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“Really.” But he didn’t sound impressed.
“Corruption in action,” he muttered.
“Yeah. Everywhere’s corrupt, kid.”
“I hate that.”
“Want to change it?” I shrugged. “Not a bad aim for someone to have.”
“Even though that’s how you make your money? Through corruption?”
“Corruption eases bureaucratic paths. It doesn’t make the money. It just facilitates it.”
When his shoulders hunched, I knew he didn’t like that answer. “Do you think it’s impossible to eradicate?”
“Yes,” I replied candidly, but something about the conversation set me on edge.
He wasn’t the only person in the room who could hot read another, and I had a helluva lot more experience at it.
His great-grandparents had definitely been executed. He, without a shadow of a doubt, wanted answers. His great-uncles didn’t get on with his great-grandfather, and he was genuinely curious about the relationship I had with my brothers, but this line of questioning came from somewhere else.
When I was lying on that hospital bed, my heart attacking itself, my body struggling to survive, I’d made a vow to myself. Hell, I’d made several vows. To let the kid come to know me how he wanted. On his own time. But, also, and more importantly, to let him choose his life path.
Even if that meant getting in Da’s face and taking a beating or ten. The old man might not be as strong as he used to be, but that didn’t mean he didn’t have goons who’d hold us in place.
Eoghan was the recent recipient of that kind of a beatdown. He’d been dithering about marrying Inessa, and Da had made the decision for him.
Something he tended to do frequently—make decisions forallof us.
Well, Seamus was mine, and I’d be the one acting as the go-between for grandfather and grandson. First, I had to figure out what was going down here.
It felt like a test.
One I was pretty sure I’d just failed.
“A lot of things are geared toward corruption in this country,” I began slowly, trying to get my thoughts together. I hadn’t expected any of this kind of chatter today. Fuck, we’d talked sports and cartoons since I’d come home. This was heavy shit, and not something I’d figured a kid his age would even be interested in. “It takes a lot of coordinating to elicit change. That doesn’t mean it’s impossible. It just takes a lot of good people investing in the future. Improbable, yeah. Impossible...not necessarily.”
“Same number of letters.”
I smirked. “Smartass.” His grin was swift but sheepish. “What I’m trying to say is that if there are enough people out there who want things to be different, then it can be done.”
My words had his cocky humor disappearing, and in his eyes, I saw I’d replaced his uncertainty with hope.
Hope was a dangerous thing.
But in my kid, it was the only thing I wanted to cultivate.
* * *
AELA
“You didn’t haveto do that.”
One thing I liked about being in the kitchen was the ability to hear everything the two men in my life had to say, all without having to be in there. I wanted Seamus to get to know his father because, whether I wanted it or not, I had no alternative. If we were going to be here, if we were stuck together as a unit, then Seamus needed to understand what and who his father was.
“Of course I did.” He tipped his chin up at me, slowly turning his head to the side and switching his focus off his phone and onto me.
I hated how my body responded to having his full attention. There was a time when that was all it would take for me to leap into bed after having stripped. Like I was nothing but his personal sex doll. Only, he’d never made me feel that way.
