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I don’t know what waits for me on the other side, but I need to get her EpiPen.
I open the safe room’s steel door with a whoosh to find Cormac standing there holding Darragh’s motionless bloody body.
Sophie screams, and I lurch back to pull her into my arms. Shield her eyes before the vision sets in of her daddy hurt.
“What the hell are you doing?” I yell.
Cormac swings Darragh’s body like he’s a rag doll and lays him on the carpet. “I didn’t shoot him.”
With precise moves, Cormac locks us back inside.
Darragh groans on the carpet.
“He’s alive?” I whisper, holding Sophie’s head against my stomach.
“Quite.” Cormac looks around. “Where’s the medical kit?”
Shaking, I point to the cubbies.
Darragh opens his eyes, but they’re red and glassy.
“Your daddy is okay.” I grip Sophie’s face. “He’s got a lot of blood on his clothes, but he’s going to be fine. I need you to be strong, Sophie. Can you be strong for Daddy?”
“Soph,” Darragh coughs, holding his bleeding arm. “I’m okay. I’m okay.”
J.P. stirs on his blankets, letting out a soft coo, triggering Cormac to whip around to stare at him.
Our eyes meet and his expression is blank. No smile. No anger.
Ignoring the baby, he tends to his brother like a doctor and not a junkie.
I drop to the carpet and kiss Darragh’s forehead. “Don’t you dare leave us.”
“Never.” He kisses me back.
I look up to see Cormac watching us. “You fix him. Now, Cormac.”
Pulling Sophie back to the chairs, I scoop up my son with my free hand and wait.
Sophie whimpers against my lap as I watch Cormac become a different person. A person I met a very long time ago.
The jerky movements of an addict are gone. He looks broad and professional. Heroic even, cutting away the long sleeve shirt Darragh had put on at some point.
Cormac holds the scissors with skilled precision, exposing the wound.
Exhaling, he says, “It’s just a graze, Dar.”
“How can a graze cause all that bleeding?” I ask bitterly, thinking he’s lying.
Cormac lies, a fact I can’t get out of my head.
“Because hitmen use hollow point bullets designed to go through shielded vests,” he sneers with no attempt to soften his words around a child.
My breath hitches. Darragh’s wearing a vest, but his arms are exposed.
“I can suture this up, but you’ll have one hell of a scar, brother.” Cormac talks to Darragh like they got hurt in a hunting accident and have been drinking buddies all weekend. “It’s about time you inked up this pristine skin. Be who you really are.” His brogue is thicker than that night he crawled into my bedroom.
The Irish mobster in him has fully taken over.
