Page 7 of Wicked Auction

He leans in. “That’s what we’re hoping for, sweetheart.” My scream is swallowed in the cell as the needle pricks my neck.

Chapter Three

TORIN

We pull up to the house, and for the first time today, my throat goes tight. I grew up here, in the McCarthy family home, one of the most famous landmarks outside Dublin. My father expanded it as our family grew. It stands, imposing and majestic, against the backdrop of the Irish sky at dusk. I roll down the window despite the autumn chill, just to smell the familiar salty air.

I don't know what to expect. It's hard to face a mix of familiar and new, like visiting a past life.

The door opens before I reach it.

Mam stands in the light spilling out of the hall, and for a second she just looks at me. Her eyes are as blue as ever, but there's more gray in her hair, and she looks… older. Frail. Tired.

Is she holding her breath? My mother has buried people she loved, raised five children under impossible circumstances, and survived decades of married life beside one of Ireland's most feared. But when I start walking toward her, she falls apart.

She crosses the grassy garden outside our house in bare feet and falls straight into my arms. I catch her the way you catch someone you're braced for. I know I'm bigger than before I went to prison, but she feels so much smaller than I remembered.

Everyone will be, I reckon.

Then Mam is sobbing into my borrowed shirt, deep, racking sobs that shake her thin shoulders. I bury my face in her hair. I don't tell her I'm fine or that it's okay. I'm home, and that's what matters right now. I pat her back and hold her.

“You're home, Torin. I thought you'd never come home again.”

“Aye, Mam.” My voice is still rough. “I'm home.”

“Come, see your father. He was practically up all night—he was that excited for your return, and it took your brothers and cousins to hold him back from coming to pick you up.”

I nod, walking beside her up the steps that lead us home. When he was healthy, he’d have come instead of Seamus, but his heart isn’t what it used to be. “How is he?”

She shakes her head. “Alright, for now.”

I nod. I'll take it.

The kitchen is exactly where I left it, yet somehow nothing like what I remembered. Like my mother, it's smaller, like a room from a dream, like memories pieced together. Is that a new… table? Chairs? I don't remember, and I don't care.

It's still home.

Two little ones I’ve never met come barreling into the room and stop dead when they see me. The girl recovers first and hides behind Seamus’s leg. “That’s your Uncle Torin,” he says. A small, petite woman with a soft smile comes in holding a toddler.

“My wife, Zoya.” Seamus beams.

“Pleased to meet you. Wow. Uncle.” I swallow hard.

“You look like your brothers,” Zoya says.

I nod. “Aye, I do. Your girl looks just like you, but the boys are McCarthys, eh?”

She laughs. “Yes. This is little Cait and Ronan, and the baby’s Dmitri.” Ah. A good blend of Irish and Russian, then.

“Torin, soda bread?” Mam says, taking the baby from Zoya with a smile. It’s wild to see my mother with a grandchild.

“Aye.”

The smell of Mam’s soda bread hits me as soon as I walk through the door, followed by a squeal and a wave of light-brown hair.

For a second, I don't recognize her. My mind is still holding onto the teenage girl I left behind, who used to trail after me through the stables. But that girl is gone. The woman holding onto me now has a round, gentle face and cheeks that still flush pink.

“Bronwyn?”