THE CALLAHANS (A Mafia Romance): The Complete 5 Books Series (43 page)

Stacy

Alex was pretty sure I’d been taken over by aliens. He watched me move through my day, the smile never leaving my face, and he’s pretty convinced that I’m a completely different person. He kept asking what was going on that had taken away my hair-trigger temper and the perpetual frown that used to mar my face. But I wasn’t ready to share it yet.

I wanted to keep Sean completely to myself for as long as possible.

Deep down, I knew that couldn’t be my reality for much longer. Alex wasn’t the only one who’d noticed the difference in me over the last few weeks. My mom heard it in my voice when she called a few days ago. And even Jack commented on it when we had lunch yesterday.

It’d been almost three weeks. Three weeks of sharing my bed, three weeks of lingering over meals and staring into each other’s eyes, three weeks of practically living together, locking ourselves up in my condo and doing things that I’d only imagined were possible.

Three weeks Sean and I had been together—and it felt like forever and a split second all at the same time.

We talked about everything and nothing, made love over and again, lay tangled together between the sheets, and just listened to each other breathe.

I was falling in love, I knew I was, yet I still knew so little about him. Somehow, whenever we discussed personal things, he always managed to turn the subject around on me. He knew my favorite color, my favorite movie, the name of my middle school best friend, the posters I had on my walls my freshman year of college. But I didn’t know where he lived, or the name of the law firm where he worked.

If he didn’t come to me every night after work, I wouldn’t know how to find him again.

It was insane, and it was exciting, and it was everything I’d always imagined romance should be.

“What are you working on right now?”

He groaned, tugging me tight against his chest as he tried to pretend he was on the cusp of falling into a deep sleep.

“You want to talk about work now? It’s late, Delaney.”

“I just…I want to know more about you.”

“There’s nothing more to know.”

“Where were you last night? You said you had to work, but you didn’t come over until after three.”

“I told you, I fell asleep at my desk.”

“You weren’t wearing a suit.”

“I changed on the way over.”

I groaned. He always seemed to have an answer for everything. I lay my head on his chest and told myself it didn’t matter. I trusted him. If he wanted to keep some parts of himself a secret, then who was I to question him?

But there was this tiny part of my heart that kept reminding me that if he felt the same way about me, he would want to share everything with me.

Was that stupid? Or was there some truth to it?

He wrapped his arms around me, his skin warm where it pressed against me. I ran my fingers over his bare belly, letting them dart downward toward the longer, more intimate hairs that grew from the base of his cock. He sighed, and I knew that even that simple, almost thoughtless, touch was arousing him. And that made me feel powerful in a way I never had before.

I owned the right to do this. I was the only woman who was allowed to touch him in such an intimate, if almost thoughtless, way. And he was the only man who was allowed to dominate me, to make me feel every inch of the power that arousal offered me. Those things were something I’d never thought about before, never craved or desired. But I did now. I wanted it; I wanted that power, that sense of possession. I wanted to know that he was mine and I was his and the things we did together would never be repeated with anyone else.

I reached up and kissed him before rolling over and curling into a ball on my side of the bed. I liked having him there; I liked touching him. But I was completely exhausted, too.

I was just drifting off to sleep when I felt the bed sink and then seem to float a few inches higher as he got up.

“Where are you going?” I mumbled.

“I have to go.”

“What?”

I rolled over, rubbing the sleep from my eyes. Had I been asleep and not realized it? The room was still dark, the curtains still pulled against whatever light might be radiating outside them.

“Where are you going?”

“My sister’s in labor.”

“Your sister…?”

“Killian’s wife. Stacy. She’s in labor. The whole family’s heading to the hospital.”

I sat up and reached for his phone, pushing the power button to check the time. I would’ve—should’ve—checked my own phone, but I’d left it downstairs on the charger. As the phone came to life, I found myself looking at a family portrait of sorts, a group photo that’d been taken at a wedding judging by the attire of the couple in the center. It was a handsome group—five strapping young men, Sean included, stood in the center with a beautiful, blond bride. An older woman, a young lady who looked a lot like her, and a redheaded man stood off to one side, almost as if they were bombing the photo rather than an invited part of it.

I knew the older man.

“It probably won’t be long. If I know Stacy, she’ll push this kid out in about an hour. She’s always been very efficient in everything she does.”

There was laughter in his voice that barely registered.

“I’d take you with me, but you don’t really want to meet my family like this. They’d send you running for the hills with their enthusiasm.”

I heard him come to the bathroom door and the slap of his feet against the tiles. I didn’t look up. I was still looking at that face, the face that was more familiar to me than I wanted it to be. I kept willing it to change, to become someone I didn’t know. But the longer I stared at his face, the more certain I was that I knew him.

“Delaney?”

“Why didn’t you just tell me?”

There was a long silence. “I was going to.”

“When? We’ve been doing this for nearly a month. Don’t you think the time for telling me came and went weeks ago?”

“I thought…I don’t know. I’m not sure what I thought.”

I tossed his phone onto the mattress and climbed off the bed, grabbing a forgotten t-shirt off the back of a chair. I couldn’t have this argument while I was naked, and I knew it was going to be an argument.

“You’re Brian Callahan’s son.”

“Yes.”

“Brian Callahan. The only person who’s been a part of Jack’s organization since before he took over the leadership. The only person Jack has ever completely trusted with his protection, with the secrets of his organization. The only person he would make CEO of his legitimate business; the only one he knew would help him use that business to cover up everything they do that’s not quite so legitimate.”

“Yes.”

I looked over at him even as I pulled on a pair of sweat pants, wrapping myself in a soft, clean blanket. I was as covered as I was ever going to get, yet he was still standing there in all the glory of his nudity, his beautiful body backlit by the bathroom light.

“Is that all you have to say?”

“What do you want from me, Delaney? Is there any reason to deny any of it?”

“Did you know who I was before? Before you helped me with Claude? Before I invited you to dinner?”

He inclined his head slightly. “I did.”

“You knew I was Jack’s daughter?”

“I’d been watching you,” he said softly. “He knew about Claude. He wanted you protected.”

My heart sank, falling into my feet and then continuing down, falling through the floor to the basement and further, falling so far that I could feel the weight of it tugging me down.

Tears burned in my eyes.

“The gym? That was just a set up?”

“I paid that girl to tell you about it.”

“How did you know…?” I stopped, not sure that it really mattered. I sat hard on the edge of the straight-backed chair shoved into a corner of the room, rubbing at my eyes with the heel of my hand. “You set me up.”

“You wouldn’t allow Jack to help you in a way that was obvious. So we had to manipulate you a little.”

“Manipulate me?”

“The mugging.”

Ice stiffened my heart muscles, moving and growing, slicing through me until every drop of blood was frozen hard. I wanted to scream, to lash out, but I couldn’t move.

“It wasn’t Claude or any of his friends. It was my brother, Kyle. He was only supposed to frighten you, but I guess you pissed him off. To hear him tell it, you were something of a wild cat.”

I shook my head, the only movement I could force myself to commit to.

“You played right into our hands, doing exactly what Jack predicted you would do. And I taught you enough that you could probably have taken Claude out that day in the parking lot if I hadn’t shown up.”

“So it was all just a game you were playing.”

“Not all of it. We orchestrated everything up until that moment in the parking lot. What came after that…that was us.”

“Us.”

The word would have been such a turn on a week ago, a day ago, an hour ago. But now? It was like a knife being driven into an existing wound, just making it wider and more painful.

“I want you to leave.”

He didn’t respond. He didn’t go back into the bathroom and dress, and he didn’t put down the toothbrush that he was still calmly using to brush his teeth. He didn’t argue with me or plead his case. He just stood there, naked as the day he was born, watching me as he brushed his teeth.

“Please. Leave.”

“You’re angry,” he said after ducking into the bathroom to rinse. “I understand that. But this…it doesn’t mean anything.”

“You know how I feel about Jack and his business.”

“I do.”

“And you knew that this lie would hurt me. Why else would you keep it from me?”

“Delaney, I never lied to you. I never hid the truth. I just wasn’t forthcoming.”

“You lied to me. I can’t…and you’re part of his world. You’re a criminal.”

“I’ve never done anything outright illegal.”

“But your family runs protection for Jack and his people. Isn’t that illegal all on its own?”

“We stand guard and watch as they conduct their business. That in itself is not illegal.”

“But you’re part of…” I stopped because I knew it was useless to argue with him. Besides, my heart wasn’t in it. It was gone. Ripped to shreds. Lying in a gruesome puddle at my feet. “You need to go.”

He disappeared into the bathroom again, coming back out dressed in the jeans and t-shirt he’d been wearing when he came over several hours ago. He crossed the room and bent close, kissing my cheek as though nothing had happened between us.

“Falling in love with you was never part of the plan. Sharing your bed…if Jack knew how intimate our relationship had become, he’d have me castrated. I lied to you because I wanted to hold on to the newness of this as long as possible. I didn’t want our fathers and their business to become a part of something so beautiful. But I knew it would have to eventually.”

He kissed me again, his lips brushing my temple even as I turned my head away.

“I love you, Delaney,” he whispered. “I’ll be around when you remember that you love me, too.”

Then he was gone and I was once again falling down a dark hole, not sure what I would find at the bottom.

Sean

I stood at the back of the room and watched my brothers. Kyle was leaning casually against the wall. Nothing ever seemed to bother him. Ian was pacing. Of all of us, he was probably the closest to Stacy—besides Killian, obviously. And Kevin was leaning against the archway that separated this room from the rest of the hall, watching for any sign of our father or Cassidy or Killian, whoever might come down that long hall and announce the birth of our first niece or nephew.

I turned to the window, wishing Mom was here. How happy would she be to welcome her first grandchild into the world? She loved children. It was her life, taking care of children whose parents had failed them in one way or another. She would have been thrilled to become a grandmother, to hold that perfect baby in her arms. I’m not sure how she would have felt about Killian and Stacy marrying—she probably would have been okay with it since they were so deliriously happy. But she would have been thrilled by the baby.

She should have been here. Fuck cancer for taking her away from us too soon.

This little voice in the back of my head wanted to remind me that cancer wasn’t the only culprit. But I ignored it because I didn’t want to hear it. I wanted to focus on what was good about this night.

I wanted to be happy for once.

“I think it’s going be a perfect little girl that’ll look just like Stacy,” Kyle suddenly announced.

“Naw. It’s a boy,” Kevin said, sounding so sure of himself, like he’d been privy to a confirming ultrasound or something.

“Doesn’t matter,” Ian said. “Either way, as long as it’s healthy.”

Kyle threw a magazine at him. “You always have to be the reasonable one.”

“And you’re the child.” Ian scooped up the magazine and tossed it back, the little inserts flying all around the room.

“Then what am I?” Kevin asked.

He was the last brought into the family. Pops’ favorite. He tried to hide it, but everyone knew that Kevin was Pops’ favorite. He was the one who was still young when Pops was finally able to step back from MCorp a little, to spend more time at home with the kids. Only Kevin and Stacy were left by then, both in high school, but young enough to appreciate the attention. Stacy and Mom were so close that Pops was something of an outsider to their relationship. But he and Kevin…Mom used to joke that they were thick as thieves. And they were, always whispering to each other, planning the next escapade. Their activities usually centered on model airplanes and video games, but there was enough secrecy there that it felt like being on the outside of some great conspiracy.

“You’re still the baby,” Ian said. “Too innocent to be as annoying as Kyle over here.”

“Gee, thanks,” Kevin mumbled.

In truth, we were all very close in age. Ian and I were both twenty-six, Kyle twenty-five. Kevin just turned twenty-one, which was why Pops brought him back up from the family vacation house down in Florida. Kevin and Stacy were nearly the same age. She turned twenty-one two months ago. And Killian, the oldest, was twenty-nine by his last birthday.

Mom couldn’t have any more kids after I was born, something about an infection that set in only hours after I came into the world. But that didn’t stop her from gathering up kids in her job as a social worker.

“I don’t know why you’re so annoyed,” Kyle said. “He’s just calling you an infant. He’s calling me immature.”

“So it’s not offensive to be called an infant when I just became old enough to drink?”

“You just answered your own question, didn’t you?” Ian asked.

Kevin turned away, pacing just inside the room. His eyes darted down the hall again and again as he watched for some sign of a familiar face. One did come into the room, Brianna, our secret big sister. She was also twenty-six, just six months or so younger than me, a beauty with her red hair so much like our father’s. Mine tended toward orange, but hers was pure in its hue. She was beautiful, and Kevin seemed to feel a special affinity to her after he was on hand when she was rescued from her kidnappers. They huddled there together by the door, his hand resting casually on her hip. I watched, wondering if we might not have another brother-sister match at some point in the near future.

Too many and someone might begin to accuse us all of incest.

I turned back to the window, slipping my phone from my jeans pocket, hoping for something I knew wouldn’t be there. Delaney was pretty angry with me. I knew she would be, but a part of me was still hoping she’d get past it. That she would admit to herself that she was in love with me and my family associations didn’t really matter. But I was afraid that that would never happen.

What would I do if she didn’t forgive me?

I felt less when I wasn’t with her. The weight of the past sank down on my shoulders when I left her. But when we were together? I was lighter than I’d ever been, even before my world was shattered by one single act.

I loved her. And the mere fact that I was able to feel such emotion for her proved that I was still human. I was still capable of emotion. I wasn’t the monster I was beginning to think I was.

I needed her.

But the phone remained dark.

“It’s a boy.”

I turned just in time to watch Killian walk into the room, his face flushed, with Pops’ arm around his shoulder. They were laughing and crying all at the same time, holding each other up like they couldn’t stand without the other. For a long second, it was as if the air had just been sucked out of the room. And then cheers went up and I found myself in the center of a group hug.

We somehow managed to make our way down the hall, still hugging, still laughing, a few tears sliding down manly, chiseled jawbones. And then we were in the delivery room, Stacy exhausted but happy, holding the tinniest human being I’d ever seen. Cassidy—Pops’ new wife—was beside her, gushing over how beautiful the baby was. Brianna moved up behind her mother, gazing at the baby as if he was the most perfect thing God ever made.

And he was. He had dark hair like his father and light eyes that would likely be pale like his mother’s, chubby little cheeks and the most perfect little fingers. I’d seen a few babies in my time, but none I was as interested in as this one.

I stepped back and watched as everyone gushed over him, jokes flying around the room about Killian and Stacy’s relationship—no one could really resist that particular elephant—as well as just about anything else they could think of in their exhaustion-induced euphoria. I glanced at my phone a few more times, this funny little pain shooting through the center of my chest each time I saw that there were no messages. I was trying to be a part of this amazing moment, but finding it difficult.

I was not a good man. I didn’t deserve to feel the sort of joy that I could see on Killian and Stacy’s faces. But I envied them their happiness. I’d thought—for a while—that I would never feel that sort of thing in my life. Ever. But there’d been a little bit of hope with Delaney.

If she didn’t forgive me, I’d be lost.