Chapter 15 Amelia #2
“Sit down, Amelia.” There’s authority in his voice, and I do as I’m told. “Look, I don’t know what your mom told you about me, but I swear I didn’t know that she was pregnant when I left New York. She never reached out to me. She never asked me for anything.”
I shrug. “That’s my mom.”
I can understand why she never contacted him. His go-to stance is to immediately shift the blame onto my mom for not telling him that he was a father.
Nice man.
“What can I give you to make this go away?”
I blink, uncertain if I heard him correctly. “To make this go away? Do you mean your daughter?”
“Well…” His eyes narrow. “I only have your word for that. Did Julia send you? Was she too scared to come and find me herself?”
I inhale deeply. “You know nothing about her at all, do you? She didn’t stop me from coming to Ireland, but she didn’t want me to find you, and now I know why. You can keep your money. Declan Byrne is a generous employer, so I don’t need anything from you.”
My voice has risen a notch. Adrenaline is pumping through my veins.
“Declan Byrne… Now there’s a name I didn’t expect to hear anytime soon.”
“You… You know him?”
His smile materializes, and a shiver runs down my spine. “He didn’t tell you what line of business he’s in, did he?”
“I never asked.”
He taps the side of his coffee cup with a long fingernail that makes my stomach squirm. “But you were happy to take his blood money.”
Blood money?
“What’s really going on here, Amelia? His heir gets killed in a mafia conflict in New York. Then you show up with a story about a woman I met almost thirty years ago in the same city.”
Mafia? I’d forgotten the conversation with Carol, but now it all makes perfect sense. Declan’s wealth. Ruairi’s murder. Declan’s business meeting in New York after the funeral.
I stand up, but Michael grabs my wrist.
“Let me go, you’re hurting me.” I try to wrench my arm free, but his grip is like metal.
“Not until you tell me why you’re really here.” His voice is as cold as his eyes.
“I told you already. I came to find my—”
Before I can finish, the back of Michael’s hand connects with my cheek.
My head snaps back. I topple over the seat that I just vacated, and it collapses underneath me.
My back hits the floor with a whump that sucks the air from my lungs.
The chair splinters. Something sharp slices through my sweater and I feel blood trickling from my arm.
I instinctively draw my knees to my chest to protect the baby in my womb.
“I’m pregnant,” I mumble. “Don’t hurt me, please. Declan doesn’t know I’m here, I promise. There’s a taxi waiting outside to take me to the airport.”
The taxi driver will come inside to find me, I tell myself. He’ll save me from this maniac. But then I remember that I paid him already. He has no reason to stick around.
My father rises slowly and looms over me, his eyes dark as coal. Then he crouches beside me, fists my hair, and tilts my head back so that I have to look at him.
“Declan doesn’t know I’m here, I promise.” He repeats my words with a whiny American accent. “You’re on first-name terms with your employer, who thinks that you’re on a flight back to America. Is that right?”
He’s gripping my hair so tightly my scalp is burning and tears trickle from the corners of my eyes. “He doesn’t know that I’m going home.”
“You’re running away?” His grip on my hair tightens, and I stifle a groan. “What are you running away from, Amelia York? Surely not the employer who pays you so well.”
“I-I’m not running away. I’m going home because I’m pregnant.”
He shoves my knees aside and his eyes travel down my body, lingering on my stomach. I’m wearing jeans. They’re tighter than they were when I arrived, but either he won’t believe that I’m pregnant, or he’ll figure out that I’m still in the first trimester.
Fear slithers through my veins when he asks his next question. “Is it true that Declan Byrne got married after his son died?”
I could lie and say that I don’t know, but he isn’t going to buy it. “Yes.” I hate how feeble and weak I sound, but this guy has already proved that violence is his first language, and I’ll protect my unborn baby in any way possible.
His smile is back, revealing a crooked front tooth. On anyone else it might be cute, but on him, it simply adds to the aggressive mafia boss vibes he has going on here.
“And I guess the new Mrs. Byrne isn’t happy about her husband’s affair with a member of staff.”
The new Mrs. Byrne.
I could correct him, but it’s safer for everyone concerned if he doesn’t know the truth. My mom got lucky when he married someone else. I don’t even want to think about the life she would’ve had with this fucking monster.
“Maybe I should pay her a visit.” He leans over me. His cologne is so strong that I gag. “What’s her name?”
“I… You’re hurting me.” I claw at his arm, but he forces my head further back till I’m afraid that he’ll snap my neck.
“Her name, Amelia.”
Fuck. My mind has gone blank, and I can’t think of any typical Irish names, so I say the first name that comes into my head. “Carol.”
“Carol,” he repeats.
His eyes glaze over as if his body is here, but his mind is elsewhere. It scares me more than my body contorting to protect my baby, because I don’t know what he’s capable of.
“On second thought, why go to the missus when Declan will appreciate me taking care of his little problem for him?” He blinks, snapping back to reality. “How much do you think he’ll pay to keep you quiet, Amelia?”
Panic courses through my veins. What does he mean, keep me quiet?
He is mafia. They’re all fucking mafia. They all carry weapons, and own mansions, and go on business trips after they bury their dead.
“He doesn’t know about the baby,” I blurt out. “No one knows.”
I believed Declan when he said that he would protect me and the baby with his life. But that was before he found out about me and Ruairi. Now though… Would he pay this man to get me out of his life, or would he be the hero that he promised he would be and save me?
I remember the look in his eyes in the stables before I left. He didn’t look at me with love. He looked at me like I was a stranger. No, he’d have shown more kindness to a stranger.
He looked at me like someone he’d cross the road to avoid even if I were begging for help.
“He doesn’t know about the baby yet, Amelia. Someone should deliver the good news, what do you think?”
“He won’t pay you to get rid of me.”
My thoughts are buzzing around like wasps who lost their nest. I have to stop him going to Declan. If he finds out that I’m Mrs. Byrne, but Declan doesn’t care about me, he’ll have lost whatever power he thinks he has over us both, and there’ll be no reason for him to keep me alive.
Because I have no doubt that this man, my father, wouldn’t hesitate to murder anyone who stands in his way.
It’s too late to wish that I’d listened to my mom. She thinks I’m on my way home. I haven’t spoken to Carol in days. And Declan probably thinks that I’m in the guest room of his mansion, staying out of his way. No one is coming to help me.
It’s just like my mom always says. “You gotta look out for number one, baby.”
“He won’t pay you to get rid of me because his dead son is the baby’s father.”
Michael releases his grip and stands up, and I feel my scalp with my fingertips, expecting to find half of my hair ripped out by the roots.
“Oh, this is too fucking brilliant, Amelia.” He studies me like I’m an animal that got in the way of his boot. “Like mother, like daughter. Only your mom had the sense not to try swindling me for cash to bring up her kid.”
“She had a lucky escape.” I glare at him, not that it gives me any satisfaction.
“Shame her luck didn’t rub off on you.”
He produces some zip ties from his pocket. I shuffle backwards across the floor, until my spine collides with the wall.
“Here’s what’s going to happen,” he says, coming closer. “I’m going to tie you up, and you’re not going to make a sound. Not that there’s anyone around to hear you.”
I can’t believe that I didn’t think to scream. The taxi driver might still be outside. It’s my only chance of anyone getting me out of here before he goes to Declan.
I open my mouth to scream, and his fist connects with my jaw.
Then the world goes black.