CHAPTER THIRTY-TWO
LILA
When I got back home, there was a gift box waiting on the kitchen table.
It was wrapped in lush pink satin.
I shrugged off my jacket, hanging it by the door. Imma wasn’t in. Her son was visiting from Italy, so she took a few days off. Was it from her?
I made my way to the present, examining it without opening it.
When I turned around, Tiernan was standing before me, hands stuffed into his front pockets. Through the fog of exhaustion, I noticed the dark
circle under his eye.
“You haven’t slept well?”
I took his silence as confirmation. He ambled toward me, bracketing my face in his rough palms, sorrow gleaming from his eye. I exhaled in relief when I saw his eye patch was back. It hadn’t disgusted me, seeing his eye socket the other night. But it did remind me of the pain my own kin subjected him to, and I felt shame and anger.
“It looked like you slept fine last night.”
“I look like a lot of fucking things I’m not.”
“Oh.”
“Yes. Oh.”
“Like…what?”
“Gealach.” He brushed his nose against mine, breathing me in, fingers curling around my waist. “I’m sorry I was a cunt.”
I palmed his face and pulled him away so I could read his lips better.
“I’m not your punching bag, Tiernan.”
“I know.”
I waited for him to acknowledge the gender of our baby, to pick up the conversation from last night, but when he finally spoke again, he gestured
to the gift on the table. “Got you a present.”
Swiveling to reach for it, he caught my waist, anchoring me back in his
arms. “You can’t open it, though.”
I frowned. “What is it?”
“Deli boy’s cock.”
My eyes flared in horror, and I pushed him away.
“Oh my God! Why would you do that?”
His face bricked over. “Tierney told me what happened. No one’s allowed to touch you without permission. That includes me.”
“You could’ve simply gotten him fired!”
“He disrespected you. Disrespected me. After I warned him.”
“You can’t sever a man’s genitals just because he tried to touch me.”
“Why not?”
I stared at him, dumbfounded. “The punishment doesn’t fit the crime.”
“I know.” He bowed his head humbly. “But chopping off his hands seemed like overkill. I couldn’t fit all the organs into the one small box.”
I clutched my head, probably to stop it from exploding. What could I say to that?
My family was far from the realm of normal, but my brothers had never done something so violent because of me. So far, my conscience was clean
as a whistle. Until now.
“This is not romantic. It’s deranged.”
“Let’s settle for both.”
Folding my arms, I shook my head.
“No? Fine. I’ll ask next time before I chop off people’s parts for you.”
“Is he alive?”
“Depends on your definition of the word.” He toyed with the edges of his phone. “I stopped the bleeding, so he didn’t die. But he won’t be able to fuck or piss normally. And, of course, it’s not ideal that he lost his job, now that the medical bills are gonna pile up.”
“This is sick.”
“We do terrible things for family.”
“You consider me family?” A warm tremor passed through my chest.
He jerked his head in a nod. “Now, what do you consider romantic?”
I was out of ideas. I never had a boyfriend, and the little curated romance my mother allowed me to consume, in the form of books and old films, was set either in a fantasy world or a war.
“I don’t know. What do you usually do to woo a woman?”
“Tip her handsomely.”
Good point. I rubbed the space between my eyebrows.
“We can go on a date.” He dropped his gaze to his wingtips.
“No, thank you.”
He lifted an eyebrow questioningly.
“You acted like a jackass yesterday and then gifted me a human penis.”
“Make you a deal. If you go out with me, I’ll buy you whatever you want.”
“What kind of woman would exchange her favors for money?” I stared
at him, scandalized.
“Most of them.”
“That’s very misogynistic.”
“I happen to share the same sentiment about men. Humans are easily corruptible. It’s how I stay in business. So. Date?”
“No.”
“If you come, I’ll answer any of your questions, nothing off limits.
You’ll get an hour.”
This did the trick. I was thirsty for his words, for his story. He watched my face intently, knowing his offer was too good to pass up.
“Bastard.”
He grinned. “Get your jacket.” _______
We went downstairs to Fermanagh’s.
The place was hot, humid, and stank of sweat, stale alcohol, and fried food.
As soon as the patrons spotted us, they stood from their seats, clapping and whistling, like we were some kind of royalty. Tiernan slung his arm over my shoulder, yanking me to his side. A mixture of pride and embarrassment fizzed in my stomach. I’d spent my entire life trying to avoid attention just to land in the center of it now.
My husband’s eye landed on a table at the far corner of the pub, and the two men occupying it immediately grabbed their pints and shuffled to the bar. Tiernan pulled out a chair for me, but I chose to slide into the long, red vinyl couch opposite his seat.
Before we managed to settle, Fintan materialized with two sticky menus and a broad smile. “Hello there, brother, sister-in-law.” He bowed
exaggeratedly. “What can I get ya?”
“I’ll have a pint and vinegar crisps.”
“All right. Lila?” Fintan turned to me.
“Lemonade with some ice, please.” I smiled.
“Lemonade with ice,” Tiernan repeated verbally. “And crisps for her as well.”
Fintan not speaking ASL made sense. It seemed whatever the twins went through, Fintan wasn’t with them during that time.
“You still haven’t spoken to your ma?” Tiernan asked.
I shook my head, about to elaborate, when I noticed something from the corner of my eye.
A vase with red roses sat on the pub’s bar. My blood curdled into ice.
They reminded me of the tarnished rose tiara.
Pull yourself together. It’s just flowers.
But I couldn’t look away. They were uncanny.
Tiernan waved a hand in front of my face, frowning.
“Have you seen a ghost?”
“I saw much worse.” I gulped hard. “Flowers.”
There was no point in lying to him. Not that I was at risk of receiving flowers from my husband at any point in our marriage.
“Flowers,” he repeated dryly, turning his head to follow my vision, before whipping his head back. “I concur. Hate them. Puppies, too.” He was being sarcastic.
“They remind me of that night.” I squirmed. “I had a white rose tiara.
But it became red after the attack. I still remember it, half-buried in the sand.”
He was quiet for a moment. Suddenly, he stood up, ambled to the bar, and knocked the vase inward. Everyone’s heads whipped and the chatter stopped to see what caused the clash. Tiernan returned back to our table and assumed his seat like nothing happened. “Where were we?”
Fintan reappeared with our drinks before I could produce an answer.
“Did you just knock down the vase?” He frowned.
“I did.”
“Uh, why?”
“No more flowers in or around this establishment.”
Fintan’s eyebrows jumped to his hairline. “Because…?”
“I said so.” Tiernan took the first sip of his Guinness, darting his tongue to lick the residue foam from his upper lip. “Now go deal with the
flowerpots hanging from the windows.”
Fintan left.
I shook my head. “Thank you. But I can’t avoid roses forever.”
“Challenge accepted.”
“I’ll need to get over it at some point.”
“That point won’t be tonight. Probably not tomorrow, either.”
I took a sip of my lemonade. It was very sweet and made the baby cartwheel in my belly. Which reminded me of another, elephant-sized
hurdle between us.
“Ask your questions,” Tiernan said.
“Can you stop calling me wiseass now that we’re friends?”
“Wiseass?” He tilted his head.
I typed on my phone, turning the screen so he could see it. Gealach.
“First of all, I’m not your friend. Second, Gealach means moon in
Irish.” A joyless smirk found his lips.
“Moon?”
“Mm. The first time I saw you, you were drowning in the night. I was in pain and in a terrible fucking mood. And you glowed. You shone so bright, I couldn’t look away.” His chest expanded with an inhale, and he frowned to himself. “You were my first dream, I think.”
My heart shattered, scattering into tiny shards in the pit of my stomach.
Gealach didn’t mean wiseass?
All this time, he was calling me his moon? Even at the fountain, when I was nothing more than his enemies’ sister?
“You were wide awake.”
“Technically, yes. But when I stopped and tipped my head up, I asked the moon for a reason to live. We have a history of bargaining, me and him.” He paused. “I think it gave me you.”
The words settled beneath my skin. I felt the same. Existing was no longer enough. I wanted to live. And I wanted to live by his side.
“Why did you tell me it means wiseass?”
“Because you’re a wiseass.”
“That’s rude.”
“You still like me.”
“What makes you say that?”
“The way you look at me.” He shook his head. “Like I hung the gealach in the sky to light the way for you.”
It was true. Because in a way, he did. He gave me freedom. Agency.
Normalcy. And his last name.
“I also have a confession to make.”
I swallowed, looking down at the sticky wooden table between us.
“I kept it.”
“Kept what?”
“Your eye. I came back for it. I don’t know why.”
His mouth broke into a devious smirk. I forgot how much he liked those
dark parts of me.
“Where?”
“A jar. Full of isopropyl. Imma helped me.” I pressed my lips together.
“I buried it in our garden. You can have it back, if you want.”
“It’s yours.” He kicked back, eyeing me humorously. “You can have all my organs.”
Not all of them. I can’t have your heart, I thought.
“Why did you call your pub Fermanagh’s?” I signed. “Your last name is Callaghan.”
“Mam was from Fermanagh County.” He took a pull of his drink. “I spent my entire childhood frightened I’d forget her existence. Fermanagh’s was my first business. I bought the nicest building on the block, an old
church, and converted it.”
“When did she die?”
“Before I was born.”
“How is that possible?”
“Tierney and I were carved out of her body while she was still alive when she was thirty-eight weeks pregnant. They kidnapped us and left her to bleed out. They left Fintan behind, too.”
My stomach lurched and rolled, twisting around my lunch, threatening
to purge it.
“Who were they? Why did they do that?”
“The Bratva. Igor, more specifically. My father’s business rival back in the day. They competed over large swaths of Europe’s ports. Spain. Greece.
Croatia. Da thought he was being ambushed at a port one day. Drew his pistol and aimed straight to the head. He thought it was a Bratva soldier.
Turned out to be Igor’s late wife, Luba. She came to speak to him personally, try to reason with him to strike a deal with her husband. She died. So Igor decided to take the most precious thing to him—his unborn children—killing my mam in the process.”
“Why didn’t he take Fintan?”
“Fin hid in the closet and didn’t come out until he was sure the house was empty. Afterward, he sat there, in her blood, waiting for my father to show up. It fucked him up. They flew Tierney and me to Siberia, where we grew up until we managed to escape when we were fourteen.”
Now it all made sense. The twins grew up in a work camp. They learned ASL because their supervisors wouldn’t let them speak freely—and because they didn’t want to be understood.
They’d been tortured. Sexually abused. Shaped into killing machines.
Funny, how I always thought I held the deepest, darkest secret. That my journey was the toughest, longest, most twisted. My childhood, in comparison to Tiernan’s, was a walk in the park.
Tears rimmed my eyes. I didn’t let them loose.
“How did you run away?”
“I formed a close relationship with Igor’s son, Alex. We were about the same age.” He smiled morbidly. “Igor raised his children in the camp to toughen them up, so we did everything together—trained, ate from the same plate, went through the same physical and psychological terror. I’d gained Alex’s trust, and little by little, found out everything I needed to escape. The codes to the gates. Where they kept the keys to the doors. Maps of the area.
Escape routes. It took us years to collect all this data and form it into a plan.”
“So how did you end up in North Africa?” I remembered Tierney’s mention of it.
“We had to erase our footprints and travel in a convoluted way. Besides, we weren’t sure where Da and Fintan were. We were told they never bothered looking for us. That wasn’t true. My father fought tooth and nail trying to get us back. Igor told him we never made it past infancy. But we found him, anyway.”
“Does this mean you were raised Russian?” I blinked in confusion.
“You speak the language? Know the customs?”
“Yes, and yes. Russian is my first language. English is my second.” He used his index finger to sweep the stout’s foam from the pint, popping it
into his mouth. “Once we found our way to Da and Fin, we caught up on everything Irish. There was a language barrier at first. We decided to move to New York after a few weeks. Fresh start. By the time I set foot in Hunts Point, everyone mistook me for a born-and-bred Irishman.”
“It took you a few weeks to learn English and sound like an Irishman?”
“I’m a fast learner.”
“More like a genius.”
“Your words, not mine.”
I could hardly breathe I was so choked up on my emotions. Now it all made sense. Why he killed Igor. Why he kept his skull, hollowed out on his office desk, serving as a pen holder. Why Alex was next on his list. The Bratva—the Rasputins—robbed him of his mother, his childhood, his future, his happiness.
“Our names were the only thing Igor allowed us to keep,” Tiernan said.
“It was Christmastime when he came for us, and Ma hung ornaments with our names on the tree. Igor kept the ornaments to taunt us with them.”
I reached across the table, clutching his hand. I was so sick to my stomach I was afraid I’d vomit my own heart.
“Don’t feel sorry for me, Lila.” He pulled away, his words an order, not a request. “I’m not that boy anymore. I shed my former self like a snake’s skin, leaving it in the dust of my own tragedy. It’s Tierney I worry about.”
He worked his jaw back and forth. “A part of her stayed in Siberia.”
“How do you mean?”
“She self-destructs.”
“And you don’t?”
“I will, eventually.” A morbid smirk touched the corners of his mouth.
“My self-control is far superior, though.”
What did he mean by that?
I lifted my hands to ask, but he shook his head and tilted his wrist to show me his watch. “Your hour’s up, Cinderella.”
I peered at the time on my phone. He was right. Seventy-five minutes had passed.
“Now that I fulfilled my end of the bargain, would you be so kind as to let me take you out for grub?” Though I couldn’t hear his tone, I knew he delivered everything he said acerbically. With enough venom to kill a snake.
Our ankles tangled under the table. It was the briefest touch, and yet it held so much meaning for me. I stared at the man across the table and realized that I was falling in love with him. As with every fall, once you lost your balance, crashing was a matter of when, not if.
“Yes.”
