Page 101 of Dirty Padraig: Dirty Dusters

Finian’s mine.

I have a two-year-old son that no one’s bothered to fucking tell me about. Not Jaine. Not my own family.

I’ve been treated like a leper since I returned, and now I know why. I disrupted their perfect lives. Jaine had been slotted into the family to stand side by side with my eldest brother, and that left no room for me.

They didn’t know what to do with the actual baby daddy when I turned up unannounced, so they just brushed me and my sad little existence under the fucking carpet.

She kept Fin from me. That’s not love. What should have been some of the happiest moments of my life have been stolen from me.

Moments that are irreplaceable.

I never got to witness Fin entering the world. I never saw his first step. I never witnessed his first tooth. I never got to console him when he cried the first time he fell over and grazed his little knee.

When he said Da for the first time, he said it to someone else. Not to me.

Tears prick my eyes at the unfairness of it all. All I’ve ever wanted was to be a husband and a father. All I ever wanted was all of that with her.

It wasn’t too much to ask from life, was it?

I’d have given up everything because that meant everything. She meant everything. Nothing else has ever mattered to me.

Instead, she sat on the sidelines and watched me existing as she moved on with her life with someone else.

First Ace, then with my own brother.

What did I ever do to her that I was deserving of that? Was it because she thought I cheated? Was this her idea of payback?

Betrayal.

There’s no other word fitting to describe how I feel right now. Its bitterness laces my tongue, and it’s turning my vision red as it courses through my blood. It’s been a while since I felt the urge to kill, but I’m feeling it right now.

Not Jaine. I would never harm her. She’s the mother of my son. Right now, though, I fucking hate her.

That she thought it right to walk out of my life without a backward glance. That she found it acceptable to keep my son away from me for all this time.

I’ve been back in New York for almost two months. I’ve been interacting with the child on a pretty much daily basis. Only now, I’m finding out why we’re so similar.

It’s because Fin and I share the same fucking DNA.

She’s changed. The girl I knew would never have betrayed me like this. Jaine was never fake. Jaine was never dishonest. Why?

Undiluted rage. I never wanted her to see me like this, and definitely never in close proximity with no way to vent. The me that exists in the concrete tomb under Play.

I was born a psychopath. God saved the best for last when he created the final O’Connell brother. I pray most because I sin most.

Blood red.

My favorite color. I would bathe in the blood of my enemies. I would paint a fucking picture with it. Right now, I want to paint a room with it.

I stare at her. This girl I no longer know. The mother of my fucking son. I want to hurt her like she’s hurt me.

Defiance. Regret.

Right now, she portrays a mixture of both because she doesn’t know if she did the right thing or the wrong thing. Either by him, by me, or even by herself. But here we are. She made the decision on behalf of us all.

The wrong fucking one.

“Truth.” Her gaze drops to where I’m repeatedly clenching and unclenching my fists. Is she scared? “Why.”

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