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Green eyes.
My baby had soulful green eyes like mine.
Soft skin that smelled like honeyed milk.
Black hair like his father’s
Blameless.
I remember Kirill shouting and slapping my face to rouse me, demanding to know where my baby was, and then nothing but a land of darkness without sense and feeling.
I woke, four days later, to no Roisin. No beautiful baby to nurse and my breasts burning with unwanted milk. Kirill came to see me again that afternoon—not to talk to me, but to talkatme. He had my son. He was planning to raise him as his own. If I disagreed, he’d kill him. If I ever tried to contact him, he’d kill him.
This was my second punishment for giving Frankie the part of me O’Sullivan had promised him.
The third would be a cold existence without either half of my heart to keep me warm.
* * *
When we reachthe hospital it’s the end of the school day. The Fulham Road is packed with colourful blazers and backpacks as children carve zig-zag paths through pedestrians, while chatting away to friends and crowding around iPhones. Numbly, I wonder if Alex is allowed to go to school, or if his entire education is with a knife in one hand and false propaganda in the other.
Adrik tries to take my arm as we enter the lift, but I jerk it out of reach, ignoring his low growl of warning as the carriage starts to rise.
“Blyad,” he hisses.
“Touch me again and I’ll scream.”
He can go to hell, for all I care. I couldn’t give a damn what happens to me because of this, and I certainly couldn’t give a damn what happens to him.
Roisin looks peaceful in the bed, cocooned in white sheets and blue blankets, her monitors forming a beeping halo around her head.It’s the first time I’ve seen her without make-up on, and now that her tough shell has been scrubbed away, I see all the truth she was hiding. The purple welts around her mouth are in stark contrast to her pale skin, and there are two new red marks on her left cheek and jaw, plus finger-mark bruising on the side of her neck.
O’Sullivan’s trademark.
I was wearing the same set of bruises the day Seamus and I walked past Frankie and Aiden outside the old library.
Thick bandages are wrapped around her wrists instead of invisible shackles. O’Sullivan doesn’t have a single man on the door to protect her against his enemies. It’s just another example of how little he cares about her, and one of the many reasons why my seeds of hate for him are now a forest of thorns.
I sit down in the chair by the bed and stare at her for a long time.
Why is it only when someone’s dying that you think about their life as a whole and not how it slotted into yours?
I don’t know where she grew up, or who her family are. I don’t know the shape of her hopes and dreams before an Irish mobster shot a hole right through them all.
I think about the woman she was before she met O’Sullivan, before he’d forced her to marry him at gunpoint. I’ve never seen her smile, but I imagine she had a stunning one. I bet she was the type of girl who could walk into a room and light it up like a cul-de-sac at Christmas time.
Adrik’s pacing up and down the hallway outside. His scowl keeps dropping in and out of view.
“Don’t give them the satisfaction,” I whisper again, placing a hand on her arm and feeling frightened by how cold she feels beneath my touch. “Not now. Not when we’re this close to the end.”
The door swings open suddenly, and a harried-looking nurse appears, pushing a blood pressure monitor trolley in front of her. When she sees me sitting there, she stops short and gives me a tired smile of apology. “Sorry, love. I didn’t know you were in here.”
My hand slips from Roisin’s arm, and I shuffle backwards into the chair. “I can’t stay long. Is she…” My voice trails off when I find it hard to articulate what I want the nurse to reassure me over the most:
Is she going to live?
Is she going to die?
We barely spoke. We used to hate the sight of each other, so why does it feel like I’m losing the sister I never had?
