Need you, brother. Bring your laptop. And quiet, she’s asleep.
Before I even have a chance to respond he sends another.
Connor
And bring me a whiskey.
Shaking my head, I tap 0ut a response.
Me
Be there in two.
I grab my laptop and the whiskey bottle that also sits on my bedside table with the two glasses I have and head to my brother’s room.
I give a gentle knock on the door. “Yeah.” I hear Connor call out.
Pushing the door open, I quietly enter the room, making sure not to disturb Alex. “Hey, brother, she okay?”
I watch him look down at her before responding, he looks tired. “She’s just taking a break. And now I’m making her tell me. It’s a lot, she was looking like she was gonna break, so I told her to sleep. The truth is though, I needed her to stop for a minute. She’s barely told me anything and I can already feel my demon surfacing. I needed a breather as much as she did.”
I give him a small nod and take a seat on the bed, as I open my laptop, I turn to look at him.
“What do you need from me, brother?”
“Lex mentioned that he beat her so badly that he put her in the hospital twice, I’d rather she didn’t have to go into too much detail about that so I’m going to need you to pull her medical records. I need to know what she sustained at his hands.”
I start tapping at the keys, but steal a glance or two his way. “I can do that brother, but are you sure she’d be ok with this? I mean it’s one thing for her to tell you, but pulling her medical records is violating her personal space.”
I know I’m pissing him off, I just need to check. “What…suddenly you have a conscience? You do worse than that shit daily.” He snaps at me, trying to keep his voice low so not to disturb Alex.
I stop typing and turn to look directly at him. “This is different, and you know it. I’m pulling her personal medical records; this isn’t some arsehole we want to get one over on, or someone we’re looking to terminate, this is the woman you’re holding in your arms like your life depends on her.”
“And that is why I need you to do it, please, Rory…”
I nod and pull up the files “Okay, you ready to hear this?”
Chapter 2
The rage I had felt build inside me when I went through her records was something I don’t think I had felt before. But once again, my rage wasn’t just directed at J or even Liam. It was directed at myself. Her last stay in the hospital was only a few days after I had seen her in Chicago, if I’d fucking done something then she wouldn’t have suffered that last beating. She almost died that day, as it happens, she’d miscarried as a result of the beating she received.
Reading her records was one thing, they only told us what her injuries had been as a result, they couldn’t tell us the truth, couldn’t tell us all the detail.
Alex did though, that night I’d stayed up researching trying to find anything I could. I’d created files on Liam and J and stared filling them with whatever I found online. Ronan had sat awake with me, we didn’t talk, we didn’t need to. He was showing his support by just being there. Around two in the morning, maybe three we’d heard Connor and Alex go downstairs, we didn’t follow them down, but we sat at the top of the stairs my brothers and I had listened as she recounted every detail of what had been done to her, the hell she suffered. We sat there and listened as she broke reliving the worst times of her life.
We made a silent promise the four of us, sat there on the stairs in our Ma’s old house, that we would do whatever we needed to protect her. We’d do whatever was necessary to ensure that neither she nor anyone else would suffer at the hands of those fuckers ever again.
We’ve been in Ireland for four days, and all I’ve done is research. Even when I’ve been to the gym with my brothers, I’m at my laptop while Connor trains for his upcoming fight against ‘The Sleeper’. I need a break, I need some stress relief, and I know just the person.
I pull out my phone, and find the contact I’m looking for, I smile as I hit call. It only rings twice before they pick up:
“Four days, Rory O’Farrell, four days you’ve been home before you finally decide to call.”
I love that the first thing out of her mouth, is cheek for waiting so long to call, “Hey there beautiful, you free?”
“For you…always.”
I smile into the phone “I’ll be there in an hour, and I’ll bring the wine.”
