The contractor tells me I’m crazy. The permits have been wildly expensive. Digging out dirt roads and clearing the trees has been a big pain in the ass. Only a crazy person would spend what I’m spending on a cabin in the middle of the woods. Yeah, there are tons of spots to build cabins. Easier spots.
But this is the spot.
This is the spot for me and Carrie to build a cabin and build a life.
End of discussion.
Nothing can change it. Nothing can ever take that away.
I didn’t want to see Cormac - or what was left of him. I didn’t dare get too close to the rubble. The pain, the anger, the guilt, it all rushed freely through my body. Cormac was a straight shooter. A good man. A great brother to me.
As the anger built and built, creating a tower big enough that I wasn’t sure even I could hold, I realized that this was what Cormac secretly waited for. His own fate. Just like the fate of his sister. Carrie had been killed in a senseless tragedy. A random car accident that maybe could have been prevented. Same right now. Cormac didn’t need to be in the cabin when it exploded. He shouldn’t have been in there.
When Carrie went, I was told she felt nothing. There was no suffering. Meaning she was here, then gone, instantly.
Just like Cormac.
He had been half drunk, hopped up on aspirin, snoring like a wild animal.
Yeah, maybe it did comfort me a sliver that he didn’t feel any pain when he went, but it didn’t make it right. Yeah, he had given his blessing for me to love Shayna. He understood I was moving forward, even if I didn’t realize it.
Christ, it was so much to handle.
I put my back to the truck and started to feel ill. I took breaths but there wasn’t enough air. I wanted to scream. I wanted to punch something, someone. I knew there were pieces - literally - of Cormac just feet away.
The son of a bitch would never step into a ring again and fight. He would never knock some dude’s jaw backwards. He would never feel that rush of victory. He would never make tons of money and get drunk and laugh, fight, cry, and hug.
I started to slide down the truck.
My ass hit the ground and I lost it.
Cormac and the cabin were the last ties I had to Carrie. I built the damn cabin for her and she never got to see it. And Cormac was her brother by blood and my brother by fight.
They were gone.
It was all gone.
Except Shayna.
Fiore had her now. I couldn’t go up against a boss. My boss. A guy who had rich Italian blood with connections that were sick. For fuck’s sake, he had somehow managed to rig up my cabin and make it implode!
But that didn’t mean the game was over. The fight wasn’t over.
I just needed…
I picked my head up from between my knees and I saw legs. Beautiful, dark legs. Blood red heels. A black skirt. My eyes kept going and going and going.
“Finn. I hope you’re not quitting on me now. If you want to see Shayna again alive… and get out of this… stand up and be ready to fight.”
I blinked a few times to make sense of what I was seeing.
It was Fiore’s daughter - Mara.
40.
(Shayna)
I sat in a big office chair. It was comfortable leather with a high back to it. My hands held the arms tight. Two men - one on each side of me - stood there with guns on me. Fiore made it clear that if I tried anything, he’d hurt me. I asked about the baby, if he would really kill me, and he smiled. He didn’t respond, which scared me even more.
We were at the fight, waiting for it to begin.
Well, not begin, because Fiore assumed Finn to be dead. And a dead man can’t fight, right?
The door opened and Fiore walked in. He held the door and in came a short woman. She was a little round, but in a beautiful, curvy way. Everything she wore was expensive. Her black hair was curled and pieces of it looked fake. Her face was caked with makeup, obviously trying to make herself look ten years younger.
“Oh, my Marie,” Fiore said, “I have her right here for us.”
“Fiore…”
Fiore grabbed the woman, Marie, by the arm and squeezed. Marie winced and was dragged to the desk.
“Shayna, this is my wife, Marie. Say hello to her right now.”
“Hello,” I said.
Marie stared but didn’t say a word.
“I brought her for us,” Fiore whispered. “She’s almost sure she’s pregnant. By Finn. You remember Finn, right?”
“Of course,” Marie said.
“You see now? You see my work? I’m going to fix what was wrong. What was taken. What happened cruelly to our family.”
“Fiore…”
“No,” Fiore growled. “Mara has no sense. She thought she loved Finn… but how could my daughter love a dirty Irish fighter?”
Love? Finn? Mara?
“What?” I asked.
“You don’t speak,” Fiore said to me.
“It was a harmless crush,” Marie said. “It was a long time ago.”
“I saw the way he looked at her!” Fiore screamed. “I saw the look in his eyes! And her eyes! Your daughter would have become a whore! A fucking whore!”
The windows in the room rumbled.