Epilogue #2
I slipped from the kitchen, and on silent feet, I headed up the back stairs. My fingertips brushed along the cool, white wall. Toby said I’d find the person I was looking for behind the last door at the end of the hallway.
I paused and took a breath before twisting the handle.
The room was dark. A solitary silhouette sat in a chair shoved in the corner, but there was a rustle of movement when I tiptoed inside.
“Gwen—” Liam’s voice was rattled. The clink of a bottle. More shuffling. Maybe the clink of glasses. “I—”
“Relax,” I reassured him. “I know you drink.” I edged the door closed behind me. “It doesn’t bother me. You’re not like her. I know you’re a good man.”
Liam scoffed a sound but sank back into the chair and crossed his ankle over his knee. “I’m many things, clever Gwen… Good isn’t one of them.”
We’d have to agree to disagree about that.
I’d seen the way Liam let Noah clutch his thumb as he pointed out the new herbs sprouting in Cat’s garden and the gentle way he held my little boy when he was asked for a cuddle.
There was something sweet buried in the hollow echoes of my brother’s chest…
if only he’d let someone close enough to see it.
I tiptoed over and sat on the edge of the bed. “You struggle with the noise?”
Liam jerked his chin in a nod. “Too many years with…” He waved a hand like the memories of our childhood were nothing, but I knew better. “Is your husband still crowing about finishing the first year of his doctorate?”
“He’s pretty proud. He’s always thought of himself as the dumbest person in the room”—I shrugged—“but he’s found his talent in pediatric dentistry. The change has been one of the best things that’s happened to him in a long time.”
“The lovable Labrador is certainly a hit with the children. And what of your vocation?”
“Are you mad at me for resigning?”
Liam scoffed a laugh. “Eli’s been preparing me for the day you’d leave since you first started.” There was an uncomfortable tightness to the smile he forced. “Helping those teenagers won’t save me, Gwen.”
Nibbling my bottom lip, I pretended Liam hadn’t seen right through me by smoothing the hem of my dress over my knees.
“You should’ve accepted your job back in the Prosecutor’s Office,” he continued. “Being an underpaid defender for the miscreant youth of Sydney is a waste of your talents.”
I could’ve batted back with any of the excuses I’d made when I’d surprised everyone with my new career path, but instead, I answered the real question. “Caring about you was never a waste.”
Another scoff. “You should have left me to die that night.”
“Never.” Even half-hidden in shadows, he wouldn’t miss the fierce protectiveness in my glare.
“There was no way I was leaving you that night. Or any night. You got that?” Shaking my head, I took a deep breath.
Getting overly emotional about a night that happened more than seventeen years ago wouldn’t help me convince Liam, but it was hard to keep my feelings in check.
Memories of how broken and bruised he’d been still haunted me. “Wha…what happened that night?”
Liam shrugged. “I was too full of my own importance. Signor Morelli and the loyal elder Sullivan took it upon themselves to remind me how low I was in the pecking order.” There was a slight tremble to his hand when he lifted his glass. “It was a valuable lesson.”
I bet it was . “For when you finally rose to the top of the pecking order?”
Liam hummed softly, almost proud. “Clever Gwen.” He swirled his drink in the glass. “I did warn you.” It disappeared again in one gulp.
“You’re fighting Morelli to rule the underworld?”
“No.” Liam smiled. “He’s already lost that battle.”
“Is that why you left all those years ago?”
He cocked his head, thinking. “I had a choice to make. I saw our lives laid out in front of me. I knew my path, but what was yours? Sitting on the throne beside me? You, little Gwen, would’ve been formidable in my world.
” His face softened with a smile far too affectionate for what he was talking about.
“I used to listen to you cry yourself to sleep after our mother had done her worst. There was still some humanity in you. I could’ve stolen it, but because you saved me, I chose to save you. ”
“Liam—”
“Enough of that now.”
“And Ian? You had something to do with his death…didn’t you?”
Liam held my gaze but said nothing. His face was expressionless. He had something to do with it, and he wasn’t sorry.
“Please don’t tell Toby,” I blurted out. A flicker of surprise widened Liam’s eyes, and I rushed on, “He’s not like us, Liam. Not just because he didn’t grow up in Cabramatta, but he…he just—”
“I won’t tell him,” he reassured me gently. “I always miscalculate when it comes to Toby. I thought he’d be grateful for what happened and bounce back in a day or two, but it took so much longer for the light to come back to his eyes.”
“Almost two months,” I whispered.
“ That pain. That I never intended for him. Or you. And for that, at least, I’m so very sorry.”
I wanted to blurt out that I wasn’t sorry.
My one weakness. I wasn’t naive enough to believe the justice system I fiercely defended would’ve helped protect me from Ian.
I wasn’t angry that my brother had stepped up to do it instead.
I didn’t have to look over my shoulder. My family was safe.
And the memories of Ian’s threats and wayward hands would stay just that— memories.
What type of person did that make me? A hypocrite? Maybe. Probably. I was a long way from being perfect, and for the first time in my life, I was okay with that.
“Is that why you came all the way up here?” Liam asked softly.
“No. I came…for…” What had Toby called it? “Storytime.”
“And what tale of woe do you want to hear?”
“The one I asked about last Christmas.”
“No.”
“I’m ready now.”
“Absolutely not. Once you know the truth, there’s no going back.”
“I know, but…” I took a deep breath. “I need to know who our father is.”
When I refused to budge, Liam sighed. “Then come sit here beside me.” He patted the empty chair next to his in the corner. “I’ll tell you the story that was told to me.”
He poured me a drink, and after clinking our glasses in a somber toast, he started telling me a story I wasn’t sure I was ready to hear.
“Once upon a time, when our mother was barely eighteen and still so very pretty, she was closing up the bakery off Railway Parade…”
The End