Illicit Temptation (Astoria Royals #3)

CHAPTER FORTY-SEVEN

Shea

E veryone in the SUV is silent, still recovering from the scene at the prison as we drive to my grandparents’ estate that’s just over the border from Dunbar, on the very south end of Waterford.

Maimeó and Pop on Ma’s side lived there my whole childhood. They’re both gone from this world now. Da kept the house and the immediate residential property, but sold off the farm to a developer. When Ma said she wanted to live out her last days in Ireland, Da brought her there.

Lachlan gets a call from Katya, and I lean in to listen. “What did the doctor say?” Lachlan asks his sweet wife. “How do you feel?”

Darragh holds out his hand for the cellphone wanting to talk to her, but he shakes his head.

“I’ll be home in a couple of days. I’m calling your sister right now and telling her to pick you up. You’ll stay with her and off your feet until I get home. That’s an order, little one.” Lachlan pinches the bridge of his nose.

Darragh calls his wife Ana, Katya’s sister before Lachlan has a chance. My heart calms down knowing Ana will take care of Katya until we get home.

We arrive at the estate’s gated entry and are let in without any security hassles from the shaggy, weak-looking men, who work for my father.

Walking up to the door of the main house, I pull Lachlan aside. “Cormac was set up, wasn’t he?”

“Aye.” Anger radiates from him.

I’m about to ask a follow-up question when the main door, a heavy wooden monstrosity with a brass knocker, flies open .

Da stands there in trousers and a gray button-down shirt. For the first time, he seems older and shorter. Or maybe I’ve just grown so used to being around my extremely tall brothers. Not to mention Trace who towers above them all, except Lachlan.

As if no one else is here, Da comes right to me and squeezes me into his arms. “Shea-Lynne, my darlin’ daughter, you’re finally home! I’m so delighted to see you.” He kisses both my cheeks.

“Hello, Da.” I hug him back. He smells exactly as I remember. The mild scent of his cigar habit mixed with the English Leather cologne he’s always worn. Minus the coppery scent I learned later in life was blood.

My brothers stroll past us, not saying a word to him and a queasy feeling settles into my stomach all of a sudden. My father adored me growing up. Gave me all his love. Spoiled me at the expense of showing affection to his sons, who he raised to be ruthless killers like him. Not to mention showing any affection to his wife.

A woman he was forced to marry in these rural lands so many years ago. We all thought it was love, but cracks in our memory reveal details our brains made fuzzy and uncertain.

I’m the fourth in birth order and I’d heard rumors Ma wanted to stop after me. She had four sons and a daughter at that point. But Balor came a year after me and then four years later, Ma was pregnant again with twins.

What we don’t talk about is that she had left us for three of those four years. And again, on and off while we grew up, taking my twin brothers with her each time.

“I need to prepare you before you see your ma.” Da steers me into the house and through the grand foyer with a sweeping curved ceramic staircase to the second floor.

Alarm bells go off in my head. Cormac said she looked good. Da brings us to a room in the back of the house, a section I don’t remember well. Darragh hovers behind us. I’m so glad he’s here. Da opens the door, and it looks like a hospital room with a gurney bed, medical machines, and tubes everywhere. Under Maimeó’s kelly-green quilted blanket, my mother lies there looking like a damn skeleton.

I grab Darragh’s arm in shock, his skin cold to me. I want Trace. Where is he? God, I’ve grown so dependent on him.

Two nurses step aside when my father hisses at them.

“What the hell? Where’s her chart?” Darragh grabs a binder and starts flipping pages. “Where’s a list of her meds? What were her last vitals?”

While he’s looking over everything, I step toward my mother.

“She’s on a ventilator?” I ask my father.

“She needs to breathe.”

“I know.” I clutch my chest. “But I can’t talk with her. I came all this way to—”

“Should she have struggled to breathe waiting for you to clear your schedule?” He shows me the same bitterness he spews at my brothers for the first time.

“You mean clearing up time from our lives.” Lachlan strides into the room, not one bit of his anger simmered down. “The lives you made us live. The kingdom you left us to run.”

“Hello, Lachlan,” Da says with indifference.

There’s more to my father than my eyes ever saw. Each of my brothers has an issue with him for various reasons.

Darragh stands over Ma, his fingers pressed to her wrist. He immediately gets on the phone with someone in his practice and starts checking Ma’s meds, talking a language of complicated medical terms I don’t understand.

Looking down at Ma, worry steals all the color from Lachlan’s face as well.

“Did you speak to Katya again?” I ask him to make sure she’s settled.

He whispers, “She’s in a lot of pain.”

“Any bleeding?”

“No.”

I exhale. “She’ll be fine. I promise. It’s a baby. Women have them every day.”

Except me. Especially if I let the doctor take my uterus.

“Not one of my kids,” Lachlan says, running a hand along Ma’s thin arm bruised from all the tubes. “Not another one of us, born of evil.”

“Lach...” Stroking my mother’s hand, I lean my head on his massive bicep. “Stop. All of you are wonderful husbands and fathers. You will be, too.”

“You think?”

I smile. “I know it.”

With nothing to do, I leave my ma to my brother’s care. Da sits on a chair, watching Darragh. Something raw in his stare.

I make my way to the kitchen, my memory guiding me. I see Trace and almost weep with appreciation. He’s my rock right now. The only thing I know in my life that is real. Dressed in a suit, he stands near the stove steeping a cup of tea.

“I’ll make a cup, too. Tea sounds lovely.” I reach for a mug to give my hands something to hold and stop myself from reaching for him.

“This is for you, princess.” He offers me the red ceramic mug.

“Thank you.” I check the bag and see it’s a calming blend. “Careful, someone might think you still have a crush on me.”

He scoffs. “You’re my wife. I have more than a crush on you. ”

“About that...” I say, my mind going one hundred miles an hour.

He tilts his head toward me. “Are you thinking about letting me take my husbandly privileges while we’re here?”

“I don’t even know where I’m sleeping for you to...” I clear my throat and sip the tea, the warmth jolting me like jumper cables.

“Your da put your bag upstairs.” He gets closer to me. “Mine got taken to a bunkhouse outside.”

“I’m sorry.”

“Don’t be. It’s to be expected.” He brushes a hair out of my eyes. “Your ma?”

I shake my head. “On a breathing machine. She doesn’t even know I’m here. I don’t want to say goodbye like this.”

An overwhelming sadness hits me and tears fall into my tea. During Ma’s final year in Astoria, she doted on Sophie and JP—Darragh’s kids, and then Matteo and Cillian—Kieran’s twin sons. She briefly held Saoirse-Rose—Riordan’s newborn with her weak, thin, hands.

Now she’ll never ask me when am I having a baby. Not that she ever did. Which hits differently in the face of her death. My brothers and my parents all let me live my life as my own. I considered myself very lucky.

Little did I know, they were waiting for the right deal to be made...