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Teeghan smiled before a low rumble of a laugh bubbled out. “Yeah, I get it, you’re manly men.”
I couldn’t roll my eyes enough at her jab. “Where are they now?”
“Working out who the fuck had the balls to torture their brother.”
I didn’t want to tell her what I found out. I wanted to tell Lorcan. He would know the best way to go about it.
“Why are you really here?” I asked her, knowing her a little too well to know she wouldn’t come and give me whiskey while I was resting without a good reason.
“Damn it,” she replied. “I thought I was playing it cool.”
“If this is about Sloane-”
“Of course it’s about Sloane.”
“Look, Tee. I know you love her and you want her around but it’s safer for her to be gone. People know I care about her and people want to hurt me. I can’t risk that.”
Teeghan sat up on the end of the bed and looked down at the floor for a few moments. I thought maybe she had accepted it but she got off the bed and looked down at me. There was a coldness in her gaze that should have scared me.
“Did you ever think that maybe she had a right to make that decision for herself?”
“She did, Teeghan. All those years ago, she broke up with me because she didn’t want to be a part of the O’Farrell way of life.”
Teeghan moved around the room, as if she were burning off steam. “You are such an idiot. Why the fuck are men such idiots when it comes to women?”
“Maybe because we’re not women?” I countered, realizing it would probably annoy her more and I was injured. If she wanted to take a swing, I’d go down easily.
She turned on me, that same darkness in her eyes that made me curious about how someone as sweet as her could look so menacing in a split second. “She was fucking eighteen. She didn’t know what she wanted and all she had seen were the women in your lives being killed or maimed. She was scared because she didn’t want you to turn into your daddy.”
I’d been scared of doing that too. Unfortunately, I was very much like him. Lorcan and I both were in our own ways.
“She’s fucking miserable in Dublin, by the way.”
Teeghan moved toward the door.
“She’s only just moved there. She deserves to be happy, doesn’t she?”
Teeghan just shook her head as she opened the door. Pausing before she moved through it, she looked back. “Maybe, so do you, fuckhead.”
She was gone before I could throw her words back at her. We had bigger fish to fry than my non-existent love life. Telling Sloane to leave was the hardest thing I could have done.
But it was better off this way.
Eventually, I would start to believe that and we could both move on.
For now, I had a fucker to kill and a business to run.
SLOANE
“That’s the last of them,”I heard my cousin’s husband, Darren, say as he hefted the box into the apartment I’d rented for the next three months. It was a run down place but it would get me through the next stage of my life.
“Thanks, Darren. I’ll get in touch with Sinead tomorrow about work.”
He nodded and headed back to his car. He’d never been one for words, especially, not with a cousin of his wife that he barely knew. When he drove off, I closed the door and looked around at all my boxes. This was going to take me hours to unpack.
Then again, I was only going to move again. Was it even worth unpacking?
I moved into the kitchen to look through the boxes in there when I saw the hamper on the kitchen counter. I grabbed the card and saw the words written there, making my heart thunder in my chest.
