Page 36 of Destroy Me
“Not like this one.” King grinned. “We have a few little toys you might like to play with, Mack.”
Lyse’s toys. Deacon had always been a willing guinea pig when it came to security.
Mack hefted a plate that must weigh three pounds given what it was holding. “I’ll show you where to set up.”
They left Fionn alone with his mam. She was watching the door, her back to him, but he could read the tension in the lines of her body. When he stood to gather the dishes from the table, she turned her piercing green eyes, so like his own, on him.
He recognized that look—his mam was none too happy with him. For a moment he was back in primary school, his mam staring him down as he tried to talk his way out of some bit of trouble he’d gotten into. She’d never let him get away with it, not then. He had a feeling she wouldn’t now either, though what she was upset about…
He knew what she was upset about. Shame washed through him all over again.
Clearing his throat, he approached the sink with his load. “I’ll be working on these.”
Siobhan didn’t say a word. He could feel her stare, sense her walking up beside him, though the hard spray of water into the sink covered her footsteps. She’d always been a quiet woman; he came by that skill naturally. She’d been after sneaking up on a body more than once in his childhood, another reason he hadn’t pulled the wool over her eyes much as a boy. From the corner of his eye he watched as she leaned a hip against the cabinet, but she didn’t speak. Not right away.
“Do you know how long it took before I forgave your father for what he did?” she asked.
That she had forgiven him at all was a miracle. His father had been a great liar as well, another skill Fionn came by naturally. “No.”
Siobhan sighed, her body relaxing as she watched him load dishes into the soapy water. “Far too long, really. I spent so many years consumed by anger, by betrayal. It ate me up inside. I could never be happy that way, Fionn, and I finally realized that I didn’t want to be living without being happy. I wasn’t going to let him take that away from me.”
Fionn wasn’t sure he could be as generous; in fact he knew he couldn’t. Anger still smoldered inside him when he thought of all his father’s death had cost them, not the least of which was the illusion of trust. He’d trusted his father implicitly.
Look where that had gotten them.
His mam moved beside him to rinse the dishes he washed, and stack them in the drying rack. “There was more to it than that, of course,” she said. “By then I’d met Mack, and I didn’t want to put my trust in another man.”
Fionn’s chest got tight. His mam had been alone. He’d left her behind, believing that separating would protect her, make it harder for Ferrina or anyone else to track her down if he ever escaped. Too many people had known about the money, had wanted it. He’d created as secure a life as he could for her, hidden away in the middle of nowhere, and then forced himself to leave. He hadn’t imagined anything beyond that, but his mam had been made to love, to share her life. Mack was good for her. And she could’ve lost that because of Robert.
“Do you think he ever loved us?” he asked quietly, the words barely audible over the rushing water.
Siobhan turned the tap, shutting off the noise, and snatched a towel from the counter. Her hands were dry when she grabbed his bicep and forced him to face her. “Of course he did.”
Her warmth enveloped him, the scent of vanilla and spice taking him back to the time in his life when his mam had been his touchstone. Centering him. Filling the gaping black hole that seemed to open up when he let himself truly think about what his father had done.
“That was something I finally came to realize, Fionn. He loved us so much; that’s why he did the things he did.”
Fionn shook his head. “He committed a crime because he loved us?”
Siobhan tightened her grip, pulling him back from the sink. “Come sit with me.”
He took the towel she laid in his hands and allowed her to guide him toward the table. Only when he was settled did she continue.
“Do you remember your father talking about his childhood?”
Fionn searched his mind, looking for tidbits. “Not much. I knew his family was poor.” What family he’d had. Fionn’s grandparents had died when Robert was a child.
“He wasn’t just poor,” Siobhan said. “They were destitute. His father died in an IRA bombing in the ’40s, his mam of cancer a few years later because there was no money to treat her. He was left to an orphanage. Everything he had, he created on his own. To him, money was security, the ability to care for his family, the ability to keep us alive. I thought what we had was enough; we were certainly wealthy by anyone’s standards; Robert headed one of the largest banks in Dublin proper. But what I realized later was that no amount of money could take away the fear that lived in his mind. The fear that he couldn’t take care of us.
“Ferrina even testified that Robert thought he was going to steal the money, and hid it before he could. So he could be making certain we were provided for.”
“Normal people don’t commit crimes because they love someone,” Fionn argued.
“Stubborn to a fault, just like your father.” Siobhan took his hands where they lay on the table. “I never said it was a rational fear.”
He turned his palms up, taking his mam’s hands.
“Maybe you’ve never been in love,” Siobhan said. “ I have. More than once now. And I can tell you, if it meant keeping the ones I loved safe, I’d be doing anything, legal or not, for them. Just like your father did. Just like Aileen did for her daughter yesterday. Just like Lyse did for you.”
