“Yes, of course, Mr. Brannington.”
“And you,” I said to Reagan as she tried to follow Esther over to Ciara, “are coming with me.” From there, I firmly grabbed her arm, then pulled her out into the hallway.
“Of course, Mr. Brannington,” she sneered at me, and I wasn’t sure if she was trying to make fun of Esther or not, but the moment I flashed my disapproval at her, she cleared the haughtiness off her face. “I’m not sleeping with you,” she then said in a low tone.
“I never intended for you to do that,” I said to her, and nearly growled at the immediate relief on her face.
“Good. Now that we’re all clear on that, I’ll just join my daugh?—”
“Our daughter,” I said in a low tone as well. “And you have your own room just down the hallway,” I said to her. “Allow me to show it to you.”
I released her arm from my hold, then motioned with my hand for her to follow. I could see her shadow on the marbled floors as she trudged along behind me. I hated watching her act as if she was headed down Executioner’s Row to a death chamber. Just thinking about her and death though did something to me still after all of these years.
We finally reached her room, which was three doors down from Ciara’s. Before showing her the room, I did backtrack one door and quickly opened it. Inside, it was a standard bathroom. “This will be for Ciara to use. Your room is an ensuite,” I said.
Reagan stepped inside and gave it a quick peek before exiting it. She then walked to the room where we had just stopped, then opened the door. I hadn’t asked Esther to make her room look any different than it usually did, so I already knew what she would find. In addition to the same view as all other rooms on the eastern side of the penthouse, it was the normal beige and silver that I had scattered throughout. There would be a simple, yet modern, queen sized bed, dresser, and nightstand, along with a walk-in closet and small bathroom.
Ciara’s bathroom contained both a shower and a bathtub, while this particular room had just a shower. For a moment, a memory of her standing there with rivulets of water dripping down her pale skincame rushing back, and I forced them away. If I kept on with this mental trip down memory road, I would drop my eyes farther down to where I would remember seeing my cum dripping down her legs.
Just the mere thought of it, no matter how brief, made my cock swell. I hadn’t wanted to be attracted to her on any level again, but I was a man, and this woman once held my very heart in her hands until she, along with my grandfather and his despicable men, had shattered it into pieces. After her supposed death, I’d returned to Ireland a shell of a man, broken and empty all at once. The only things that drove me for months after were my grief and my anger, the latter of which made me find out which men had carried out the dastardly orders, and killing them with my bare hands for their actions.
Now, the only one I wanted to choke was the woman standing in front of me. Once upon a time, I’d wrap my hand around her throat as I made her come, but now I wanted towatch the last few breaths of hers leave her lungs as I made her pay for her betrayal.
“Mommy...Mommy,” I heard seconds before I felt a smaller body brush past me. “Is this your room?”
“Yes, baby,” Reagan said to her, then pulled her farther inside.
Esther joined me and smiled at me when I glanced in her direction. “I have a list of things Miss Ciara would like. Would you like for me to go and pick them up?”
“That won’t be necessary. I plan to take them into the city for more clothes, so we can get whatever it is that she wants there. You’ve been a great help. I appreciate it.”
“Anything for you, Mr. Brannington,” she said before leaving.
Mr. Brannington.
I smirked as those words now echoed, but not of the older woman’s voice but of Reagan’s instead. My Anamchara had been jealous. I wasn’t sure why it made me happy to know that, but it did. As did seeing my daughter smile as she excitedly talked about her room to her mother.
After we’d been shown our rooms and the rest of the penthouse, Cillian had taken us into the city for what amounted to nothing more than a shopping spree. We’d first headed to a department store to get accessories for our rooms and bathrooms. I had been fine to keep what was already there, but Ciara had been so excited to be able to make her room her own, and without the same financial budget restraints that we’d faced back in New York City.
As I had always known just from his enrollment at Summit Crest Preparatory, Cillian came from money, and still had a lot of it, as his willingness to slap down credit card after credit card at various stores with ease all but confirmed.
“You don’t have to try to buy her affection,”I’d said to him once or twice, but he would look over at me and essentially roll his eyes.
He’d been very short on words when it came to me, which was for the best. I couldn’t see myself actually carrying on a conversation with him as if the last seven years had never happened. For him, that might’ve been true, but my entire worldhad been devastated. I wanted to appease myself of my own guilt by admitting that my mother was no longer so tired and could finally rest in peace, while my sister was no longer sick and suffering. The latter had been the hardest to get over because with her death, a part of me had literally died. We were identical twins, and the bond we’d had made her death even worse. As did the brutal nature in which both had been slain.
And it was supposed to be me.
Had I been there, the others still would’ve died, but I would have as well. The three of us would’ve been together in the afterlife, but there wouldn’t have been Ciara. The last six years with her had filled a part of my heart that had been empty and broken for so long. My daughter had healed me in ways that no one or anything else ever could. And now, Cillian was determined to break me all over again. And he would likely be successful if anything were to happen to my only reason to go on living.
After our shopping spree, which felt like something ripped out of Pretty Woman itself, we stopped to eat at a charming Irish café. After taking our seats in the corner, Cillian made sure to seat us strategically to where he could see everyone around us, and be the first to react if something went down. While most New Yorkers lived with the fear that they could be pick-pocketed or worse on the streets, it had nothing on what I felt in this place. And what Cillian also felt.
But we weren’t alone. While the three of us were the only ones at this table, I could feel the watchful eyes of his men all around us, even though I couldn’t see them. I knew they were there, but thankfully, that paranoia hadn’t spilled onto our child. Ciara was all smiles and had been the entire day. Her own life had been uprooted in the dead of the night, but you would never know by looking at her.
And look at her, I did. While she had the same red hair I did, the shade of her blue eyes was even different from mine. They were her father’s eyes, in both shape and color. She also had his nose and the lips of someone I’d spotted in photographs around his Irish penthouse. I assumed it was his mother, but I didn’t ask because the less I knew about him and his life, the better off I would be. All I wanted was to come up with a way to flee from him, so the less I knew about him, the less I would need to forget at a later date.
“What would you like to eat, Ciara?” he said to her, and his question jolted me back to the present.
Ciara couldn’t read this menu so well, and as she looked up at me, I scrolled to the section where the kids’ choices would be. “She’ll take the chicken and chip basket.”
