Chapter 1 #3
The agony consuming my face was nothing compared to the one tearing through my chest.
My family didn’t believe me.
Not one of them.
Every desperate word I spoke in my own defense fell on deaf ears. Every plea was met with suspicion.
Every explanation was dismissed before it had even been heard.
I wasn’t just being accused.
I had already been condemned.
By the very people who were supposed to protect me.
Grandfather Flynn didn’t so much as glance at Uncle Seamus for striking me. He offered no reprimand. No command for him to stand down. No concern for the blood pouring down my face.
Nothing.
He simply looked at me.
With the same expression worn by everyone else in the room.
Disdain.
Contempt.
A hatred so complete it left no room for doubt.
In that moment, I understood something prison would only later confirm.
The deepest wounds are never carved by enemies.
They’re inflicted by family.
I had grown up listening to their hatred.
Now they unleashed it without restraint.
“Useless bastard,” Uncle Declan spat, looking down at me as though I were something he’d scraped off the sole of his shoe. “Always knew ye weren’t true Flynn blood.”
Another voice came from somewhere behind me.
“Yer mother spread her legs for some dock rat, and here ye are... stutterin’, illiterate, good-for-nothin’.”
A cruel laugh echoed through the room.
“Should’ve drowned ye the day she brought ye home.”
“Would’ve saved the family a lifetime of shame.”
Their words struck harder than the blows.
Every insult peeled open wounds far older than the cuts on my face.
I’d heard variations of them since I was old enough to understand language.
The Flynn family had never truly accepted that I was my father’s son.
To them, I wasn’t a Flynn.
I was the bastard.
The living proof of a shame they refused to acknowledge.
They spoke of my mother as though she had been nothing more than a whore who had clawed her way into my father’s bed.
They stripped her of every ounce of dignity until even her memory became something they spat on with contempt.
To the Flynn family, I wasn’t a son.
I was the boy who never should have been born.
I lowered my head, my hands trembling against the polished floor.
Blood dripped steadily from my face, splashing onto the marble beneath me.
Then my gaze found him.
My brother.
He stood at the edge of the gathering with his arms folded across his tailored suit, watching the spectacle unfold with infuriating calm.
Not once had he pretended to grieve.
Instead, the corner of his mouth lifted into the faintest smile.
Anyone else would have missed it.
I didn’t.
It wasn’t joy. It was satisfaction.
While I was treated as the unwanted son, Sergei was everything the Flynn family had ever wanted.
The golden child.
The irony was almost laughable.
He had been born to my father’s mistress.
I had been born to my father’s lawful wife.
Yet it was the mistress they welcomed into Flynn Manor with open arms, while my mother—the woman my father had stood beside before God and the law—was treated as though she were the stain on the family name.
She was never accepted.
Never respected.
Every gathering became another excuse to belittle her, to humiliate her, to remind her she would never truly belong.
And because I was her son...
Neither would I.
Sergei was handsome. Charismatic. Exceptionally educated.
The heir everyone celebrated.
The grandson everyone praised.
Everything I had spent my entire life trying—and failing—to become.
Even now, standing in the room where my sister had died, Sergei looked untouched. Untainted.
His expensive cufflinks gleamed beneath the chandelier as though the blood soaking the floor had nothing to do with him.
Rage ignited deep inside my chest, burning hotter than the blood running down my face.
I knew he had killed my sister.
He knew that I knew.
Yet there wasn’t the slightest hint of fear in his eyes.
Only the quiet confidence of a man who knew no one would ever believe me.
I dragged myself across the polished marble floor, my blood-slick palms leaving crimson streaks in their wake.
Every movement tore fresh pain through my battered body.
My shattered eye throbbed. My ribs screamed. Warm blood continued to drip from my face onto the gleaming floor.
I barely felt any of it.
There was only one thing that mattered.
Grandfather Flynn.
He was the patriarch. The final authority. His word outweighed every voice in the room.
If I could make him believe me...
If I could convince him to hear the truth...
No one else would dare lay another hand on me.
I crawled the last few feet toward him, clinging to that fragile hope with everything I had left.
“Please...”
My voice cracked.
“Gr... Grandfather...”
The word caught in my throat.
I swallowed against the blood filling my mouth and forced the next words out between ragged breaths.
“Ye have to believe me.”
My voice trembled, the familiar Irish lilt breaking beneath the weight of my desperation.
“I swear on everythin’ I have left... I didn’t hurt Sarah.”
Another breath.
Another painful swallow.
“I spent my whole life protectin’ her.”
My voice cracked.
“She was all I had.”
I searched his face for even the smallest flicker of compassion.
For doubt. For hope.
I found none.
My throat tightened until speaking became almost impossible.
“From the day Ma died... it was me and Sarah against the whole bloody world.”
No one interrupted.
Perhaps they wanted to hear me beg.
“I stood in front of her when they whipped us.”
Images flashed through my mind.
Sarah crying.
My own back splitting open beneath leather lashes.
Her tiny fingers clutching my shirt afterward while I lied and told her it didn’t hurt.
“I covered her with my own body.”
Another memory.
Winter.
She’d stolen bread from the kitchens because she was hungry.
I’d taken the punishment.
Three days without food.
“I took every beatin’ they meant for her. She was all I had left.”
My voice finally broke.
I looked directly at my grandfather.
“Please...”
The plea barely escaped my lips.
“Please... believe me. Someone did this.”
My voice splintered beneath the weight of my desperation.
“Someone murdered Sarah and they’re trying to frame me.”
I fought to steady my breathing, but every word came out broken.
“I gave Mam my word.”
Tears blurred what little vision remained, mingling with the blood that streamed from my shattered eye.
“I promised her I’d protect Sarah.”
My voice cracked, raw with grief.
“I’ve spent my whole life protecting her. I’d have died before I’d ever let anyone hurt her.”
A broken sob escaped me.
“I failed to save her...”
I lifted my eyes to Grandfather Flynn, clinging to the last shred of hope I had left.
“But I didn’t kill her.”
A sob escaped before I could stop it.
For one impossible second...
I thought I saw something flicker across the old man’s face.
Not compassion.
Recognition.
As though somewhere beneath decades of ruthlessness, he remembered the frightened boy who had buried his mother.
Then it vanished.
Without saying a single word...
He turned his back on me.
The movement was deliberate and absolute.
It was worse than any verdict.
He had condemned me without asking a single question.
The silence that followed lasted only a heartbeat.
The great double doors burst open with a thunderous crash.
Every head turned.
Heavy boots echoed across the marble floor.
Armed police officers in tactical gear poured into the ballroom with disciplined precision.
The Flynn family stepped aside almost effortlessly, creating a path through the crowd as though they had been expecting them.
As though this had all been arranged.
A tall detective approached me.
His face revealed nothing.
He glanced briefly at the blood covering my face before pulling a folded document from his coat.
“Romeo Flynn.”
His voice echoed through the silent room.
“You are under arrest for the murder of Sarah Flynn.”
The words landed with crushing force.
For a moment, I couldn’t breathe.
Murder.
The single word echoed through my mind, shattering every fragile hope I’d been clinging to.
“No...”
The whisper slipped from my lips before I even realized I’d spoken.
Strong hands seized my arms and hauled me roughly to my feet.
My knees buckled beneath me, but the officers showed no mercy, wrenching me upright as though I were nothing more than another criminal dragged from the streets.
Then came the steel.
Cold metal clamped around my wrists.
The handcuffs locked into place with a sound so sharp, so final, it seemed to reverberate through every corner of my soul.
The unforgiving steel dug into skin already torn and swollen from the beating, but the pain barely registered.
I could only stare.
Down at the cuffs.
Down at the proof that my own family had condemned me without a trial.
This couldn’t be happening.
It couldn’t.
“Grandfather!”
My voice ripped through the room, raw with panic.
“Please...”
I fought against the officers’ grip with everything I had left, uncaring that every head in the room was watching me unravel.
“I didn’t do it!”
My words disappeared into suffocating silence.
My voice broke. “I protected her my whole life!”
The words came out between ragged sobs. “I carried her when she couldn’t walk. I fed her when no one else would. I held her every night after she had nightmares.”
“I’ve protected her since she was a baby.”
My knees nearly buckled.
“I couldn’t...”
The next words barely existed. “I couldn’t do that to her.”
Silence answered me.
Not a single member of my family stepped forward.
Not one voice rose in my defense.
Not one hand reached out to stop what was happening.
They simply watched.
The officers tightened their grip and dragged me toward the doors. My heels scraped helplessly across the polished marble, leaving faint streaks of blood in their wake.
Hope died with every step.
Then, unable to stop myself, I looked back one last time.
My eyes found Sergei.
He stood exactly where I’d left him, composed amid the chaos as though none of it had touched him.
He didn’t wave. He didn’t laugh.
He simply held my gaze.
Slowly...
The corner of his mouth lifted.