Chapter Twenty-Eight
Caity
I grabbed up the files Maddie had brought and stuffed them in my purse and glared at him as I waited for the elevator doors to close. Half expecting him to rush forward and put his hand in the way. I’d never hated an elevator more, knowing I couldn’t slam the door behind me as I left.
I hit the button for the lobby, and as the car began to move, I clenched my fists and screamed.
What would I tell my daughter? That I failed? That her father decided he didn’t really want me after all?
The doors opened to a smiling Walter. He was such a sweet old man, and I was reminded that this was one of the things I loved about Cian. Very few buildings had doormen anymore. No one wanted to pay someone to do what a security system could do.
Walter was eighty years old, and Cian told him he’d have a job as long as he wanted it. Knowing that just made me angrier, but I plastered a smile on my face for Walter.
“Good evening, Miss Caity.”
“Good evening, Walter.”
Walter held the door open for me and once I stepped outside and got lost among the crowds on the street, I let the tears fall. I could have hailed a cab, but I wanted the walk. I wanted to cry silently and get it out before I got home. I refused to wallow in my home.
By the time I reached my front steps, I was angry again.
When I’d stepped into the elevator after Cian told me to move out, I didn’t think I’d ever been angrier than I was then. By the time I made it to the street, the anger had turned to grief.
I was mourning what might have been. What we could have had. I’d made Maddie a promise: to let myself be happy. To let myself love the man who had always held my heart.
I hadn’t expected to have the rug pulled out from under me. Though that had always been my life. Every time I thought my life was taking a turn for the better, someone would come along and knock me off my feet.
This time, I’d let myself believe that I was being swept off my feet, instead of being knocked down. I should have known better.
I stared at my front door.
“You did this to me,” I whispered to the ghost of my father. “You never loved me, did you? I was just a token, a decoration bought and paid for in my mother’s blood.”
I sat on the front steps and watched the street. Cars passed by without a glance in my direction. For over twenty years, this house had been a mausoleum to a monster. A shrine dedicated to the great Eamon O’Malley.
The family saw him as a leader. The world saw him as a criminal. I’d seen him as a father. Loving him despite his many flaws, the way only a daughter could.
I’d been so stupid.
Never seeing the monster that was hiding beneath the suit. Beneath the facade of power he portrayed. Power he never deserved.
He was nothing but a sick, twisted son of a bitch.
He didn’t deserve my grief. He didn’t deserve anything more than the grave he was in. Even that was too good for him. We should have cremated him and thrown his ashes into the city dump.
Instead of going inside, I went to my car and drove to my brother’s house. I was done being a trinket for everyone to show off as the O’Malley princess.
It was time to take my place in the family.
I pounded on Sal’s door until he let me in.
“Caity, what the fuck?!”
I swept past him, not waiting for an invitation. I walked straight to the bar he kept along the wall and poured a glass of his expensive whiskey. The one he never shared with anyone.
I turned around and tossed back the alcohol as he watched me without a word. Refilling the glass, I took a sip and then let out a heavy breath.
“I want to be part of this family.”
He furrowed his brow and tilted his head to the side. “You have always been part of this family. You always will be.”
“No, I want to be part of the family. I’m tired of being on the outside waiting for you and the others to tell me things you think I should know while hiding everything else.”
“Caity...”
“And I want to sell Dad’s house.”
His eyes widened at my announcement. There was more surprise about selling the house than there was about wanting to be a part of the organization.
“Why?” he asked as he poured his own drink.
“Because it’s time. Hell, it’s past time. You kept it as a shrine to him, Sal.”
My brother snorted. “That wasn’t my intent.”
“Then what was?” I asked him.
He raised his glass and gestured toward the couch. He sat across from me in the leather chair and took a sip. His forearms rested on his thighs as the glass dangled in his hands between his knees.
“You need to know why I killed him.”
“I know why you killed him.”
“You don’t,” he said. His eyes pleaded with me, though for what I wasn’t sure. To listen to him? To not judge him? To forgive him?
“I don’t blame you, Sal. I was angry at first. I think I even hated you for a bit.
But now, knowing everything.” I slipped off my shoes and pulled my feet up onto the couch, adjusting my skirt to cover them.
An automatic response after the years of my mother drilling into me how to be a lady, how to be demure.
She was meant for so much more than just being my mother. She deserved more than what she’d been given. She never once made me feel like a burden. Never once made me feel unloved.
But sometimes, when she didn’t know I was there, she would cry. It wasn’t until years later when I was in the same position she was, home alone while my husband was with his mistress, and my daughter was off with friends, that I understood why she cried at night.
I refused to die the way my mother did.
Sad and unfulfilled.
She always told me how much being my mother brought joy to her life, but there came a time when your children were grown and you realized you didn’t know who you were anymore.
They called it the empty-nest syndrome.
Only that didn’t make sense, because birds kicked their babies out of the nest to make room for more babies. No one told you that by the time your babies left the nest, it was too late to have more babies.
You spent half your life raising children. Making everything about them, only for them to grow up and leave. Then what did you do with the years you have left?
I no longer had a husband to care for. Not that I cared much for him. He was never home, always choosing to be with his mistresses instead. I should have been a part of the organization, and I would have been if I’d been born with a dick.
Apparently, men only thought you had a brain if you had a head between your legs. Maybe if they thought with the one on their shoulders, they would get more accomplished.
“I knew about the Trick Pony.”
Now it was my turn to be surprised.
“I told the family the reason Eamon was dead was because of Eduardo and what he’d done. What Eamon had let him do. But that wasn’t the truth.”
He emptied his glass and went to get some more whiskey. He refilled his glass and stood with his back to me.
“He’d come home from one of his trips. I knew he was lying about where he was going, so I sent someone to follow him.”
He turned and leaned against the bar. His face was filled with defeat. With a sadness I’d never seen, laced with disgust.
“When I confronted him about where he’d gone, he bragged about it. He told me about a little girl he’d had sex with.” He rubbed his hand over his face, his other fist clenching the glass. “Fuck, Caity, she was only eleven years old. And he fucking bragged about it.”
I sat there; stunned didn’t begin to describe what I was thinking. I looked down at the glass in my hand. I wanted to throw up. That was my father. The man I loved and admired my whole life.
It was one thing to know he brokered and kept records of the disgusting things the Society was doing. But to know that he participated in them. That he hurt that child, and probably many others.
I set the glass down and rushed down the hall to the bathroom. I fell to my knees in front of the toilet and threw up. The burn of the whiskey was worse coming up than it was going down.
Sal crouched beside me, holding my hair back.
It reminded me of when I was sixteen and he found me at a party I shouldn’t have been at.
I was so drunk that I’d almost been raped by a guy who was more than two decades older than I was.
Sal was twenty-five; the guy, who’d taken me into a room and locked the door so we wouldn’t be interrupted, was almost forty.
My brother had beaten him so badly that he ended up in a wheelchair for the rest of his life.
When there was nothing left, I sat back, and Sal handed me a towel. I laid my head back against the wall and hugged my knees.
“What was wrong with him?”
Sal sat beside me and shook his head. “I don’t know. Just born bad, I guess. Maybe something in his brain didn’t form correctly. But when he tried to go into detail, I lost it. I beat the shit out of him until he stopped moving. And then I sat there and watched him until he stopped breathing.”
“Do you think grandfather was like him?”
“Nah, he was an asshole, but he wasn’t a pedophile. Uncle Sean admired him. He had a mistress, and she was a lot younger than him, but she was an adult.”
I laid my head on Sal’s shoulder.
“Cian kicked me out,” I whispered.
“What?” he growled.
“He told me it was time I went home. He doesn’t want me.” I sniffled, trying to stem the tears I thought I’d cried enough of.
“Stupid son of a bitch,” he muttered.
“He really is,” I chuckled. “I shouldn’t have told him.”
“Why did you?”
I took a deep breath and blew it out. “I didn’t want any more secrets. It was information I found in Dad’s office and thought he should know.”
“Give him time, Caity. He’ll come around.”
“Doesn’t matter if he does. I’m done. I want to sell the house, and I want to work for the family.”
“Caity,” Sal whined.
“What, Sal? What is your excuse for saying no? And I’ll warn you right now, if you say it’s because I don’t have a dick, I’ll fuckin’ cut yours off.”
My brother pulled his knees up, and I couldn’t help but laugh.
“Duncan was right. You’re fuckin’ mean.”
I smiled at my brother. “I’ll start by emptying the house. I’ll find a realtor and list it. I’ll ask Maddie if I can stay with her until I find a place.”
“Maddie is in Colleen’s apartment. It’s one-bedroom. Stay here until Cian gets his head out of his ass,” he said, standing up and holding out his hand for me. I took it, and he pulled me to my feet.
“I told you; I’m done.”
“You’re not done any more than he fuckin’ is. Give him some time to wrap his head around that shit, and he’ll come crawling back.”
I shook my head, deciding not to argue with him. “I’ll stay at the house until it sells,” I said, walking down the hall to the living room. I picked up my glass and took it to the sink, rinsing it out.
When I turned back to my brother, I walked into his arms.
“I’m glad you killed him,” I whispered.