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Although, I had to admit, their comfortably casual clothes did make me question why Aidan had dressed so formally. Not that I should complain. He looked like sin itself in a suit.
"So, you’re the guest Aidan mentioned."
I peered up at the guy who was purposely looming over me.
Okay, so that was one way to cut down on my fangirling.
I scowled at Brennan. "Yeah. You got a problem with that?"
Brennan smirked as he encouraged Camille to get off her seat then to slip onto his lap. "I ain’t got no problem so long as you’re not dicking my brother around."
My scowl deepened, but Camille elbowed him in the stomach. "Hey, leave her alone, Brennan. She’s cool."
"She is, huh? You ladies bonded over crumb cake and Beef Wellington?"
Camille nodded. "We did. So be nice."
Brennan stopped trying to stare me down and shot his wife a look.
As he did, I’d admit to melting a little, and when I looked at all the women who were accompanied by their men, most of them now sitting on their laps, well, hell, my fangirling eased some more.
My crushes of old were married now. Happily. Even though they were all murdering monster mobsters, I was happy for them.
Yes, weird.
I knew that already.
I was weird by nature. But, I realized, I was supposed to be that way. I was supposed to think these guys, who were the villains in anyone’s story, were actually heroes because Aidan was mine.
And I was his.
A belief that sank into my bones, resonating on a deeper level than I’d ever experienced before.
So, sure, our time togethercouldbe quantified in hours and minutes, but that didn’t matter when the universe had decided thousands of millennia ago that we were destined to be a pair.
Which, to me, was pretty fucking awesome.
Of course, the second I came to that decision was when we all heard it. Like a punctuation mark in my thoughts, it shot everything into high relief. Slashing through the room with all the power of a chainsaw.
The roar of pain. The roar of agony. The smashing of glass and what felt like the trembling of the earth as one man’s fury seemed capable of making the tectonic plates beneath us vibrate alongside him. That was the power of this family. That was the magnitude of a man like Aidan O’Donnelly Sr.’s wrath.
As one, we all looked at each other, silence falling where, moments before, there’d been festive joy, and the craziest thing happened.
Once the roars died and the smashing stopped, everything went back to normal.
Everything.
But while they appeared to be able to switch off that side of their brains, not digging into business they didn’t consider their own, reverting to peeling carrots and whipping mashed potatoes, turning back to the gravy they were sweating over and the cakes they were praying didn’t sink as they baked in the oven, I didn’t work that way.
Aidan Sr., I knew, had just learned about his son’s child abuse, and I had a feeling in my bones about what that meant for the holiday period.
No one was safe in New York City tonight.
