Epilogue #2
The drive home is filled with celebratory chatter. We're planning a celebration dinner at her favorite restaurant when a sharp pain shoots through my lower back.
At first, I thought it might be from the tension of the day and too long sitting in the waiting room. But when another wave hits five minutes later, followed by a distinctly different kind of cramping, I realize what's happening.
"Ronan," I say carefully, not wanting to alarm anyone. "I think we need to turn around."
He glances back at me in the rearview mirror. "Why? Did you forget something at the hospital?"
Another contraction makes me gasp, stronger this time. "No, I think… I think the baby is coming."
The car goes silent for a heartbeat. Then Ronan turns the car around faster than I thought possible, heading back in the direction we came.
I grip the door handle as another wave hits. "This wasn't supposed to happen for two weeks."
"She's excited to meet her grandmother," Mom says from the backseat, a smile in her voice. "She heard the good news and decided it was time."
"Very funny," I gasp, but I'm smiling too, despite the pain. It feels right—finding out Mom is going to be okay and immediately going into labor. Like our daughter knows exactly when it's safe to make her entrance into the world.
By the time we screech back into the hospital parking lot, the contractions are three minutes apart, and I can barely walk. A medical team rushes me up to the maternity floor, and Dr. Walsh meets us at the elevator.
"Couldn't stay away?" she jokes, but her expression is professional as she assesses my condition. "Let's get you settled and see how far along you are."
The next eight hours are a blur of pain and exhaustion.
Ronan never leaves my side, holding my hand through every contraction and whispering encouragement when I'm convinced I can't do this anymore. My mom stays close by, checking on me in between taking breaks from being on her feet. I’m wrung out and feel like I’m floating by the time I hear a sharp cry, and I realize our baby is here.
“Leila.” Ronan’s voice cracks, and I see him staring with awe as the nurse hands me our squalling baby. "Leila, she's perfect."
I can’t stop staring either. “She is, isn’t she?” I whisper, tears welling in my eyes as I touch her cheek with one fingertip. Ronan leans over us both, his eyes wide as he takes in the sight in front of him.
"Hello, little one," he whispers, his voice thick with emotion. "I'm your daddy."
"She's so beautiful," I manage through my own tears. "Look what we made."
"Look what you did," he corrects, leaning down to kiss my forehead. "You're incredible, Leila. She's incredible."
“I think her name is Rose,” I say softly. “Rose O’Malley. I like that, don’t you?”
“It’s perfect,” Ronan agrees. “Rose. A perfect name for a perfect baby.”
"Are you happy?" I ask, suddenly needing to hear him say it. I look up at him, and I can see the answer written all over his face.
"Happier than I ever thought possible,” he promises me, leaning in to kiss my forehead again. "Are you?"
“Yes,” I whisper, still staring at our daughter. “I’ve never been happier in my entire life.”
“Good.” Ronan reaches out, touching my cheek as he looks at me, love like nothing I’ve ever seen shining in his eyes. “Because this is just the beginning. You’re my whole world, Leila, and our daughter is too, now.”
“You are too, for me,” I whisper. “You both are my world. Our world.”
The one we built together from the ashes of everything that tried to destroy us. A world that, no matter the danger, is perfect because we’re together.
And nothing will ever tear us apart.
I hope you enjoyed Ruthless Savior!
Ready to meet your next book bae?
Elio Cattaneo was the forbidden boy who got away.
Now he’s back in Boston, no longer the ward beneath the O’Malley family’s roof but the ruthless don of the Italian mafia.
Annie O’Malley has spent eleven years trying to forget the boy she once loved, but when an attack leaves her with nowhere else to turn, she runs straight into his arms.
Isolated in a safe house, surrounded by lies and danger, the desire between them refuses to stay buried. The girl he left has become the woman he can’t walk away from. And when vows are made in desperation, Elio knows one thing with absolute certainty.
He left her once. This time, he will never let her go.
Vicious Heir is a story you won’t want to put down, filled with tropes you love:
He Falls First and Hard
Touch Her and Die
Second Chance Romance
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Now, for the sneak peek of Ruthless Savior…
Chapter One
Annie
“Here are the numbers for the overseas bank accounts. We’re ahead of the projections I gave you last fiscal quarter, so you should be pleased.
And all of the money is clean. Washed through the businesses you wanted to prioritize—the new gentlemen’s club downtown, the two new restaurants, and the speakeasy.
” I push the documents over to my brother’s side of the desk, sitting primly in the chair opposite him despite the fact that he is my brother, and I could wear pajamas to this meeting and slouch if I wanted to.
I’m still his finance manager, and it matters to me that I have this role in the family. That Ronan O’Malley, head of the Irish mafia in Boston and my older brother, has given me this responsibility, this freedom.
Truthfully, it was our father who put me in this role, initially. But I can’t think about him right now. That wound is still too fresh, too new, in addition to the other wounds our family has sustained over the past year.
“Good. This all looks good, Annie.” Ronan scans the documents, and I know he’s giving them the cursory once-over that he’s supposed to as the boss, but he trusts me fully, and he’s never had a head for numbers.
No one in the immediate family does, except for me, which is a large part of why I was sent to Columbia to study finance and then brought back home to make sure that our family’s illegal money comes out looking squeaky clean on the other side.
I’ve always been good with math, and I love it.
The organization, the fact that if you just know the formulas and the patterns, it will work out the way it needs to.
No subjectivity. No arguments or theorizing. Just cold, hard numbers and manipulating them to do what I need them to.
“Did you even read it?” I tease him as he hands the file back. “Or did you just say that to sound smart?”
“If you were an actual employee, you couldn’t talk to me like that.” Ronan smirks at me, glancing at his computer screen.
“I am an actual employee,” I shoot back. “You pay me a salary. I know, it’s part of the spreadsheets I do every month.”
“Maybe I should dock it for your insubordination.” He grins at me, but there’s no real heat in it. I smile back, the curve of my lips feeling somewhat unfamiliar after the events of the past six months… but the last two, in particular.
It feels good to smile again, honestly. There’s been too much grief, too much death, pocketed with moments of happiness—like finding out that Ronan’s wife is pregnant and that I’m going to be an aunt, or their second, more intimate wedding that they had with just family and friends when they came back from Ireland.
Ireland, where our father—Padraigh O’Malley—died.
Ireland, where his body is buried now, in a quick and hasty funeral that our brother Tristan didn’t even fly out to attend.
He was too furious that, after a lifetime of strife between him and Padraigh, our father committed a betrayal too deeply painful to ignore—not toward him, but toward Ronan.
Our beloved older brother, who has already gone through far too much, deserved better than that from the father he idolized and adored all our lives. And though I’ve grieved my father’s death since the moment Ronan called me with the news, I also understand why it had to happen.
Including the means of how he died.
Our world is blood, and violence, and often pain.
But it can also be beautiful. It can also be full of life, and joy, and fulfillment, for all the duty and responsibility that wear us down sometimes…
and no one more so than Ronan, who is responsible for not only his own wife and child, but also the rest of us.
Tristan and me. If something—anything—were to happen to us, or because of us, it’s ultimately he who has to answer for it.
Which is also why sometimes, I wish he’d look a little closer at the paperwork I hand him before signing off on it, even if he trusts me with the numbers.
“Is there anything else?” Ronan looks at me as I tuck the file back into my bag. “I have another meeting here shortly. Although you’re welcome to stay if you like—you might want to, actually.”
I raise an eyebrow. “Why is that? You’re not trying to set me up with someone, are you?”
An odd look passes over Ronan’s face, and I feel a leap of anxiety in my stomach.
I’ve been fortunate all my life that neither my father nor my older brother ever pressured me to marry.
There’s no need for it, really—Ronan is the heir, and his wife is pregnant, and Tristan has his own empire in Miami and his wife with a baby on the way.
The O’Malley line is secured, and there’s no real need for me to contribute to it.