“Things happened.”I got pregnant. Married. Then my heart got broken. Is that enough to be getting on with?
“Sit down, Amelia.” There’s authority in his voice, and I do as I’m told. “Look, I don’t know what your mom told you about me, but I swear I didn’t know that she was pregnant when I left New York. She never reached out to me. She never asked me for anything.”
I shrug. “That’s my mom.”
I can understand why she never contacted him. His go-to stance is to immediately shift the blame onto my mom for not telling him that he was a father.
Nice man.
“What can I give you to make this go away?”
I blink, uncertain if I heard him correctly. “To make this go away? Do you mean your daughter?”
“Well…” His eyes narrow. “I only have your word for that. Did Julia send you? Was she too scared to come and find me herself?”
I inhale deeply. “You know nothing about her at all, do you? She didn’t stop me from coming to Ireland, but she didn’t want me to find you, and now I know why. You can keep your money. Declan Byrne is a generous employer, so I don’t need anything from you.”
My voice has risen a notch. Adrenaline is pumping through my veins.
“Declan Byrne… Now there’s a name I didn’t expect to hear anytime soon.”
“You… You know him?”
His smile materializes, and a shiver runs down my spine. “He didn’t tell you what line of business he’s in, did he?”
“I never asked.”
He taps the side of his coffee cup with a long fingernail that makes my stomach squirm. “But you were happy to take his blood money.”
Blood money?
“What’s really going on here, Amelia? His heir gets killed in a mafia conflict in New York. Then you show up with a story about a woman I met almost thirty years ago in the same city.”
Mafia?I’d forgotten the conversation with Carol, but now it all makes perfect sense. Declan’s wealth. Ruairi’s murder. Declan’s business meeting in New York after the funeral.
I stand up, but Michael grabs my wrist.
“Let me go, you’re hurting me.” I try to wrench my arm free, but his grip is like metal.
“Not until you tell me why you’re really here.” His voice is as cold as his eyes.
“I told you already. I came to find my?—”
Before I can finish, the back of Michael’s hand connects with my cheek. My head snaps back. I topple over the seat that I just vacated, and it collapses underneath me. My back hits the floor with a whump that sucks the air from my lungs. The chairsplinters. Something sharp slices through my sweater and I feel blood trickling from my arm.
I instinctively draw my knees to my chest to protect the baby in my womb.
“I’m pregnant,” I mumble. “Don’t hurt me, please. Declan doesn’t know I’m here, I promise. There’s a taxi waiting outside to take me to the airport.”
The taxi driver will come inside to find me, I tell myself. He’ll save me from this maniac. But then I remember that I paid him already. He has no reason to stick around.
My father rises slowly and looms over me, his eyes dark as coal. Then he crouches beside me, fists my hair, and tilts my head back so that I have to look at him.
“Declan doesn’t know I’m here, I promise.” He repeats my words with a whiny American accent. “You’re on first-name terms with your employer, who thinks that you’re on a flight back to America. Is that right?”
He’s gripping my hair so tightly my scalp is burning and tears trickle from the corners of my eyes. “He doesn’t know that I’m going home.”
“You’re running away?” His grip on my hair tightens, and I stifle a groan. “What are you running away from, Amelia York? Surely not the employer who pays you so well.”
