“I’m yours as long as you’ll have me. That I promise you. I’ll be yours until my final days.”
“I love you, sweet rose. I fucking love you, too.”
Suddenly the air in the room shifts, each vow uttered sounding more sacred and profound than its predecessor. When Rosa turns to me, her eyes filled with newfound hope, I swallow the mountain-sized boulder lodged in my throat.
“Shay, please don’t hate me. But if you promise me that you can love me just a sliver of how much I love you, then I’ll be the happiest woman this world has ever known. I love everything about you, but most of all, I love how you make me feel. How at peace and safe I am in your arms. Please don’t shun me, love me instead. Love me, as I love you.”
Jesus, Mary, and Joseph
How the hell can I say no to that?
I bridge the small gap in between us and hold her to me, making sure her connection with Colin stays intact.
“I’m yours, petal. I think since the first day I saw you, I’ve been yours. Te amo.”
“Te amo.”
I kiss her until my words of love and devotion fill her bloodstream, only pulling back once I’ve made sure I’ve left her boneless and content.
Her hooded gaze tells me she’s ready for Colin and me to drag her to bed and have our way with her, but that’s going to have to wait.
“I’d love nothing more than to consummate our vows to one another, but I have a better idea in mind.”
“You do, do you?” She giggles shyly, the sweet melody making my heart want to leap out of my chest.
“Aye, I do. Get dressed, petal. We’re going shopping.”
“Shopping?” She says the word like it’s a curse, and by the way my cousin groans I can tell he has a million different ideas on how to fill up our afternoon. Most of them involve being inches deep inside our woman.
But again, that is going to have to be placed on the back-burner. For a day at least.
Right now, I want to fill the home she bought with all the furniture we need to start our lives together. We may be a family, but the faster we start acting and living like one, the better. We need to get her knocked-up as quickly as possible and moved into our home and away from my brother’s influence. Permanently.
Rosa won’t bat an eye at my suggestion, especially because she thinks Tiernan hates her.
But I know my brother.
And even if I didn’t, I saw it in his eyes just minutes ago.
There wasn’t an ounce of hate in them.
Only love.
And that will be a problem.
Chapter 21
Tiernan
I wake up drenched in sweat, my heart beating unnaturally fast, like a runaway freight train about to come off its rails. Most bosses and dons have nightmares about the blood they’ve shed in the war. They’re haunted by crushed skulls and cries for mercy they never gave.
I, however, have had the same consistent nightmare for the past five years.
No matter how it starts, it always ends the same way—me opening Patrick’s bedroom door and finding him hung by a rope slung around the ceiling fan. Every time the nightmare comes, so do the cold sweats it provokes and the rancid taste of bile clawing at my throat.
I run to the bathroom and throw up all my stomach’s contents, heaving so loudly it is sure to wake up the dead. Once there is nothing left to purge, I get up off my knees, brush my teeth, and jump in the shower just so I can feel human again.
The memory of my brother giving in to his suffering never gets any easier with time.
People are fond of saying that time heals all wounds.
That’s a lie.
Some wounds just fester until they rot your soul and blacken your heart.
After Patrick died, this family has never been the same.
I haven’t been the same.
I was his older brother, the one he came to when he had nightmares of his own and needed a protector to cast them away. But somewhere between childhood and adolescence, he no longer turned to me for help. Instead, he shrunk into his melancholic cocoon until all that was left of him was a shell of the sweet, sensitive brother I used to hold in my arms to help him sleep.
Of course, I had to find someone to blame for his death.
I couldn’t stomach the thought of blaming him for being so weak.
For being so cruel to leave us like that.
No.
There was another party that deserved my wrath, and their name was Hernandez.
If it wasn’t for their drugs, Patrick would have never summoned the courage to kill himself. I can still see the needle and smack on top of his dresser. He knew that his suicide would cause the ultimate suffering to his family. And because he couldn’t handle that, he needed to get high to be able to take the easy way out.
But life for Patrick was never easy.
He never understood the life of made men.
Never agreed with our actions nor how we earned our living.
He attended too many of his friends’ and kins’ funerals, sang too many Danny Boys, for it not to have made a deep impact on his soul. He was too good. Too kind. Too damn empathetic to the world’s pain, and he suffered even more for the part our family had in such destruction. And so, he did the only thing he could do to stop his misery. He killed himself just so he could finally find the peace that had eluded him all his life.
My brother was the least selfish person I have ever met.
And yet, it was his last and only selfish act that permanently scarred me.