Chapter Thirty-Five
Abbott
I feel as though there are weights attached to my eyelashes, holding my eyes closed each time I try to open them. My body is heavy, my brain foggy as I try to move, try to pull myself out of the darkness I’ve found myself in.
Where am I?
What happened?
A voice in the background squeezes through the confusion in my head. I can’t make the words out at first, can’t even tell who it is, but after a moment, the mumbling starts to get clearer and the tone more familiar.
It’s my father.
Why is…oh yes. That’s right. He sent me an email, and then I came to see him. After that, everything is a blur.
My eyes finally flutter open a few times, the room around me mostly shadows and fuzziness.
I came to the summer house…he gave me something to drink…and then nothing. I don’t remember anything between then and waking up just a few moments ago.
“He’s my son,” I hear in the background, but no other voice replies. “That was different. How am I supposed to…” His voice trails off again, my vision becoming a little clearer by the second.
My father is standing with his back to me, looking out of a window, his hand to his ear.
On the phone, I guess?
There’s someone outside too. He has his side to the window, standing on the wraparound porch, but the long gun he’s holding in front of his body is impossible to miss.
My brain wants to pull into darkness again, but I fight to keep myself awake, to listen to what he’s saying and figure out what’s going on.
“I understand this makes things difficult. It’s not my fault. I’m doing everything I can.”
What makes things difficult, and what is he doing?
“He was asking too many questions. He would have ruined me if I’d given him the chance—just like she would have!” A pause. “I’m sorry.”
That’s probably the first time in my life I’ve ever heard my father apologize, but I can’t even enjoy it, can’t make sense of it because my head is pounding. It feels like the damn thing will explode, like even trying to listen will fry whatever’s still firing in there.
My father drugged me. There is no other possibility. He drugged me, and now I’m lying here, on the same couch I used to sit on with my mother as a kid, while he’s doing what exactly?
“How am I supposed to cover… I’ve done everything you asked, and I don’t appreciate…hello? Goddamn it!” He punches the wall.
My father rarely loses his temper. Even when he’s angry, he’s good at hiding it, at pretending to be cool, calm, and collected—like he’s always in control, so seeing him like this is fucking with my already confused brain.
When my father turns in my direction, I tell myself to close my eyes again, but the message isn’t sent and received fast enough.
He looks more frazzled than I have ever seen him, hair messy, clothes slightly disheveled as he notices my fluttering lids.
“You’ve ruined everything,” he tells me, hand fisted in his gray-ish hair, pulling.
“You drugged me.” The words are slightly slurred. At least I think they are. I don’t know if that’s in my head or not. Did I really even say them?
I must have because he says, “You gave me no choice!”
I try to sit up, dizziness sweeping me up into a cyclone, but I fight through it, not resting until I’m leaning against the back of the couch.
“You never…take responsibility…” It’s never his fault.
Nothing bad ever has been. It was always my mom’s fault…
or mine. People who work for him, voters, his opponents, and citizens. Never his.
“You’re just like her,” he spits.
“Like who?” I answer, my new position somehow helping my brain begin to clear more by the second.
“You always thought you were better than me,” he says instead of answering. “She did too.”
She… “Mom? Are you talking about Mom? Fuck you. She was better than you!” I seethe.
I don’t understand what’s happening, what she has to do with anything, but I sure as shit won’t accept him putting her down.
“She hated you…just like I do, but you don’t care about that, do you?
You care about young women. Is that what this is about? ”
“You’re not in a position to be looking down on me. That man you’re with—do you understand who he is? What he does?”
“Rian is a better man than you’ll ever be.”
“He’s a murderer. A thug.”
“So, what does that say about you?”
“Shut up!” he growls, then, with a visibly shaky hand, he reaches into his jacket and pulls a gun out.
My stomach drops, breath catching, fear waking me up completely from the drugged state I’d been in just moments ago.
I’ve never seen a gun in my father’s hand, but now there’s one not just there, but pointed at me.
“What are you doing?” This can’t be happening. My father is a lot of things, but pulling a gun on me? Then again, he did drug me. My gaze darts around the room, as I try to figure out what to do, and I notice another man inside with us. He’s behind me and holding a gun as well.
“I can get away with this,” he says, more to himself than me. “Rian O’Shea put ideas in your head. He used you. He wants me dead. I called you here to talk some sense into you about being with a man like that. You tried to kill me for him, and I had no other choice.”
“Dad?” I ask, voice softer than it’s ever been when talking to him, maybe since I was a kid.
“How long have you been plotting with him? Is that why you brought up conversations you have no business talking about?”
“Conversations…what?” I try to ask, but my brain is spinning, pounding even harder than it had been before—possibly in fear.
“How did he know?”
“Who? How did he know what?”
“Rian!” my father shouts, before raising the gun higher from where his arm had begun lowering. “How did he know they were coming after you?”
They were…how did he know they were coming after me? Realization hits me with the same strength as if he’d pulled the trigger. My world explodes. My heart shatters.
He tried to kill me. It was my father who put a hit out on me.
He wants me dead.
He thinks because Rian was there that day, that Rian knew it was going down.
This can’t be happening.
“Why?” falls past my lips. I knew he didn’t love me—I had to have. But how could he want me dead? What kind of father would do that? Am I really that bad? No. This isn’t me. Rian loves me.
“It’s your fault,” he says, not for the first time.
“It was her fault too…and those women. They wanted it. They can pretend they didn’t, pretend I forced them, but they were quick to want to spread their legs for me.
They wanted me, and when I didn’t want them, they made up all these fucking stories!
If they hadn’t, then I wouldn’t have needed to do any of this! ”
None of his words are computing. No, that’s not true.
They are. I just don’t want them to. My father wants me dead, and it has something to do with the women…
women who were going after him? Women he assaulted.
I knew he cheated on my mom, knew he had a stable of young women, but the disgusted feeling curling in my gut right now is saying it’s even worse than I thought.
“Once you’re gone, I’ll figure the rest of it out. They’ll see I’m serious and…”
“And then you’ll have me to deal with,” Rian’s voice comes from behind me, startling my father so he swings the gun up to aim it at him. Rian has a gun in his gloved hand. He must have snuck in the back door.
I turn to see Conan is there too. He grabs the guard inside by the head, before he can turn around, snapping his neck in a quick, brutal twist. The body slumps to the ground. I hear noises coming from outside—men here with Rian and Conan, or others that are with my father?
He’s here.
He found me.
I don’t know how in the hell he found me, but he did, and he came for me.
Rian will always come for me, because in a world where I don’t matter to most, to him, I am the man he loves.
“What the fuck are you doing here?” my father shouts, gaze darting between Rian and me. “You told him! You led this criminal here. I knew it. You were working with him all along. You’re both trying to sabotage me.”
“You tried to have me killed!” rips from the back of my throat. I knew he didn’t love me, knew he didn’t care. I don’t think he’s capable of loving anyone other than himself, but I never would have thought he’d do this.
Ignoring me, my father says, “How did you know? They won’t stop until they get what they want from you. There’s nothing you can do to stop them.”
Who won’t stop until they get what they want? Nothing Rian can do to stop who?
“It’s going to be fun making you suffer,” Rian says to him, taking a step forward, then another. “Why did you want Abbott dead?”
“Who is going after Rian?” Conan asks at the same time.
“Because he’s just like his mother! He’s asking questions, sticking his nose where it doesn’t belong.” Another step forward for Rian. “Stop moving or I’ll shoot you!” The tremble in my father’s voice is impossible to miss.
“Rian,” Conan warns as he keeps moving.
Rian ignores him. “Do it,” he taunts. “You better fucking do it because if you don’t, then I’m going to make you suffer beyond comprehension. You hurt what’s mine, and I will never stop making you suffer for it.”
Fear clutches my heart. Yes, he has a gun pointed at my father, but my father has one pointed at him too. If Rian shoots, what if my father gets a shot off? What if he…
“Rian…baby. Don’t.” He can’t do this. He can’t sacrifice himself for me.
“Does he know what you did?” Rian asks him. “Everything you’ve done? Because I do.” He takes another step closer. “You don’t deserve him. You’ve never deserved him. He is…everything.”
Something changes in the air, an unexpected gleam in my father’s eyes. “If I have to die, then he goes with me.”
Everything happens quickly from there, so fast I can’t make sense of it all.
My father swings his arm from Rian toward me.
A gunshot goes off.
Rian lunges for me, covering my body with his own.
A loud thunk in the background.
“Get down!” Conan yells.
The door bursts open, but I can’t see who it is. Rian is on top of me still, squeezing me, my face in his chest.
“Are you hurt? Were you hit?” I ask, trying to feel him, run my hands up and down his back to make sure he’s okay.
“Dad? Are you okay?” a voice I don’t recognize says, which immediately makes Rian stiffen and turn his head.
When he does, I’m able to see, and I know that the guy asking is Cillian.
He’s here.
Rian’s son is here, along with Finan and the others, everyone on the ground, looking around as if they’re trying to figure out what happened.
“I’m fine,” he tells Cillian. “I’m okay.”
At the same time, we both look to the floor…see the body there…my father, lifeless, lying in a pool of blood.
“Who shot at him?” Rian is on alert now, but I can’t take my eyes off my father. “Did you take care of the men outside?” Rian asks the group that came in.
“Yep. All dead, no guns, and we didn’t even make a mess! We got to use our hands. We kept one alive. He’s knocked out and tied up,” a guy says, but I can’t pull my eyes away from my father to see who is speaking.
He’s dead.
My father is dead…I have no family left.
He wanted me killed, but still, he was my father, and he’s dead.
Both of my parents are gone.
“We didn’t want to do anything when he had a gun on you,” another voice says. “Whoever took that shot didn’t have the same concern.”
I finally manage to force my stare away from my father.
“Fin, Rory, Dean, and Tiernan, go find whoever the fuck that was. Everyone else, stay the fuck away from the windows.”
“On it,” Finan says, as someone drags in the unconscious, tied-up man from outside.
“Fuck yes. I expected more action,” the redhead says, and I assume he’s Rory.
They take off out of the house, and then Rian is running his hands up and down my body. “Jesus. I’m so fucking sorry. You never should have been put in this situation. Did he hurt you? Did he?”
“Shh.” I grab his face. “I’m fine. I shouldn’t have come, but I’m fine. You wouldn’t let anything happen to me.”
Rian drops his forehead to mine, and my eyes fall closed. We sit there together, him still on top of me, breathing each other’s air.
“I love you,” Rian says, over and over and over again. “You scared the shit out of me.”
“I know. I’m sorry. I love you too.”
I press my lips to his, Rian’s face still in my hands.
I don’t think my brain or body has caught up with what happened here today.
That my father drugged me and tried to kill me.
That a sniper shot him through the window.
That he’s gone. All I know is Rian came for me, and that means everything to me.
I press my lips to his, feel him shake as he holds me, still running his hands along my body like he doesn’t believe I’m okay.
“I’m fine,” I tell him. “You’re here. You won’t ever let anything happen to me.”
Rian has saved me from that first moment in the parking lot, and he won’t ever stop.