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“No? I just made us a couple of hundred mil.” I glared at him. “You know we’re vital parts to the machine. Without us, how would you clean all your dirty money?”
That had him grumbling.
“In this day and age where everything is online? Where everything is monitored… if we’d maintained your old practices, most of us would be in prison serving thirty years. As it is, we’re standing in the grounds of a beautiful home you had built a few years ago.”
He huffed. “I get your point. You don’t have to hammer it home.”
“Don’t I?”Hewould have. With the afore-mentioned hammer. Shooting him a knowing look, I continued, “By keeping this secret, I’m doing my marriage an injustice. I will live with that, Aidan. I will endure it, because there’s no alternative. I don’t want Lena to go anywhere, even if that was possible, I wouldn’t want that to be the case. So, I have no choice but to be the best man I can be for my wife.”
“And that means not going to church?” he cried. “Dammit to hell, Finn!”
“Yes. It does,” I countered. “Do you know she’s never blamed me for the shooting?”
His brow furrowed. “Never?”
I shook my head. “Never. Can you imagine that? She doesn’t blame me at all. It was hard to handle at first.Iblamedme, and the fact she wasn’t giving me any shit...” I blew out a breath. “Well, I think I’d have preferred it if she had. It ate at me like nothing else could, so one day, she only tells me to go to confession.” I rubbed my chin. “I went, and I couldn’t repent for something I felt no guilt for. But I went and I spoke with Doyle and I just felt like it was such a waste of time, Aidan. You can’t force someone to seek redemption, especially when I’d kill any bastard who went after my wife again and again.”
Aidan stepped in front of me and put a hand on my shoulder. “It’s good for you to speak with Doyle. We have no one else to share this with. No one who understands our ways.”
“Treat him like a shrink?” I sighed. “Can’t you see how stupid it is? I get that it works for you, but it doesn’t work for me and I know it doesn’t for Conor. Maybe because we’re not as active with the wet work as you and the rest, I don’t know.
“I’m not saying I’ll never go, but I just don’t want to be dictated to.”
“You wouldn’t even be questioning this if you weren’t my son,” he ground out, anger making his jaw tense.
“I wouldn’t be questioning this,” I corrected him stonily, “if your wife hadn’t killed my wife’s mother. There is no justice in our world, Aidan. None at all. We have to make it for ourselves.”
“And renouncing the church and stopping getting your hands dirty will do that?” he sneered.
“No,” I said truthfully. “But it means I can go home to my wife, who will never receive any justice for what was laid at her door, with a clear conscience. I’ll go to confession when I have something I need to confess, not because you order it of me.
“I’m taking back the reins on my faith, Aidan. I’m doing that for me and I’m doing that for Aoife. It’s a step forward, one we need to take together, one that lets me steer my future where I want it to go.”
Aidan stared at me as he processed that, then he visibly gritted his teeth after biting out, “Leave me and go greet Lena.”
I nodded, took a step back and, walking toward the kitchen doors, squinted as the sunlight peeked over the roof.
She was standing there in the doorway, watching me leave Aidan behind. She was ringing her hands and I knew Aidan had told her that I knew the truth.
When I stepped onto the stone patio where she liked to have tea in the morning on the white filigree table and chair set, she stepped out and approached me.
I let her hug me, and I curved my arms around her back and embraced her.
She’d done wrong. There was no righting what she’d perpetrated, but, and it was a big but, I loved her.
In my world, that had to be enough.
“Promise me something, Lena.”
“What?” Her voice was husky with emotion.
“Promise you’ll never tell her.”
She stiffened then sagged. “I won’t.”
“If you do, you’ll destroy everything she and I build together.”
“I know.” She leaned back, and I saw in her eyes a world of guilt. “I didn’t mean to… It really was an accident.”
