I rushed over to my daughter and pulled her into my arms. “I love you, baby. But you can’t keep this. I don’t want you involved more than you are.”
“But you’re getting involved?” she asked.
“I’m taking this to your uncle. Which is what you should have done months ago. Why didn’t you say anything, Maddie?”
Maddie shrugged, and I knew she was keeping something from me. I wanted to press the issue, but given our strained relationship currently, I didn’t think it was a good idea. I needed to build up her trust once more.
“You need to be careful, Maddie. Have you gotten anything else?”
“No.”
“If you do, please tell me. Or tell Cian. Tell someone.”
Maddie nodded, and I took a chance and hugged her. “I love you.”
I rushed down the hall and out the door, intending to go straight to my brother. But when I looked down at the envelope, I noticed something. The package hadn’t been addressed to Maddie.
It was addressed to me.
Chapter Ten
Cian
I lay in bed with my phone in my hand, staring at Caity’s empty bed. It was late, but she was still in the living room watching television. I’d never expected Caity to be a television person, but maybe she couldn’t sleep. Maybe she was looking for a distraction.
I wanted to be that distraction.
I wanted to climb into bed next to her and make her forget everything that worried her. Make her forget everything that put that sad, depressed look on her face.
Oh, she tried to hide it, and for the most part, she did it well. Sal was convinced that while she and Maddie still weren’t talking, everything would work out the way it was supposed to.
He was so fucking delusional.
I clicked on the camera in the living room and watched her as she curled into the corner of the couch, covered by a blanket. She had a tissue in her hand as she stared at the TV. I clicked the camera on the other side of the room to see what she was watching.
I sat up straight as I looked at the dark TV screen. She was sitting alone, crying.
“What’s going on, Caity?” I asked out loud, as if I expected her to answer. “What’s got you so sad, baby?”
I switched back to the other camera and zoomed in on her beautiful face. Her green eyes were puffy and red as she sniffed into the tissue.
“Talk to me, sweetheart. Let me help,” I pleaded into the camera.
Caity inhaled deeply and blew out a breath before she stood up and tossed the blanket she’d been covered with onto the couch.
For a woman in her fifties, she was still fucking gorgeous. Her long, toned legs went on for days and led up to the roundest ass I’d ever drooled over.
The shorts she wore barely covered that round ass, and I bit my lip as my dick began to swell. Sal would cut off my dick if he knew I was spying on his sister this way. But fuck him.
Caity was mine, and I would look as much as I wanted until I was allowed to touch her again. Taste her again. Fuck her again. Caity, and only Caity, would be the one to determine when that happened. And while I wouldn’t force her, the time had come to start encouraging her.
It hadn’t taken much that night, almost thirty years ago. But now was a different story. Caity had lived a lifetime worried about how the world saw her. How the family saw her. I wondered if she ever stopped to think about how I saw her.
Eamon had been dead for two decades, and Kelley had been dead for two months. Plenty long enough for her to move on from the asshole she never loved. The one she’d been forced to marry.
I followed her through the house until she walked into her room and then into her bathroom. I leaned back in my bed and waited for her to climb into hers.
I heard the door open, and a moment later, Caity stepped into view. She pulled the blankets back and crawled to the middle of the bed. I reached down to rub my dick as I imagined her crawling to me.
