Page 99 of Stolen Rival
He shakes his head. “You can’t be my wife. She’d never call me her heart.” His voice is barely above a whisper. “She’d sooner stab me in mine.”
A laugh verging on hysteria bursts from me. “We don’t have time for this. Cillian needs to give you a sedative so he can save your life, okay?”
His eyes flutter like he’s about to lose consciousness again. His skin is deathly white, and there are droplets of sweat beading across his forehead. I nod to Cillian who springs into action. He places a cannula, which is connected to a banana bag of fluids that he hands to Liam.
I kiss Patrick’s forehead. “It’s okay, just go to sleep. When you wake up, you’ll feel better.”
He’s mumbling but not making any sense, and after a few seconds, he’s out. Cillian’s already cutting off his clothes and assessing the wounds. “The shoulder is little more than a flesh wound. Bullet missed major nerves, and luckily, went straight through. Bullet to the thigh nicked an artery, and it’s still in there. I need to stop the hemorrhaging, remove the bullet, and repair the artery, or, even if he survives, he could lose the limb.”
I hug myself, but no warmth spreads into my bones. I’ve seen every episode ofERandGrey’s Anatomy, and with every passing second, the blood turns to ice in my veins. It’s hard enough to do what Cillian is planning in a fully functional, sterile operating room. But on a dining table, and without access to a stocked operating room and expert staff to assist?
Fuck.
Voices swirl around me, barked orders and angry outbursts. The more they talk, the more I realize there was no other out for me. Destiny would have come calling at my door, maybe not the night Patrick shoved a gun in my face, but if it wasn’t the Mahoneys, it would have been someone else.
Another enemy, another time. Da had plans to wipe out the O’Sullivans, probably the Mahoneys too. He knew the stakes and went after them with his whole chest on their fucking wedding day. No matter how many people die, in our life there’s always another bad guy waiting to strike.
The thought sends a shudder through my body. Ourlife is a revolving door of war and death and strategy, like a master chess game played between men with guns and a desperation to keep them and theirs alive.
Does anyone ever win? Or do more pawns take their place?
Patrick wasn’t acting out of cruelty the night he offed my family; he was acting out of necessity, survival. If he didn’t strike back, Da would have eliminated every one of them. It’s the nature of the beast. Truce isn’t something that works when everyone involved is fighting for the same thing: power.
And defending that power comes at a price as Patrick’s blood on my hands and clothes remind me.
It’s not as black and white as I first thought. This life… their business, it’s all shades of gray covered in splatters of blood and silently cried tears.
I don’t have to like it, but I can’t deny I understand it. Tonight proves that even those who are supposed to be friends can turn out to be foes. Then again, Andrew always was a foe, wasn’t he? He might have been a friend to Dylan, but he has never been a friend to Patrick or to me.
My chest tightens, making it hard to breathe. How can these men ever trust anyone?
This is my life now. One day, I will bring children into the world to take their father’s place when the time comes. Would I hurt anyone who threatened them?
Damn fucking right I would. I’d murder them with my bare hands, and right now they’re just imaginary, future children. I once thought I couldn’t kill another human being, but if they threatened Cathal, or any kids I’m blessed with, I’d do it without a second thought.
I can’t forgive Patrick for what he did, but I can forgive him for who he was. He made a shit choice in a shit world, the only choice for him left to make. Since the night he took me, he’sshown me that he might not like change, but he’s capable of it. In small, tiny doses. Like letting me speak at the table in front of his top-level mafia brothers and not shutting me down.
It’s time to face facts. I can’t hold onto the hate any longer, to let myself be torn apart by the constant battle in my chest between my old family and my new one. I can miss them, but I can’t avenge them. Seeing the fury, the hatred in Andrew’s eyes, knowing he felt it all the way to his core, what it did to him… I don’t want to turn into that.
Can I really love the man who murdered my family?
My heart squeezes at the sight of the pale man lying in front of me. I’m not sure it’s love yet. But it’s nowhere near hate anymore, and it’s growing by the day. Have I realized this too late, though? Am I going to lose him as well?
I lean over Patrick, run my hand through his damp hair, and kiss his clammy forehead again. “I forbid you from dying on me, Patrick Mahoney. You don’t get to be the fucking martyr here.”
Cillian snorts behind the surgical mask covering his mouth and nose. “Not likely.”
Shit. We should have masks too, right? Or like, not be in here?
“Should we leave?”
Cillian shakes his head. “I’m not an anesthetist, and despite my best friend’s job description, I don’t keep a large amount of medication and medical supplies on hand.”
He meets my eyes as he looks up from what he’s doing. “A policy I will revisit in the morning. But if he wakes up, you’re the only person here who will keep him calm long enough for me to dose him with something. He’s not all-the-way under, so what I’m about to do is going to hurt like fuck.”
The squawks of a newborn upstairs remind me wherewe are, and Molly soon appears bleary-eyed, yawning, and with a well-wrapped bundle on her shoulder. Her eyes widen. “Do you need help? You should have woken me!”
It doesn’t escape me that Cillian let his wife sleep until the baby woke her, or Patrick’s wailing and the commotion we brought into their house woke both of them. It’s such a small gesture, but I hold onto that kindness with both hands. The man who’s fixing my husband is a good one, and would a good one really be best friends with a bad one? Doesn’t Cillian’s friendship signal more about the real Patrick Mahoney rather than the public mafia boss he’s forced to show the world?
