AllFreeNovel
Share Us
She turned her back on us, her hands going to her husband’s shoulders as she stared up at him.
“Calm down,” she repeated. “There’s no point in crying over spilled milk.” Whatever she saw in his eyes had her reaching up, grabbing his jaw and forcing him to look at her. “You’re going to go take a walk in the garden, and you’re going to take a second to calm down.” When he didn’t budge, she shoved him, pushing him away. “Go on,now.”
His nostrils flared like an angry dog’s, but with a malevolent glance at Brennan, he stormed off, heading away from us with heavy, pounding footsteps.
A door opened then slammed and only then did Lena release a heavy breath and turn back to look at us.
In the dim light of the corridor, with its walls that were covered in family photos, she didn’t look like a woman who was nearing retirement age.
With her gleaming red hair, creamy skin, the slim figure and straight shoulders of a woman much younger than her, she looked like the powerhouse she was.
The one person who kept Aidan O’Donnelly Sr. on a leash.
It was almost surreal that, directly behind where he’d been standing just seconds before, there was a picture of a much younger Aidan with a man who had to be his brother at his side.
I recognized Coney Island in the background, a rickety Ferris wheel and a colorful merry-go-round churning forever onward while they stood directly in front of ‘Petey’s Famous.’ The pair of them were dressed in sharp suits, at least, sharpfor the 70s, but they were both grinning around hot dogs like big kids, not the hardened killers they must have been at that time.
Not everyone had two faces like me—but it was clear that Aidan Sr. did. Brennan, too. Was it because of how we’d been raised? Though, I doubted Inessa was like this, and Victoria didn’t seem that way either. Was it about an aptitude to kill?
Uneasily, I switched focus, taking note of a picture beside the hotdog one, which showed a man I recognized from the society pages. Finn O’Grady with his wife and their newborn son. My brow puckered as I let my gaze drift between the two photos—
Lena growled under her breath, shattering my focus as she snapped, “There wasn’t a better way you could think of doing that, Bren?” It was a rhetorical question because she shook her head at us both. “You’d best go. Give him time to calm down.”
Brennan shrugged. “If you say so, Ma.”
“I do say so,” was her bitter retort.
The gift bag hung redundant in my hands, a silent reminder that I needed to give it to her. Facing her, I cleared my throat, wanting her to know that even if I’d been shaken on Brennan’s behalf by what I’d seen, I wasn’t afraid. Which I wasn’t. Not with a father like mine. But a woman like this appreciated strength.
If I was scared, she’d sense my weakness and I’d never earn her respect. And that mattered. Brennan cared for his mother. Cultivating a relationship with her was smart.
“Lena, we’ll leave, but I’d still like you to have this.”
She held out her hand for the bag. “Thank you, Camille.” Her lips pursed but, a tad resentfully, she continued, “I’ll look forward to getting to know you.”
The ominous tone made that more of a threat than a greeting, but I’d take it.
She’d just offered me acceptance, after all. Begrudging though it might have been, that was what she gave me nonetheless.
Brennan urged me around, his hold on me as absolute as it had been before while he guided us to the closet.
For the first time, he let go of me, and only then, to get my coat and help me into it. Then, he shrugged his on, turned back to look at his mother and said, “She’s my choice, Ma.”
“None of us have choices, Bren,” was Lena’s reply, but rather than be belligerent, it was almost sad.
“That’s just it. We do. Da’s going to struggle getting the rest of us to comply. Eoghan did because Da got Louie and goddamn Niall to hold him down so he could beat the shit out of him to get him to marry Inessa—”
Lena gasped at that, prompting me to look back at her; her horror was clear. As was her surprise. I doubted the surprise was for the beating, but for how Aidan Sr. had gone about it.
Holding Eoghan down to be beaten? It reminded me too much of a dog being chained to the wall and whipped.
Brennan either didn’t care his mother was startled or didn’t realize, because he stormed on, “Declan’s got the woman he wants, now me. Why should Junior and Conor settle for less? Why would you want them to?”
Lena reached up to cover her mouth, but, for the first time, she appeared fragile. She looked her age.
Her shoulders stooped.
The whisper of wrinkles on her brow and around her eyes made a telltale appearance.
