Chapter 25 CIARA
CIARA
The place is packed, the music is blaring, drinks are flowing—I really don’t want to be here.
Ever since that night at the Orion—that night Katie and I cannot remember—I’ve been feeling uneasy in crowded, noisy places.
I have given an awful lot of thought to what Katie said, that if Aiden is responsible for what happened to those men, he most likely saved us that night.
My gut tells me that she isn’t wrong, but I can’t figure out why he would do it.
Why would he go out of his way to protect two women he didn’t know?
Why would he fixate on my sister so intensely?
My gut is screaming that Aiden is responsible for those men being missing, but I cannot prove it, and even if I could, part of me wants to repay the favour and keep my mouth shut altogether.
I have made a lot of mistakes in life—more than a lot.
I don’t have everything together like most would assume from the outside looking in.
To most, me and Katie had a normal childhood. When asked how things were at home, my reply was always “fine.”
I’d go to the grave before admitting the truth about the abuse and trauma we suffered growing up in that house.
Katie, though, she may be my little sister but she has some serious strength and resilience.
She doesn’t give a toss anymore. She’s vocal about what we’ve been through ever since she had that breakdown.
She doesn’t hide her pain, her truth, or, at least, the parts she cannot hide.
I have a sneaking suspicion that she is hiding something about her past. She’s opened up about almost everything to me, but there is something she refuses to talk about, and if it is what I think it is, it breaks my heart that I could not protect her.
I’ve done some major reflection since January, searching deep within myself to try and understand why I do the things I do. After falling down the rabbit hole with Google and talking to Katie, who has the weirdest habit of psychoanalysing me, I’ve discovered a lot of it is due to trauma.
Stockholm syndrome, as Katie referred to it, I protect my abusers to this day.
I’ve developed OCD with cleaning because it’s the one thing I have always had control over.
I couldn’t stop our parents from drinking, but I could keep our living space clean.
It’s a coping mechanism that helps me feel safe and in control amidst chaos.
I used alcohol as a way to numb the pain and escape reality, but now I’m working on healthier coping mechanisms with the help of therapy and a heap of meditation.
The door to the function room opens, and I see him before I see her.
Aiden steps into the room like an unofficial bodyguard; already, I can see him scanning every face in the room in the time it takes Katie to step through the door behind him. His arm is around her waist in an instant, guiding her towards the centre of the room.
“Who is that?” Sarah tosses her black hair over her shoulder.
“That’s Aiden, Katie’s new boyfriend,” I reply, watching as they make their way through the crowd with ease.
Sarah was one of Katie’s friends when they were teenagers.
She became pregnant at sixteen and dropped out of school, not uncommon for anyone growing up in an underdeveloped area like we did.
I don’t know what happened with them. I know Katie was still close with her until her early twenties before they drifted apart.
It couldn’t have been the kid thing; that divide would have happened sooner if that were the case.
I think it had something to do with one of Sarah’s boyfriends; I vaguely remember Katie ranting about it to Maria.
It definitely was not a jealousy thing anyway.
I may be biassed in saying it, but Sarah hasn’t gotten a patch on my sister; she’s passable at the best of times, and the guys she sees are meh at best.
Well matched in the looks department, harsh or not, it’s a reality.
One look at Katie and Aiden, and anyone can tell they’re well suited for each other. Even if he does look at her like a lion eyeing a gazelle, he’s not just protective of my sister; he’s obsessed.
“I’ll go and say hi,” Sarah adjusts her dress, trying to push her breasts up a little higher. She honestly can’t help herself. She thinks she’s fucking stunning. What I wouldn’t give to have that confidence. I can see it before it happens, she’s going to fall flat on her face.
Maybe this is why she and Katie stopped being friends?
Sarah clearly doesn’t give a damn that Aiden is stuck to my sister like glue; she’s going to try and flirt with him, seduce him.
I would put a stop to this immediately, but I want to see this car crash go down.
It’s like watching a train wreck in slow motion; I can’t look away.
Not when she approaches them with a honey-laced, harpy grin or brushes her fingers against Aiden’s arm.
He glances at the spot her fingers touched, as if she just sneezed in her hand and wiped it on him.
“Oh shit,” I mutter into my glass. The grin he gives her is cruel at best. I can’t hear what he says, but whatever it is, it makes Sarah’s jaw hit the floor and her face turn bright red.
Katie’s eyes meet mine, there is a twinkle of amusement dancing in them as she watches the drama unfold. I try to suppress a smile, but it’s impossible to pretend I’m not greatly amused by Sarah storming off in a huff.
“You’re losing your touch,” I say to Aiden, stepping up beside him and Katie. “She didn’t cry.”
Aiden’s lips curve into a genuine smirk. “I try not to make a scene. It’s your nephew’s big day after all.”
“We better say hi.” Katie tugs on Aiden’s arm, leading him towards Anthony and the two boys. Liam lights up when he sees her coming, his face breaking into a wide grin.
“So that’s the boyfriend?” Michael asks, raising an eyebrow. He has the same dark brown hair as our mam, and his eyes are a striking hazel like dad’s. “How old?”
“Thirty-one.”
He gives Aiden the once-over, then growls, “He’s too old for her.”
“He’s younger than her, you muppet.” Rolling my eyes, I take a sip of my drink, biting back a snarky comment.
Michael is the oldest and with the exception of Anthony’s recent degree, he is the best educated of all of us. However, he’s all book smart, completely devoid of common sense. I’ve never met anyone who is so smart and yet so absurdly stupid at the same time.
He looks at me as if he’s trying to calculate how much time he has missed with Katie over the years.
Brother by blood and blood alone, he made a run for it when he was sixteen; he’s nothing but an acquaintance to Katie. She doesn’t know him, and he most certainly doesn’t know her.
“She’s thirty-three, dumbass.” I shouldn’t be surprised.
Michael only thinks of himself. I only hear from him when he needs money, and Anthony only hears from him when he wants to stay a night in his because he’s closer to work and saves him on petrol.
Katie never hears from him. Ever. He was an arsehole to her growing up anyway; she never needed him and never missed him.
While I cleaned to cope with our tumultuous upbringing, Katie was quiet—too quiet, gullible, a pushover—until that breakdown she had at twenty-six.
Trauma, autism, and ADHD don’t mix well.
She turned to food to numb the pain, and she gained quite a bit of weight.
Michael made sure to point it out to her every chance he got.
He would offer to bring her out for the day and criticise her food choices and her dress size if he were ever buying her clothes.
It wasn’t enough that she was bullied at school, and by Mam, he had to add his toxic opinions to the mix.
Anthony tried to help from the distance he put in, but it was all too easy for him to avoid what was going on at home when he moved out.
Out of sight, out of mind. That’s what we were.
I had the option to leave; I had an out.
Two friends of mine wanted to split the cost of renting a three-bedroom house not far from home, but I couldn’t do it.
I couldn’t do what my brothers did and leave Katie to the wolves.
I couldn’t leave her. I’m far from perfect; I never claimed to be.
I’m her big sister; it was my job to protect her when our parents failed to do it.
Which makes what happened back in January all the more hurtful—the guilt weighs heavy on my shoulders.
Aiden was right; I was a reckless idiot. He was right about what he said to me; his venom was searing but not unjust. I needed that wake-up call to make me look at things and rethink my life.
“Didn’t he kill a guy?” Michael presses, loud enough for Aiden and Katie to overhear.
Possibly. I wouldn’t be half surprised if he killed more than one. “Speculation, charges never stuck.”
Maybe I should be more unnerved about my sister’s choice of partner. I was at first. But seeing them together, it’s clear that she’s happy; he treats her well. Maybe I misjudged him.
“I don’t like the way he looks at her,” Michael comments, his eyes narrowing as he watches the couple interact. “I just have a bad feeling about him.”
“He’d kill for her.” I think he already has, hence the two missing men.
Maybe having someone like Aiden Quinn around isn’t such a bad thing after all.
I can safely say that he would never allow anyone to so much as sneeze in my sister’s direction.
He’s intense, yes, but considering what we’ve grown up with, having an overprotective lover like him might not be the worst thing in the world.
“He treats her like a queen; he even made a run for the guinea pigs in one of his houses so she doesn’t have to worry about them when she’s staying with him. ”
We’ve seen my dad beat the shit out of my mam on a number of occasions.
She was asking for it (no, literally) when Mam wasn’t around dad was a “nice” drunk.
He’d keep to himself—no violence, no outbursts, no nothing.
He would get himself something to eat, watch some movies, and go to bed.
Mam never wanted the man to have any form of peace; she would just keep picking fights and pushing his buttons until he snapped.
It could take hours, but she was nothing if not relentless.
She’d insult his manhood, his weight, his family, and anything else she could think of until he saw red, then she’d run and play the victim.
She threw Anthony down the stairs, almost breaking his back; my dad nearly killed her for it.
I cannot blame him. If someone did that to my child, if I had one, I’d murder them.
She beat us—everyone except Michael; he’s always escaped her wrath for some reason.
The twins had to stop dad from slitting my mam’s throat at one stage; Katie couldn’t have been any more than six.
She was asleep when it kicked off. Thankfully, we were too busy crying in our bunk beds to see it happen, though we heard everything.
Dad’s shotgun was pulled out at one stage because he had a dispute with a neighbour.
We’ve had to pick up the drunken, half naked bodies of our parents after passing out in the bathroom and guide them to their beds.
We’ve had to walk them up the stairs to ensure they didn’t topple back down.
We were afraid to go home, afraid to leave home because the knot in our stomachs at lunchtime when we were walking home from school would make us nauseous with worry about what we might find.
In truth, dad was no angel. But he never hurt us—not physically anyway. He’s just another one of my mother’s victims, only he doesn’t realise it.
I glance back at Katie; she’s pulling away from Aiden, heading towards the bathroom, not without being pulled back to his chest to get a kiss on the forehead. He’s oddly sweet.
How fucked up is my head that I can trust a potential killer with my sister rather than our own parents? I can justify that relationship because I know Aiden would never harm her. Hell, he might be the healthiest thing to happen to her—I really need more counselling.
“I’m going to get a drink,” I mutter, bypassing Michael and heading to the bar.
Aiden slides up beside me a moment later, his grey eyes as intense as ever. “Who is that Sarah girl?”
“An old friend of Katie’s, her daughter is friends with John, the youngest of Anthony’s boys.”
Aiden nods, his expression unreadable. “What happened with them?”
“Why do you want to know?”
He doesn’t miss a beat. “Katie stiffened as soon as she laid eyes on her; something obviously happened with them.”
“I don’t know,” I admit. “She never said much, but I assume a fight of some kind.”
“What makes you say that?” He presses, pushing his card onto the reader for payment, before I can even respond. Then he orders drinks for himself and Katie.
“Thanks,” I say as he hands me my drink.
“From what I remember, she rang me one night, pissed as a newt. She was on the road and couldn’t find the house,” I laugh, remembering how I found her down the end of the road wandering around, claiming she “lost the house.” “She was really sick that night; she threw up in her sleep and everything. I’ve never seen her like that. ”
Two lines form between his brows. “Was she out clubbing?”
“No.” Placing the drink down, I risk a glance over my shoulder to see if Katie is coming. She’s not. “Just having a few drinks at Sarah’s house; she clearly didn’t know her limit back then.”
Aiden looks like he’s trying to piece together a puzzle. “Then what happened?”
“I’m not sure; Katie just put in distance after that and stopped hanging around with her.”
Aiden’s expression darkens.
“What is it?” I must be feeling brave tonight; then again, his venom is directed at Sarah right now and not me.
“Nothing,” he turns back to me with an insincere smile.
“Just curious.” He turns his head as if he has a built-in sensor when it comes to my sister, the ice in his eyes melts when he spots Katie heading our way.
“Ah, there’s my girl now.” Aiden’s demeanour instantly changes, his face lights up with a genuine smile.
I catch the final glare he gives an unsuspecting Sarah and shiver.
“Better her than me,” grabbing my drink, I go in search of the girls in attendance. The twenty-one kisses will be called soon, and I need to make sure that Liam’s girlfriend is his twenty-first kiss, or the claws will be out tonight.