door.
“I don’t need a watchdog, you know.”
“Good thing I’m not a dog, then.” His gaze flicks to the swinging hospital doors. “Your da pays me to make sure you don’t end up dead. That’s my job.”
“What about Bridget? Aren’t you gonna stay with her?”
“Her guard’s enough. Your da doesn’t like you out and about alone.”
Don’t I know it.
I roll my eyes and tuck my mobile deeper into my coat pocket, fingers tapping it four times. Just to be sure.
Keys too.
Tap, tap, tap, tap.
The motion steadies me, but I feel his eyes catch the rhythm.
“I’m fetching a sausage roll for Bridget. The food in this hospital’s shite.”
“Aye,” he grunts. Just that.
He falls into step beside me as I stride down the hall. His boots thud, low and soft. My flats hit harder, sharper. Sounds echo in the hospital corridors.
Outside, the air is damp and cool, the kind that sneaks into your bones and stays there. I wince at the city noise—traffic, voices, that messy pulse that never stops.
Darragh scans the streets like a soldier.
The bakery on the corner smells like butter and sugar, but the moment I step inside, the heat and chatter hit me like a wall.
Too loud. Too hot. Too many fucking people.
Uncomfortable, I shift my weight, then tap my thigh. Fingernails in threes this time. A different rhythm… a quieter one.
“Miss Erin,” Darragh mutters beside me. “Want me to queue for you?”
“No,” I say, sharper than I mean to. “Thank you. I’m fine. I’m not some helpless little lass who can’t handle a line.”
Not anymore. Not like when I was younger.
Back then, the overload would’ve had me curled up in a corner, rocking, crying, lost—praying my mother wouldn’t lose her temper at me again for being “difficult.”
A man at the counter leans back, loud enough for half the bakery to hear. His Dublin accent is rough as gravel.
“Aye, but the McCarthys—word is, they might not be untouchable anymore. Somebody’s making them bleed.”
My spine goes rigid.
I don’t want to hear it. Don’t want to care.
I don’t go to St. Albert’s anymore. The McCarthys are dead to me.
A ripple of noise rises—some curious, some pitying, some just plain nosy.
Good. Let the McCarthys fucking bleed.
I can’t think about Cavin McCarthy without my pulse kicking up like a traitor.
His hand around my waist. The heat of him pressed against me, every hard plane of his body against my softness. His voice in my ear rough, commanding. The way I wanted to lean into him. Let him carry me. Let him—
Christ, what’s wrong with me?
My thighs clench. Unbidden. Unwanted.
He made me cry in the school toilets more times than I can count. He called me “Little Miss Perfect,” among other things. He made me feel like something broken and wrong.
One moment of forced chivalry doesn’t change that.
Doesn’t change how small he made me feel. Or how I apparently also shivered when he touched me.
My body doesn’t seem to care that he’s the enemy. Doesn’t care that he hurt me. It just remembers his hands. His heat. The way my body fit against his like—
Christ, what is wrong with me?
He’s not a hero. He’s not safe. And I need to remember that.
I fix my eyes on the glass case of pastries, pretending indifference.
I can feel Darragh’s unreadable stare.
“Do they know who did it yet?”
“Not that I know of. You were there.” His voice is flat, knowing.
My throat tightens. “So?”
“So you’re shaking.”
I am. Dammit. I press my hands flat against my thighs.
“The McCarthys are no friends of yours,” he says, quieter now.
“No.” My voice sounds hollow. “They’re not. But the residents of Ballyhock adore them, don’t they?”
“Aye.”
The golden ones. The untouchables.
“Can I help you, miss?”
I force a smile. My turn. A gray-haired gentleman with a bushy mustache smiles at me.
“Aye. One sausage roll, please.”
“Of course. Can I get you anything else?”
“Mmm… bit of soda bread. Please.”
My stomach growls. I can’t even remember the last thing I ate.
“Here you are,” he says, sliding them across the counter. “How are you today?”
Tears sting, fast and sharp.
My throat tightens. I swallow it down, wishing I could tell someone, but the town is full of gossips, and my parents have worked hard at keeping Bridget’s illness quiet.
“I’m good,” I lie, pretending to yawn to cover up my sudden surge of emotion. “You?”
“Good, good,” he says with a smile, before he moves on to the next customer.
But as I turn, my mind’s no longer on Bridget but on the whispers circling the room. The shiny black car that purrs by the shop, drawing every eye.
Everyone’s talking about the McCarthys.
The goddamn McCarthys.
Darragh frowns. “They’re not enemies of your family. They’re just… bullies.”
“They are enemies,” I snap—too sharply. I make myself stop. Because if I keep talking, I’ll slip. I’ll become that same awkward, gangly girl I was back at St. Albert’s.
The target.
The joke.
The older ones, Torin, Seamus, and Kyla graduated before me. Bronwyn was in Bridget’s class.
But Cavin…
I inhale through my nose and shake my head.
Cavin McCarthy is a bully, and I hope he fucking suffers.
The sting in my gut still flares when I remember. Every white tile in that bathroom I memorized, hiding because I didn’t want anyone to see me crying.
No one else has the power to drag me back to that helpless girl… except the McCarthys.
And I hate that we’re in a place where everyone worships them.
“People change, you know,” Darragh says, stuffing a hand into his pocket.
“Why are you suddenly best friends with the McCarthys? Because they’re mafia?
Torin is in prison. Cavin was just released.
Only bad people doing bad things go to prison.
Why would people admire them for that?” I mutter, catching a glimpse of someone nearby.
Watching. I lower my voice. “They were never your mates.”
“I—It’s just that…” Darragh shrugs and sighs. “Things aren’t always black and white, Erin. And you’re not the type to hate people.”
“I don’t hate them,” I lie.
And I know I’m lying.
I do hate them.
Well, not all of them.
But I hate Cavin McCarthy, even after I saw him at the funeral. “Pay your respects,” my father told me. “It’s the right thing to do.” But I balked when I saw all the heads of the mafia there and pretended I was putting flowers on a grave.
He didn’t try to save me, no, despite how it may’ve looked.
He was wondering why I was there.