“And why is that?”
“Maybe because I don’t respect the man who tried to sell me into a relationship I never wanted with assholes who were just out to use, and possibly abuse, me.”
“You were with Andrew on your own. He was your choice.”
“No, he was pushed on me by people who I thought were well-intentioned friends.”
“You agreed to his proposal,” my father said as he turned me to face him.
“No, I did not agree. I was never in love with Drew and only allowed him to put the ring on my finger in front of our friends until we could have a conversation in private. In case you missed it at the party, or now, I wasn’t wearing his ring. There was a reason for that.”
“He told me that you accepted his proposal. That was the only reason I agreed.”
“Well, good for you for thinking you had a say in who I married to begin with. Your ideas about my marriage are the reason I left the way I did, the reason I lost twelve fucking years to hiding out and changing my name constantly to stay a step ahead.”
My father looked as though he had been struck by my truths. “No,” he said as he shook his head vehemently. “No. You left because that Maddox boy finally broke your heart.”
“I always planned to leave. One way was with Logan as my husband so you couldn’t marry me off to some disgusting goon. The other way was without him.”
“I don’t understand.”
“You paraded me around at those parties, as if seeing me was a sampler platter meant to tease and entice the best offer of marriage from one of your men. Everyone knew that meant marriage to me was negotiable, and since I wouldn’t have agreed, you were okay with arranging it without my consent.”
“You are my daughter. I would never have done that to you. It was done to your mother and I swore that it was something I would never do to my own daughter.”
“Yeah right. I knew about the marriage contracts for Faye,” I told him.
“Faye wasn’t my daughter, Aoife!” Dad shouted at me. “She was your mother’s illegitimate bastard. I had to claim her to save face, but she belonged to the lover your mother wanted all along.”
“What?” I was floored. There was no way my mother had an affair or that my father put up with it.
“Your mother was always trying to find ways to fight against me, against our marriage and her fate. When Faye got sick, she would have gone to her lover to make another baby for the chance to help her daughter. I killed the bastard before she could and she was forced to try with me. It’s why your sister’s treatment didn’t work and the cancer came back. They warned us that you were a close match, but not perfect, not enough markers in common.” He raised his shoulder and let it drop as if it didn’t matter to him. I supposed it didn’t if Faye had truly never been his.
“Why didn’t you ever tell me?”
“And destroy your image of your sister and mother?”
“What image? My sister never liked me and my mother chose to live her remaining years as nothing more than a wraith hidden away in seclusion rather than raise me. What exactly would you have destroyed?”
He walked over to the bar and poured himself a glass of bourbon before he turned back around. “I suppose I should have just told you the truth then. Maybe you wouldn’t have thought I was out to sell you.”
“I’m not the only one who thought you would do exactly that. You can’t possibly expect me to believe the way you’re rewritinghistory right now. Even your own men knew they had a chance if they convinced me to choose them.”
“That may have been the case, but you seem to gloss over the part where you said you had a choice. I never forced a union on you. You went to college, Aoife. Most girls being sold off into mafia unions don’t do that. They’re plucked fresh at eighteen and wedded to the husband who was chosen for them. You had a choice. It is what those parties were all about. I knew Logan wouldn’t come through and ask for your hand. He wasn’t ready then and he wouldn’t have been able to protect you. If any of his brothers had stepped up, they may have been contenders at the time, but I also knew you wouldn’t have gone for any of them. I was trying to find you a suitable mate, but I had no plans to force one on you.”
I shook my head, unable to process everything he was telling me. “I don’t believe you.”
“I’m sorry you feel that way. Maybe I should have relented a bit more and explained my plan for you - which was just to make sure you ended up with someone worthy of your love and who could offer you the protection you would need in this world as a Sweeney family heir.”
I plopped down on the couch and stewed in the possibilities. “If all of this is true, then why are you threatening Logan?” A small, hard piece of plastic landed in my lap. “That is the only copy of the video. I imagine Logan and his team have wiped out the electronic versions passed between our two emails. I only used it to get you here in front of me. I’m dying, Aoife. Doctors say I have maybe a couple months, if I’m lucky. Pancreatic and lung cancer, both are stage four.”
“What?” I asked as I snapped my attention back to my father and really scrutinized him. He was thinner, maybe a tad off-color, but it was his eyes that really hit home then. There was a yellow tinge to the whites. “Are you getting treatment?”
He shook his head. “Nothing would work. I got kicked in the ass with two types that are hard-hitting to begin with. Both are stage four already. I’m lucky to still be on my feet.” As if contradicting his own words, my father sat in the chair that was situated at the end of both his couches and between each. “I wanted to see you happy and married. More than anything, I just wanted to see you again before I passed. Andrew didn’t know about my illness, though a few people have wondered about my health lately. I wanted you to be safe and secure before I left this world.”
The elevator down the hall dinged and I hadn’t realized just how quiet the room had gone until that slight noise could be heard. “I brought you here for another reason. Don’t be angry when your man takes the shot. I need him to. There’s no treatment for me from here on out but pain meds, and they won’t work well enough for the pain, I’m told. I brought you here to tell you goodbye, Aoife.” He paused and I stared into his eyes until his image started to blur because of my unshed tears. “I love you, my girl. Tell Logan he has my blessing as long as he keeps you happy and safe. He earned it when he went after Andrew.”
I didn’t get to tell my father I loved him, that I believed what he’d told me, or that part of me still thought he was full of shit and trying to give me better memories of him, so he wouldn’t be easily forgotten. I had a feeling that the truth was somewhere in between those extremes. None of that mattered when I watched his head fly back with the impact of a bullet. My body remained glued to the couch, but I managed to turn in time to see that there was no threat waiting to put one in my head, too. Logan was there with his brothers, though he wasn’t the one to take the shot judging by his empty hands.
