Page 25 of His Forced Irish Mafia Bride

Then he spoke again, more slowly. “Sean was younger when it happened. He wasn’t the man you know now. Everything was still…unstable.”

I watched him closely. “That doesn’t explain anything.”

“I know.” The admission was quiet, almost reluctant. Father Michael shifted slightly in his chair, his hands folding together. “There was still an organization then,” he continued. “Not as structured as what exists now. Trust held it together more than rules did.”

I leaned forward slightly. “And that trust broke.”

“Yes.”

“What broke it?”

“People made decisions they shouldn’t have,” he said finally, “and someone paid the price for it.”

Something turned in my chest at that wording. “Someone,” I repeated. “Not everyone.”

Father Michael didn’t answer, which was an answer in itself.

I started connecting things: Sean’s silence around the past, Patrick’s refusal to give details, the way both men avoided direct answers entirely.

“It wasn’t just betrayal,” I said slowly. “It was something that split everything apart.” Father Michael’s jaw tightened slightly.

“That’s enough,” he said quietly, but I was already past the point of stopping.

“And Sean?” I pushed. “Where does he actually sit in all of this?”

The question changed the air enough that Father Michael straightened slightly, his expression tightening in a way he couldn’t hide.

“Maeve,” he said, more firmly now.

“Did my father betray him?”

Father Michael looked away. “That’s not something I can answer.”

I stared at him. That reaction told me more than words ever could. It confirmed that Sean wasn’t just part of the story.

He was the center of it, the part people refused to speak about directly. The attack on the penthouse flashed through my mind again. I exhaled slowly, tension building behind my ribs.

“So this isn’t over,” I said quietly.

Father Michael didn’t deny it.

Instead, he rose slowly, as if the conversation had reached a point he refused to cross. Before leaving, he paused near the door. His voice was quieter now, heavier.

“Some truths don’t free you when you find them,” he said. “They just change what you have to survive knowing.”

I watched him carefully. “So I should just stop asking?”

He mets my gaze briefly. “No,” he said. “Just…be careful who you decide to trust.” Then he left, and the penthouse felt colder without him.

I sat where he left me for a while, staring at nothing in particular, replaying every sentence of our conversation until the words started to lose their meaning.

They shifted when I turned them over enough times, forming new shapes I hadn’t noticed before. When Sean was younger, someone betrayed him, maybe my father. With no full explanations, I was left with fragments. I stood eventually, unable to stay still with all of it sitting in my head.

The penthouse was too large for how contained it felt. Every step I took echoed slightly differently now, like the space itself was aware of my movements.

I paced through the living area first, then the corridor, then back again, as if repetition might clarify something that refused to settle. It didn’t. Instead, the gaps became louder.

Dad had hid so much from me.