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“Jesus, what a waste. He was good at what he did.”
Conor heaved a sigh. “He was the only guard Ma actually liked. It’s going to be tough on her learning that he died.”
“This entire situation is going to be hard,” Brennan murmured, and the lack of sympathy in his voice wasn’t surprising since he rarely had much intonation.
Brennan, more often than not, sounded bored shitless. Like he either couldn’t give a fuck or just had zero opinion on anything. Which I knew was bullshit. In recent years, he’d taken a step forward since Aidan Jr., my eldest brother, had been shot, and we’d started going to him with all our problems and not Aid.
He was a smart fucker, wasted on his job on the streets, but you couldn’t tell Da shit. He did what he wanted—always had, always would—and because Aidan was the heir and Brennan merely the spare, Da often let Brennan go to waste.
Well, we didn’t.
We knew his worth.
“Send them straight to my house.”
He arched a brow. “You want them there? I was going to set them up in one of our buildings.”
I shook my head. “The second I’m out of here, you know what’s going to happen.”
“She might not want to marry you,” Conor pointed out, ever helpful.
I growled at him. “She won’t have much of a choice.”
He snorted, then cut Brennan a look. “You can tell he didn’t get to meet her, can’t you?”
“What’s that supposed to mean?” I snarled, when Brennan’s smile made an appearance. Sure, it was only a twitch of his lips, but with my elder brother that was pretty much a clown’s grin.
“It means she’s not exactly the biddable type,” Conor answered wryly, as he wrapped his hands around the foot rail and leaned into the bed.
“She never was,” I argued, and any idiot who thought otherwise was exactly that—an idiot.
Brennan tipped his head to the side, but he agreed, “No, he’s right. She never took much bullshit, even from you, did she?”
I narrowed my eyes on him. “How the fuck do you know that?”
“Big brother has eyes and ears everywhere,” Conor intoned, his tone mocking.
“There’s more than eyes and ears. Me and Aela were sneaking around—”
“For a year, Dec. Maybe longer,” Brennan interjected. “Jesus. And you weren’t exactly smart about it. You were lucky no one else picked up on it.”
Someone had.
I pursed my lips. “I wasn’t as bad at hiding her as you’re making out then, was I?”
“You were boning her for a year?” Conor ground out. “What the actual fuck? I thought you were into Deirdre.”
My mouth tightened at just the mention of that cunt’s name. I scowled down at my blanket-covered feet, hating that I was here, hating that I needed to be here.
I’d take this kind of treatment for a week maximum before I’d go home. I didn’t give a fuck about what the doctors said either. I could rest in my own bed, in my own building without needing to be in the center of a goddamn warehouse.
And if my kid was there too?
Even better.
I could get to know him, and he could get to know me. If he wanted to, of course.
A wave of resentment hit me for the first time as I thought about how much I needed to learn, but I decided to shuck it off. That had no place in the here and now. Not yet anyway. Maybe if she was as much of a pain in the ass as Conor was making out, that resentment might come to the fore again, but I was going to try not to let it.
