“I would guess a long fuckin’ time.”
“Why?” Sal asked.
“She’s been watching me. She told me everything.”
I explained to everyone what Sylvia told me about why she gave me up and why she’d been watching me. I told them about Eamon not having as much information as he thought he did, and Tyran working with her since Eamon’s death.
“So she’s been biding her time waiting for you to have kids in hopes you would have a girl?” Mac asked.
I nodded. “Which means the word is out there about Maddie being my daughter.”
“Is there any chance we can contain the fact that she’s Sylvia’s granddaughter?” Duncan asked, and Sal looked at me.
“I’m not sure how long. She doesn’t have me to use as leverage, and she doesn’t have Ty anymore for muscle. She’ll scramble for a bit until she can make another plan. Meanwhile, Maddie is in danger.”
The men looked between themselves and I rolled my eyes, pain shooting through my skull. “Caity already told me about the fuckin’ Russian.” I glared at Duncan. “Your woman needs to be more forthcoming when she talks to Lucille.”
Duncan pinched the bridge of his nose and groaned. He didn’t want to believe in Lucille; hell, none of us did. But we couldn’t deny that Freyja had, on a number of occasions, given us information she shouldn’t have known.
“Liam will stand guard outside your door tonight. He’ll switch with someone else in the morning,” Sal explained.
“Can’t you get me a private room?”
“The hospital’s full. If it weren’t for your surgery, you wouldn’t have this one; you’d still be in the fuckin’ ER, probably in the hallway.”
“You’ll survive,” Mac laughed. Amazingly enough,Johnhad been quiet since the guys walked in.
“We’ll see you in the morning.”
The guys left, but Caity stayed. Sal left Flynn Sullivan, Aidan’s brother, to make sure she made it back to Sal’s place. I tried to talk her into going back to my apartment, but she said no. When I tried to talk about it, she shut me down.
It seemed I had a lot of work ahead of me if I wanted Caity to forgive me.
Chapter Thirty-Five
Cian
Three days they kept me in the hospital. Three days of the man behind the curtain cussing out the nurses until they walked into the room, then he was sweet as molasses.
Three days of sleepless nights from him randomly screaming out numbers 333 666 999.Still don’t know what that was about.
Three days of him threatening to burn down the hospital, rip out his colon, and stab himself. And moaning that he just wanted to die.
The man was in his nineties, and I understood, from eavesdropping when the nurses spoke to him, that he had stage four colon cancer and was refusing life-prolonging surgery. It wouldn’t save his life, only prolong his suffering, but every day they came in and asked him if he wanted the surgery.
Quality over quantity.
By the time I left, I wanted to put him out of his misery. People shouldn’t be forced to live with uncurable diseases.
Mac came to pick me up. Caity hadn’t been in since the first day. I’d called and begged her to talk to me, always leaving a message on her voicemail because she wouldn’t pick up.
We pulled into the parking garage under my building, and I sighed. Mac parked the car but left the motor running.
“You staying or going?” he asked.
I couldn’t be here without Caity, not anymore. Never again.
“Going.”
