Chapter Nine
Caity
I stood outside my daughter’s door, hand poised to knock, fear keeping me from making contact.
It had been two months since Maddie had learned Cian was her father, and it was time to talk to her. I’d wanted to let her come to me, but she was stubborn. It was that damn Irish temper we were all afflicted with.
Someone had told her the truth, and I needed to know who. And I needed her to understand why I’d made the choices I did. I only hoped she understood.
Taking a deep breath, I rapped my knuckles on the wooden door and waited. I could hear her moving around inside. Did she know it was me? Would she answer the door? Would she slam it in my face when she found me on the other side?
I took a step back and held my breath as the knob turned. The door swung open, and Maddie’s eyes widened in surprise.
“Mom?”
“Hi, Maddie. Can we talk?”
Maddie bit her lip and looked over her shoulder, and I wondered if she had company.
“Sure.”
She stepped back, opening the door wider so I could walk in.
I knew the apartment layout; it was Colleen’s.
When she wanted to move out of her parents’ house, Duncan bought this building so she had a safe place to live.
Now that she was living in Nebraska with Maureen, Maddie was taking care of the place for her.
There had been no end date on Colleen moving back to Boston, and I wondered if she would. Maureen was pregnant, and I suspected Colleen would want to stay at least a while to help her mom and get to know her new brother or sister.
I waited to the side and let Maddie lead. This was her home, and I was the guest now. I followed Maddie down the hall into the kitchen.
“Would you like coffee?”
“If you have some, but don’t make it especially for me.”
Maddie had never been much of a coffee drinker. Truth be told, I wasn’t either, but my mother had instilled in me that you offer your guest coffee, and it gave your hands something to do while you waited in awkward silence.
“Water?” Maddie asked.
“Yes, please.” I smiled at my daughter. It was awkward and humbling to know that my daughter, whom I loved with everything inside me, might hate me, and worse, might never forgive me.
The hate I could handle. Most people didn’t like my brash personality.
They didn’t take into account that I was raised by the head of the Mob.
I may have lived with my mother, and she did the best she could to temper my father’s contribution, but I was Eamon O’Malley’s daughter, and nothing would change that.
Maddie set a glass on the counter and filled it with ice before running it under the sink. She placed it in front of me at the table, where I sat down and waited.
I stared at the glass for a moment before reaching out and wrapping my hands around it. I fought the tears in my eyes as I asked, “You know I love you, right?”
I chanced a quick glance at my daughter, and she nodded.
“Everything I did was to protect you, Maddie. I know you may never forgive me for what you lost, but I hate myself for how my decisions hurt you. For what they cost you.”
“Why didn’t you tell him?”
My first thought was to snap back and ask why she hadn’t told me she’d gotten married or that she’d had a child. My grandson. But I didn’t speak to Maddie the way I did others. I didn’t treat her the way my father treated me, instead, looking to my mother as the role model for parenting.
“I was afraid,” I said. “I was afraid of what Nolan would do, and I was afraid of what my father would do.”
“Do you love him?”
I nodded, still unable to say the words out loud. Still afraid of two dead men and the hold they had over me.
“Why did you choose him if you were afraid of what they would do?”
My eyes snapped up to my daughter. “I didn’t choose him, Maddie. Not the way you think. I wasn’t trying to get pregnant.”
“Then what were you trying to do?” she shouted.
“I wanted to be loved. I wanted to be cherished, if only for a night.” I shook my head. “I know you don’t want to hear this—”
“I do want to hear this. I want to hear all of it. I want you to make me understand how you could keep my father from me and let me believe that monster was a part of me. I want to understand why you said nothing even after he killed my husband!”
“I didn’t know you had a husband!” I shouted back. “I didn’t know anything about him, Maddie. If you’d told me about him...” I paused and took a breath. “If you’d told me about Henry, I would have protected you both.”
“How?”
“I would have let Cian kill the motherfucker,” I said, looking my daughter in the eye.
Her breathing hitched as a small gasp escaped her lips.
It wasn’t the first time she’d heard me swear.
Though I was thankful she was more demure than I was.
Maddie didn’t swear until she lost her temper. Then all bets were off.
“It was pure Irish luck that Cian was in that bar that night. I still don’t know what he was doing there; I never asked. But I went in there looking for one night. It was supposed to be a stranger. Someone I would never see again. Lord knows my husband didn’t give me the same courtesy.”
I lifted the glass to my lips and took a healthy swallow, wishing it were something a little stronger.
Maddie turned away and grabbed two smaller glasses, then opened the freezer and pulled out a bottle of vodka.
Without a word, she poured some into the glasses and sat across from me at the table, sliding one of the glasses in my direction.
“Thank you,” I said before gulping down the contents and refilling the glass.
“I love you, Mom.” Maddie reached over and placed her hand over mine. “But I’m so angry and hurt that I don’t know how to get past it.”
“I don’t know how to help you, Maddie. What I did was wrong; there is no excuse for it. I thought I was doing the right thing, but I just made everything worse.”
“You really didn’t know?”
“Not for sure. I suspected; hell, I even hoped, but I couldn’t confirm it. Not without putting him in danger.”
And I wasn’t willing to do that. I lived a life of misery to protect him, and I wouldn’t change a thing. Even after my father died, I never said a word because my father had friends. Men and women loyal to him who wouldn’t think twice about finishing what he started.
That was clear from the files I found in his office.
“Maddie, how did you find out?” I asked carefully.
My daughter took a deep breath and blew it out before taking a sip of her own drink.
She would be turning twenty-nine this summer, and I wondered how she felt about her life.
When we lived in New York, she seemed happy.
Happier than she was here, but maybe that was because she could see Henry every day.
Even if she never got to talk to him or hold him in her arms.
“I received a package.”
“A package?” I asked, sitting up straighter. “What kind of package?”
“Pictures and a tape recording.”
“A video?” I asked, curious about what was on it.
Maddie shook her head. “A voice recording. I don’t know where it was from, but I heard Uncle Sal talking. And Nolan.”
It didn’t escape me that Maddie called the man she thought was her father, Nolan. They’d never been close. I guess now I knew why he’d never really made an effort to bond with her.
I wondered how long he had known.
“Can I see it?”
Maddie quietly stood and walked down the hall to her bedroom. She returned with a large yellow envelope and placed it on the table. My hands shook as I lifted it and flipped it over to spill the contents out. I picked up a picture and gasped.
There in black and white was a picture of me and Cian at the bar, twenty-nine years ago, the night Maddie was conceived.
“Is that when it happened?” Maddie asked.
I nodded as I stared at the look on Cian’s face. I hadn’t noticed it that night, but seeing it now, caught in time, the love in his eyes was unmistakable. No one had ever looked at me the way he was in this picture. I set it aside, picking up the others.
There were dozens.
Pictures of us leaving the bar, entering the hotel. And pictures of me leaving the hotel the next morning in the same clothes I wore the night before. My hand covered my mouth, and tears filled my eyes.
It had never been a secret. Someone had always known. But who? Had my father sent someone to follow Cian? Or did my husband have someone follow me? And why did they wait almost thirty years to reveal it?
Was it someone unconnected to either my husband or my father?
This didn’t make sense.
“What about the recording?” I asked, looking for the tape.
Maddie pressed the button, and I heard them.
“Why would you do that to your daughter? What happened to family fuckin’ first?”
“I don’t have a fuckin’ daughter,” Nolan spat out.
“You disowned Maddie because she fell in love? You’re a fuckin’ disgrace!”
“You can’t disown someone who isn’t yours,” Kelley snarled.
“What the fuck are you talking about?”
“The bitch fuckin’ cheated. Not even a year into our marriage.”
“Who?” Sal demanded.
“You fucked my sister?” Sal asked. His voice was low and tight. “You fucked my married sister?” Sal asked again, clarifying what he wanted to know.
“Not your kill,” Mac said.
“Fuck you, Mac.”
“You aren’t half the man your father was, Sal. You have your head so far up the family’s ass, you can’t see all the people who have betrayed you.” Kelley continued to spout shit until a gunshot echoed in the room.
I sat there, staring at the small recorder. Someone there had recorded this and sent it to Maddie. But who? Who would want to hurt her this way?
“Did you show this to Cian?” Maddie shook her head. “I’m taking this with me.”
“Mom, no!” Maddie grabbed at the envelope, but I had already shoved everything back inside.
“Sal needs to see this. Someone in the family has betrayed us all, Maddie. This is evidence that could send everyone there that night to prison for the rest of their lives. This is most likely a copy. Which means whoever it was has the original, and they need to be found.”
“Mom.”
I rushed over to my daughter and pulled her into my arms. “I love you, baby. But you can’t keep this. I don’t want you involved more than you are.”
“But you’re getting involved?” she asked.
“I’m taking this to your uncle. Which is what you should have done months ago. Why didn’t you say anything, Maddie?”
Maddie shrugged, and I knew she was keeping something from me. I wanted to press the issue, but given our strained relationship currently, I didn’t think it was a good idea. I needed to build up her trust once more.
“You need to be careful, Maddie. Have you gotten anything else?”
“No.”
“If you do, please tell me. Or tell Cian. Tell someone.”
Maddie nodded, and I took a chance and hugged her. “I love you.”
I rushed down the hall and out the door, intending to go straight to my brother. But when I looked down at the envelope, I noticed something. The package hadn’t been addressed to Maddie.
It was addressed to me.