Page 15 of Vengeful Vows

I was home-schooled by a tutor, and I couldn’t really meet other kids my age unless their parents were also in the life. I was sheltered, but my father just wanted to protect me.

When Daidí gets closer to the bed, plopping down on it, the aroma of whiskey is strong on his breath.

“She’s hurt?” My heart is slamming against my chest plate.

He shakes his head. “She just left us, wean.”

Tears start to stream down his face. I sit on his lap and his arms wrap around me as we sit there and cry most of the night.

He told me she’d left a note, said that she wasn’t ready for this kind of commitment, which seemed strange after twelve years of being a mother and fifteen of being a wife.

I never saw the letter. I never had to. My father would never lie to me.

Over the next few weeks, he drank too much, and I started helping out anyway I could. Sometimes trying to understand the books, others with phone calls and keeping his appointments.

He needed me, and I was more than willing to help.

We became united, a Murphy front, and we’ve been that way ever since.

I squeeze my eyes, my heart tightening with how much I miss my father. He wasn’t always there for me like he had been that night. He has his issues with expressing emotions, but he has tried. I know that he loves me, and that is enough.

And now I’m stuck behind enemy lines, and what do I do? I sleep with the son of my father’s greatest enemy.

I take in a shaking breath, trying to stop crying. Crying doesn’t do any good, it just makes our eyes red and our soul a little lighter for a bit, my mother always said. I guess she was right, even if she ended up abandoning us.

I need to get some rest. It’s the only way I can stay sharp and find my way out of here. So, I close my eyes.

When sleep overtakes me at last, oddly, it’s not my father I dream of but my mother: her kind blue eyes, how her soft hands used to refresh my forehead when I was sick.

5

DECLAN

I slip out of bed while Bree is still sleeping, her soft snores in the air. She’s out, and I can’t help but find it a little cute how she’s drooling on the pillow, which I slipped back under her head last night after finding her under it.

Cute? A Murphy?

I shake my head, throwing on a pair of jeans and a T-shirt, not worried about wearing a suit today. I just got married, after all, and if Da is going to make me do the ceremony and the consummation, he can damn well give me a vacation for the honeymoon.

I’m shocked that last night even happened, given how much Bree hates me. And she was the one who initiated. Of course, I wasn’t going to say no. I don’t make it a habit of saying no to beautiful women.

She may be a Murphy, but she’s also drop dead gorgeous.

Besides, it’s just sex.

I’m going to have to work out how to get around this, how to get out of this marriage, because love isn’t in the cards for me. It never has been. And with a Murphy, it will never be about love. But still. A wife is a weapon to be used against you in this life, so I just need to convince my father that this is a bad idea.

But when this is all over, when we’ve been able to take down Niall Murphy, maybe we can get a quickie divorce. I’ll make Da and Gray pay for every cent of it.

I walk downstairs, following the fresh scent of coffee in the air. Our chef, Marisol, has made muffins and some sausage, and I grab a muffin on the way to the dining room table.

She smacks at my hand briefly. “Wait for your father,” she scolds, but I stuff a muffin into my mouth, grinning at her.

She shakes her head. “You always were stealing food.”

“It’s because your food is so good, Marisol.” I hug her slightly with one arm.

She smiles up at me, putting her slender but familiar arm around my waist.

---