“Of course I want people to know, Avaleigh.”
I cringe at the use of my full name. Liam purses his lips, turning me to face him, my free hand clutched tightly in his.
“Do you know why your mother named you Avaleigh?”
I shake my head, my gaze on the floor as redness crawls up my neck in embarrassment for letting the simple use of my name affect me so much.
“I know your name has been used to belittle you over the years,” he explains, his finger coming up beneath my chin, forcing my head up. The green of his eyes don’t show the pity I’d been expecting, merely fatherly concern. “But I want you to understand why I choose to use it. I can’t believe your mother never told you.”
“My mother didn’t tell me anything about her past,” I huff. “My whole life was a lie that she created, and even though I know it was to protect me, I feel that if she’d confided in me, I would have been better prepared.”
“You were just a child,” Liam says softly. “No parent wants to lay such a heavy burden on their child so young.”
I shrug a shoulder. “No child wants to lose a parent so early, but that’s the way of the world sometimes.”
Liam nods thoughtfully.
“Well, let me give you a little something she couldn’t,” he tells me with a warm smile. “Your name is made up of two different names of the people we loved the most. Your great-grandmothers. Ava was your mother’s grandmother, and Leigha was mine. The two of them were inseparable growing up in Ireland, and even when they were married, they were still joined at the hip.
“Their families traveled to America together to start anew,” Liam continues. “A fresh start. Your mother and I were practically raised by them.”
“Really?” Nan seems so maternal and caring. She doesn’t seem like the type of mother who would leave her children for someone else to raise.
“Don’t get me wrong.” He sighs. “Our parents loved us and were by no means neglectful. But they were building a shipping empire alongside our grandfathers. It often kept them out of town or out late at night. They kept us out of the public eye. Boston at that time was a no-man’s-land. Gangs were fighting for territory, and drug trafficking was slowly spreading across the east coast. Everyone wanted a piece of it.
“It nearly killed your mother when they died,” Liam speaks softly. “The two of them were more like mother and daughter. After their funeral, we made a promise to each other that our first daughter would bear their names. The same way our first sons would bear our late great-grandfathers’ names.”
Seamus and Kiernan.
“But you named your daughter Saoirse,” I point out.
Liam chuckles. “It didn’t seem right naming her Avaleigh,” he admits. “Marianne never had that connection with them. They died a few years before we met her.”
Something about that makes me warm inside.
“I’m sorry,” I whisper.
“It’s all right, lass.” He smiles bleakly. “I wish you could have met them.”
“Me too.”
“Now, enough of this.” He straightens himself and draws me to his side. “Let’s go manipulate the fuck out of these rich, snobby bastards.”
“Language, old man.” I laugh at him, and he snorts in amusement.
“You are definitely my daughter.”
“Did you recognize anyone?” Liam asks on our second round. More people have begun to filter in throughout the night, and the quiet conversations from before have picked up.
“A few of them.” I confirm. Subtly, I motion with my champagne glass toward a portly man who laughs egregiously at something one of his men says. I see him drinking his weight in whiskey throughout the beginning of the night, and now he’s red faced, his toupee slightly shifted. The young girl on his arm looks more alarmed by the second as one of his hands roams her backside.
“His name is Acastus Chloros,” I sneer. “He was one of Elias’s biggest purchasers of underage girls.”
Liam growls.
“Like the one on his arm?”
I snort derisively. “I doubt she’s underage if he brought her here, but she probably was when he bought her.”
