30. Chapter 30
Callahan
In the back of the car, with Rory leaning against my shoulder, I thought back over the last hour of events. Her reaction to Sylvie coming onto me, while it pleased me, was so out of place for her. She was the type to kill with kindness, not attack with aggression. It confused me. The way she looked so freaked out when she came into the cigar lounge had concerned me, too. Perhaps she had discovered something that already had her on edge and Sylvie’s boldness just pushed her over the edge of her patience?
Schmoozing with Elio made me want to pull my eyelashes out, one by one. We sat in the lounge, talking about how I was adjusting to married life and if Rory was fitting well into her role of mob wife. He was being way too kind, and it made me wonder what shite he was up to. It took all my patience to keep the conversation going, but Rory was currently snooping through his private office. Keeping him here was much more important than shoving my fist through his fecking nasal cavity.
The image, though, was extremely gratifying.
His eyes caught on something over my shoulder and his eyelid twitched. “If you’ll excuse me, Callahan, there’s something that requires my attention. I’ll be right back.”
“Of course,” I said with a dip of my head as he heaved himself off the low couch.
I wanted to follow him. Every one of my instincts screamed at me to follow him, to be sure that, no matter what, he didn’t make it into his own study. But I couldn’t very well do that with his guards posted all over the house and grounds.
I sat in that spot, my eyes glued to the door he had left. What couldn’t have been more than ten minutes felt like a lifetime as I worried about Rory. I knew if she was in danger, she would have screamed, or called. I’d have heard her, or Connor and Carson who were waiting downstairs would have. She was protected. She was safe. Between me and my men, Nate and Elliot, Mikhail and his men, if Rory so much as whimpered, she’d have an army at her back in seconds.
I got restless staring at that doorway and got up to pace to the opposite side of the room. I tried to appear as if I was admiring the decor when I was actually just going out of my mind with worry. In my restlessness, I removed my jacket and flung it over the back of a nearby chair, rolling up my sleeves just for something to do with my hands.
Sylvie, Elliot’s date, approached me and tried to make small talk but I didn’t have the brain capacity to entertain her while every thought was consumed with where Elio was and why Rory was taking so long.
Apparently bored with my inattention, Sylvie laid a hand on my arm and ran her claw-like nails over my skin. Goosebumps, not the good kind, erupted over my skin and I shuddered, firmly pushing her hand off my arm. Just as her fingers left my skin, my attention caught on a head of glowing blonde hair in my periphery. I immediately moved Sylvie out of my way and almost jogged across the room in my haste to get to Rory.
She appeared frantic and stressed, but unharmed. Her pulse fluttered wildly under the pale skin of her neck, her eyes red-rimmed with heavy bags underneath. I could see the exhaustion lining her body, her waning strength draining by the second. I framed her round face in my hands and ran my eyes over the rest of her body.
Small tremors shook her as if she was running on reserves alone. I immediately wrapped my arm around her waist and led her to the balcony so that I could ask her what she had found, what had happened that had her so freaked out.
Sylvie followed us out onto the balcony and started spouting shite about being disrespected that I would dare prefer Rory over her. Of course, I did, though. Rory was perfection and Sylvie was nothing more than a bug in comparison.
Sylvie planted herself between my wife and I and within seconds, Rory had her dangling over the railing. Her possessiveness was such a turn on that my iron hard dick held me in place, unable to walk without risking injury. And then she said something that made my arousal spiral out of control.
“He loves me.”
Said with such confidence that I almost fell to my knees and begged her to marry me all over again.
I hadn’t told her, but she knew. Or, was she just saying it to piss Sylvie off?
The car jolted as it turned down the driveway to our home, yanking me from my musings. I braced a hand on Rory’s limp head before it could fall off my shoulder.
I need to tell her tonight. If she only said that to piss Sylvie off, she needs to know the truth.
I thought about the way Rory looked at me sometimes. The soft smiles and gentle way she touched me. I ached for her to say the words back and feared she wouldn’t. But I would tell her anyway.
When the car stopped in front of the house, I gently shook Rory awake. “Rory, baby, we’re home.” She raised her head and looked around the car, blinking as if she was confused until her gaze settled on mine. The clouds cleared almost immediately and she smiled at me. I could see the moment she remembered the evening, because her smile dropped like a bag of bricks.
“Cal…I have to tell you something.” The hesitancy in her voice sent anxiety spiking through my system and my brain ran off with every scenario it could conjure.
“We’ll talk inside, my love. Come on.” I opened the door and gently helped her slide across the seat. She’d removed her heels so as soon as her legs were out of the car I lifted her into my arms. She leaned her head against my shoulder, wrapping her hand around one side of my neck and pressing her forehead against the other. She held onto me with a strength I didn’t think she could possibly possess after the ordeal of the evening, much less the last two weeks.
Finn, Connor and Carson followed us into my study, the door closing behind them. I sat with her in my lap and the men took their spots across from us. Rory adjusted herself, sitting up and removing her phone from her pocket. She turned it over and over in her hands, looking nervously at my men before meeting my gaze.
“What I found is…sensitive. Are you sure you don’t want to be alone?”
I ran a gentle hand from her head to her lower back, petting her over and over again. “Whatever you tell me is going to get back to them anyway. If it’s that serious, they need to be aware of it so we can discuss it and react accordingly. I’d rather just save time and you tell us all now.”
She took a deep breath. “Shit, where do I start?” Her eyes wandered the room and her hands clenched around the phone until her knuckles turned white as she gathered her thoughts.
“Elio isn’t the one that organized the attack on me. When I was in Elio’s office, he and Marco came in. I overheard them talking about murdering you and Elio asked if Marco had discovered who was behind the poison. Marco said they were still looking. Elio wants to find out who did it and pay them double to make sure the next attempt is successful, but I think…maybe, Marco isn’t actually looking very hard because one of Elio’s enforcers saw me leaving his office. He tried to attack me but Marco knocked him out and let me leave.”
“Marco works for me,” I said quietly, my eyes scanning the men for their reactions to this news. “He contacted me about six months ago, asking if I would be interested in taking Marino down. I made him prove himself before I’d trust him. He repeatedly gave me useful information that always turned out to be true.”
Rory frowned thoughtfully before shaking her head, like she was forcing her thoughts to refocus. “When they were talking, Elio said you’d be so devastated by my death that it would be the perfect time to launch an attack against you but Marco kept telling him to be patient and think things through, like he was trying to talk him out of it. And once they left, I found the file and-” She stopped and swallowed, her face going pale. “Cal, I-…I know who your father was.”
Everything had spilled out of her in a rush but the last words were said so softly I thought I hadn’t heard her correctly. They hit like an atomic bomb. The silent room somehow went even quieter, more still. Everything felt frozen, even the blood in my veins slowing to a sluggish crawl. I had to physically force my lungs to expand. “What? What did you say?”
She took a deep breath and met my eyes briefly before unlocking her phone and navigating to her photo album. She opened an image and handed me the phone.
“There are twelve photos. Most of it is just Elio’s plans to have you marry Fern, and then how they were going to carry out your murder and cover it up to blame on Mikhail. There’s a lot of notes about a car bomb. There’s a few pages of new plans, now that we’re married instead. The last page is a paternity report. The report is dated June of 1996.”
My brain struggled to keep up with what she was saying. “That’s when I was born.” Rory nodded slowly, her fingers tangling in the hair at the nape of my neck. I looked at the men around me, my closest friends, and met Finn’s eyes. His worried gaze and clenched jaw did nothing to assuage my anxiety.
I pulled Rory closed by the hips and held her tightly to me, but she seemed reluctant, like she was trying to pull away. I frowned and pulled her against me anyway, my hands shaking against her hip and around the phone. I lifted the device, my eyes glued to each photo. On the last photo, I saw the words stamped across the top and the tremble in my hands doubled.
PATERNITY REPORT
Rory wrapped her hand around mine and steadied the phone. I held her eyes and her mouth flattened, worry and fear filling her gaze.
Her fear was enough to pull me out of my confused haze and I frowned. “Why are you afraid, mo solas? You look like you did the night you thought I was going to send you back to Elio.”
Her throat worked around a swallow and tears began to shimmer in her eyes. Her hold on me tightened and then released, as if she’d already resigned herself to being shoved off my lap. “I’m afraid you might, after you read that report.”
“Never!” I replied vehemently. She dropped her gaze and I lifted the phone again, reading through the report. Shock settled in my gut and for a moment, I couldn’t comprehend what I was reading.
Cesare Marino - 99.9999% probability of paternity.
My wide gaze finally lifted from the phone to meet Finn’s. He frowned and moved closer. He always stood off to the side, ready to fight and defend no matter where we were. But whatever he saw on my face brought him closer to me.
“What is it, bráthair?” I turned the phone to him. When his gaze lifted to mine again, his gaze held almost as much shock as I felt. Connor cleared his throat and Rory shifted to move off my lap, breaking the heavy moment between Finn and I. I clamped my arm around Rory’s waist and pulled her tight against me again, laying my forehead on the round of her shoulder.
I spoke to the twins without raising my head. “If that report is to be believed, my father was Cesare Marino. Elio Marino is my biological uncle.”
There was a short gasp followed by weighted silence. When I finally raised my head, I met Rory’s tired eyes. They were rimmed by dark circles and shaky.
I gripped her thigh and pulled her even tighter against me, taking a deep breath. “Which means my wife is also my step-cousin.”
“Cal,” her voice was slow and thick. She wasn’t going to last much longer, whatever strength the IV medication had given her fading fast after the adrenaline filled evening. “It also means you’re the rightful heir to the NYC Cosa Nostra.”
Oh, fecking shite.