two

AEOLA

“YOU’RE SHITTING ME.”

It wasn’t a question. It was a statement.

A statement because I knew Brennan was joking. He had to be, didn’t he?

Of course, there was massive concern over the fact that he was the one imparting this news to me.

After all, Brennan rarely joked.

It wasn’t that he was somber, it was that he saw the world a little differently. There was nothing wrong with that considering the world we lived in was a shower of shit, but still, he wasn’t easily amused.

And he’d never laugh or joke about the fact that I had a son out there.

A son I’d fathered with Aela O’Neill.

My throat tightened at the memories of her. She’d been the one who got away. The one I’d loved. Who I’d let get away.

At the time, a part of me had been relieved when she’d gone, so there’d been no blame. No recriminations. I’d even thought she was smart to leave the city.

A lot of people underestimated her, but never me.

She was a little ditzy because her mind was usually in a sketchpad, cooking up various things for her projects, but anyone who failed to see how smart she was deserved to be in the outer circle.

She’d been one of the best people I’d known.

Until shit had gone wrong. Until my past had come crawling up my butt and I’d had to let go of the best thing that had ever happened to me.

“How?

Brennan scowled at me. “How?”

Because I knew why he was scowling, I rolled my eyes even though that hurt, and ground out, “I don’t need a talk on the birds and the bees, Bren. I’m just talking out loud.”

“Oh.” He shrugged. “You were boning her on the side for a while. You were dumb back then. Not too hard to figure it out.”

I narrowed my eyes at him. “Fuck off, you never knew that.”

His lips twisted slightly. “I know everything about the family.”

That had me complaining, “When you and Eoghan say crap like that, it’s creepy as fuck.”

“Maybe, but you should be grateful. At least I know the stuff that would make our enemies come if they got their hands on our weaknesses.”

“You didn’t know about my son though, did you?” I wasn’t smug about that, because I wished I’d known about him too, but Brennan could be an arrogant shithead sometimes.

He wriggled his shoulders. “I can be forgiven for that. When you were busy boning Catholic schoolgirls—”

“I was a Catholic schoolboy at the time,” I groused. “So don’t make me out to be a pervert—”

“I was working full-time, and you know I had to work hard to make the docks ours.”

I rolled my eyes. “Overachiever.”

His lips twisted. “You’re taking this better than I thought.”

“Probably the drugs. They’re wearing off,” I replied honestly, staring around the hospital ward that was something from a nightmare.

Or an episode of The Blacklist.

I’d only woken up in one of these joints once before, and I had to say, I hated it.

We drew out the big guns when someone was badly injured, illegally, and waking up like this was just horrendous and something I wouldn’t wish on an enemy. Being in the middle of a black space in a bright area that was covered up in plastic sheeting made me feel like the kid in E.T., when the house was all excluded.

Fuck, I’d hated that movie, and that goddamn alien still visited me in my dreams.

Reaching up to rub my eyes, I muttered, “The drugs make everything bearable, I guess.”

Brennan snorted. “Don’t get any ideas. We’ve already got one junkie in the family.”

I grunted. “Aidan ain’t no junkie.”

“You’re a fool if you don’t think he is. Just because he isn’t shooting up and doesn’t have track marks all over his body doesn’t mean he isn’t an addict. We’re pussyfooting around him—”

I raised a hand. “I can’t deal with this right now.” Brennan winced. “Sorry, bro.”

“No. It’s okay. We need to do something about him, you’re right. But I just got my ass handed to me. You need to remember that.”

He pursed his lips. “You were reckless.” “Maybe.”

As one of the lieutenants of the Five Points’ Mob, I often got my hands dirty. Brennan too. It was part of the job, part of the life.

We were high-ranking—the highest because our father trusted no one more than he trusted his boys—but we were still involved with integral parts of the puzzle, even though in most families like ours, the heirs were untouchable, rarely getting involved in wet work.

Things had devolved a few nights ago. Aela O’Neill—a blast from the past if ever there was one—had been visited by

an MC Prez’s daughter.

The kid had discovered that her partner had been kidnapped by the Famiglia, and the Italian cunts were going to kill him unless we helped rescue him.

While we sure as fuck were no white knights, the Hell’s Rebels MC was renowned for the quality and their level of production of ghost guns—a type of weapon that had no serial number on them, so they couldn’t be traced.

When we’d cut a deal, we’d gone in and saved the fucker, but I’d gotten shot up in the process. I knew for a fact that we’d lost another of our men too.

A sad day.

And even worse, my body hurt like a fucker.

In my own way, I was used to pain though. We all were. Knife fights, gun fights, fist fights—they were par for the course.

That was my life, and I didn’t want— My jaw clenched.

I shouldn’t think about that crap.

Couldn’t.

Because if I did, I’d do something stupid. I’d be kind or something. I’d think of the son I didn’t know existed and not of the family, and family was everything.

It was all.

That was our creed. Something that had been drilled into us for a lifetime.

But with that creed came the realization that if I didn’t protect the boy who I’d never known about, he’d be in danger too.

“What’s that look on your face?”

Brennan’s question had me blinking at him. “Huh? Nothing.”

He narrowed his eyes at me. “What’s going on with you, Dec? I thought you’d be wicked pissed. That’s why I made sure to tell you on my own. Didn’t want you upsetting Ma.”

I scowled. “Why do you always think I’m going to upset Ma?”

His lips twitched. “Because you usually do.” “Now you’re just pissing me off,” I growled.

“That’s what I do best.” His sage tone had me huffing, before he said, “I thought you’d be furious.”

I wasn’t.

That was the kicker.

I wasn’t furious, and I knew I should be.

I had a son.

And family was everything.

I should have been there for him, should have helped him grow, should have helped form him into the man he was going to be some day.

Instead, I’d had no input, but I got it.

I did.

And I was almost sad for the kid, because now?

He was going to be introduced into the life, and it wasn’t a good life.

I could admit that to myself.

I could admit it when I’d never thought a damn thing about what I did for a living before, because what I did was just the way of it.

As natural as night following day.

O’Donnellys worked for the family.

That was it.

How it worked.

Like clockwork.

My da had worked for his father, and his brothers had done the same—not that they were as smart as us, of course. But still. We’d turned the fam around, gotten us out of the penny-ante shit, and turned us into a corporation.

But that didn’t take away from the bones of what we were.

And I wasn’t sure if I wanted a kid of mine doing that, being involved in this crap.

The dilemma had me wondering if Finn, one of our family friends and the Points’ money man, was feeling the same way about his kid.

His wife had just had a baby, well, a while back, and I had to wonder if he thought about his son doing the shit we did.

“You’re not angry.”

The simple statement had me blinking at the opening in the ward. It was odd because it was a make-shift door with plastic sheets that were Velcroed together, so the sound of the ripping should have dragged me from my thoughts. It hadn’t.

Maybe the drugs were dulling everything.

I stared at my brother, Eoghan, and shook my head. “I will be. Just give me time.”

But he didn’t smirk at me.

He just stared at me.

Christ.

Brennan and Eoghan always saw too much.

I felt like a petri dish with the way they were both gawking at me, and I scowled at them. “What do you want me to do? Go full out Hulk on you?”

Brennan shrugged. “I think that was what I anticipated.”

“Did the doctors say he woke up too early?” Eoghan asked Brennan, pissing me off that they were talking around me, not to me.

I heaved an irritated breath. “Look, I’m tired. I need to rest.”

• didn’t.

• felt wide awake.

• was definitely more mellow than I should be, definitely a lot more chilled about this situation… yeah, had to be the drugs.

Eoghan grunted. “Stay awake for a little bit longer. Ma’s on her way. She was shitting herself.”

“Not literally, I hope,” I rumbled, trying to tease and failing.

Brennan and Eoghan didn’t crack a smile—serious fuckers. “Jesus, where’s Conor? At least he’ll laugh at my crappy jokes.”

“He’s asleep in the waiting room. We’re all exhausted because we’ve been here for two goddamn days watching over you.”

My mouth turned down. “Yeah. I get it.” “No. I don’t think you do,” Brennan retorted.

I gritted my teeth before I muttered, “Move the pillows out from behind my head. This position hurts.”

Eoghan moved toward me and helped shuffle out the two pillows a nurse had stacked under my shoulders when I’d woken up and found Brennan sitting at my bedside.

The instant relief was enough to make me sigh heavily. I allowed myself to rock back and let my muscles settle.

“I’m just going to rest my eyes,” I mumbled, suddenly needing the peace of sleep and a spare moment to stop the buzzing in my head that had nothing to do with almost being shot, blood loss, drugs, or the aftereffects of emergency surgery.

A low hum of conversation came next, and I heard the Velcro softly open and close as they left me to the nightmare ward.

I rocked my head to the side, saw the partition between me and the other guy, Ink, the man we’d gone in to save, and saw

he was out 

Then again, he’d been tortured. I figured it probably wasn’t the first time, judging by all the scars I could see on the parts of his body that weren’t covered up with tape, gauze, and wires, but still, torture always took it out of a person.

I pursed my lips, rolled my head up to the ceiling where those godawful surgical lights were blaring onto me, and even though it hurt, I reached up and covered my eyes with my forearm.

I needed to reassimilate things. Needed to figure out what the hell I was thinking and feeling.

I was a father.

I had a son.

That changed everything.

I just didn’t know how yet.