Page 83 of The Wrong Mafia Bride
18
ROSALINA
I cannot stop crying.
It has been three days since Margaret's phone call, and the tears just keep coming—sometimes in great shuddering sobs that leave me gasping for air, sometimes in quiet streams that I do not even notice until Dante or Gabriel or Luca gently wipes my face with their thumbs. My eyes are perpetually swollen, my throat raw, and there is a hollow ache in my chest that feels like someone has carved out something essential and left me to function around the absence.
Numb. That is the word that keeps circling through my head. I am numb and grieving and crying all at once, which should not be possible but apparently is.
I have tried calling Erin seventeen times.
Seventeen calls to the number she used when she contacted me, and every single one goes straight to voicemail. I have left messages—increasingly frantic ones—begging her to call me back, to let me know she is okay, to come home for the funeral. But there is nothing. Just silence on the other end, and theterrible fear that something has happened to her too, that I have lost both of them.
Dante keeps telling me she is probably just out of cell range, that farms in rural Texas do not always have great service, that she will call back as soon as she gets the messages.
But what if she doesn't? What if something happened and I do not know and I cannot reach her and?—
I force myself to stop that line of thinking before it spirals completely out of control.
I need to focus on what I can control. Which right now is getting through this meeting with Patrick without losing my mind or my temper. I straighten my shoulders and look around, trying to ground myself in the present moment.
The O'Connor estate looms around me, familiar and wrong in equal measure. Everything is exactly as I remember—the green carpets, the tall windows, the artwork on the walls—but it all feels empty now. Hollow. Like someone has sucked the life out of these rooms and left behind nothing but a shell.
Seamus's office door is closed. I cannot bring myself to look at it.
I keep thinking about the fact that I never said goodbye. That the last time I saw him was at the wedding, and I was so focused on Erin, on making sure the substitution worked, on getting through the ceremony without being caught, that I didn’t stop to tell him I loved him. Did not stop to thank him for everything he had done for me.
And now I never can.
The guilt sits in my stomach like a stone. I should have come back to visit after the wedding. I should have called more. Ishould have made time instead of being so wrapped up in my new life with Dante and Gabriel and Luca that I forgot about the man who made that life possible.
Some daughter I turned out to be.
I am sitting in the hallway outside what used to be Seamus's office, my back against the wall, knees pulled up to my chest, staring at nothing. Dante is beside me—has been beside me for hours now, silent and steady, his presence the only thing keeping me tethered to reality.
We are waiting for Patrick Murphy.
Seamus's right-hand man. His closest friend. The man who, according to Margaret, has somehow been named the new leader of the Irish mafia.
That part does not make sense to me. Seamus had a will. He had plans for succession. Patrick was loyal, yes, but he was not supposed to lead. That role should have gone to?—
I do not know. Someone else. Anyone else. The whole thing makes my stomach turn, makes the grief sharpen into something that feels uncomfortably close to suspicion.
But maybe I am just looking for someone to blame. Maybe grief is making me paranoid.
Dante's hand finds mine, fingers threading through mine and squeezing gently. I squeeze back without looking at him, grateful for the contact, for the reminder that I am not alone in this even though it feels like I am drowning.
Footsteps echo down the hallway—purposeful, unhurried—and I look up to see Patrick approaching.
He looks the same as he always has—tall and broad-shouldered with graying red hair and a face full of freckles that make him look younger than his fifty-some years. He is wearing a dark suit, appropriately somber, but there is something in his expression that makes my chest tighten.
He is smiling.
Not a big smile, not inappropriate, but there is a lightness in his eyes that should not be there. This is a man who just lost his best friend, who should be devastated, destroyed, barely holding himself together.
Instead, he looks almost... pleased.
"Rosalina," he says warmly, opening his arms as he approaches. "I am so sorry I am late. There has been so much to handle with the transition."
