“I’m not like my father,” Tara supplied. “Or his father before him. I think that’s what Aidan means, but is too polite to say. And I am not like my sister Maggie, either. I’m well aware of the damage my Family has done in this city, and I’m sorry if that has impacted you.”
It was a good speech, delivered with emotional truth, but I guessed that it was not quite as off-the-cuff as it seemed. Tara Donovan, I was willing to bet, had had to make the same apology to more than one person since taking the Donovan throne.
John O’Leary did not look convinced by it.
“Dad, please,” Aidan begged.
“Aidan, how did you come to be mixed up with these…people?” John asked, turning a pain-filled face to his son.
“Perhaps I should…” Tara said, and left the room as quietly as a wisp of smoke. The O’Learys were still staring at Aidan as though he had something to answer for.
Aidan hung his head with a sigh. “We need to talk.”
“I’ll leave you to it,” I said at once, but Aidan reached out to grab my arm.
“Please stay, Teo.”
I looked into his face. As if I could deny him anything. “Sure.”
“Mom, Dad—please sit down,” Aidan said, and I sat as well, while Aidan paced in front of us as though we were a makeshift congregation waiting to hear his homily.
Aidan laid it all out for them—up to and including supposedly-dead Uncle Jim, even though his father scoffed at the idea. That was where I came in, to back Aidan up in his retelling, and at last Aidan did seem to convince his father that he was telling the truth.
That Jim O’Leary was still alive.
That he had attacked Aidan at Our Lady of Mercy Church in New York.
That a group of Irish nationalists were still after Aidan for some reason, and now John and Nancy as well.
“But this isinsane,” Nancy said at last, her face stained with tears and mascara.
John, once he’d accepted the truth of his brother’s status as alive, had said nothing more. Now he looked at me. “What about him?” he asked, nodding in my direction. “How does Teo fit into all this?”
“Like I said,” Aidan hedged. “He saved me at Our Lady.”
“Yes, but…” John frowned. “But why was he there? And why is he here, now? Why is he protecting you?”
“I’m a bodyguard,” I said, when it became obvious that Aidan didn’t want to explain. “By profession.”
“You are?” Nancy frowned.
“I am.”
“I thought they were more, you know—” She waved her hands around. “Chunky.”
I huffed a small laugh. “Well, not all of them.”
“You’re telling me my son has hired you as a bodyguard?” John asked, sounding suspicious.
“No,” I said honestly. I couldn’t help glancing across at Aidan, who mouthed,Sorry.
“You’re protecting him forfree?”
I looked back to John and again, told him the truth. “Aidan is my friend. And also, I just don’t think people should attack priests, and definitely not in churches. So if I can do something to help out, it seems like my duty to do it.”
John pulled his shoulders back. “You’re telling me you’re willing to take a bullet for my son?”
“Yes, sir, I am.”
