Page 48 of Brendan (The Doherty Mafia)
I nodded. I believed him. He had no idea how relieved I was to hear it. I wished he would have taken me in his arms and kissed me.
“I know I’ve made a mistake by not telling you about Davey, but I thought it would have been easier to just raise him myself.”
“You could have found me. You knew who I was. Everyone around here knows who I am.”
I nodded. “Yes, I know that. I’m not going to lie. It was a conscious decision on my part to keep Davey from you. I thought I was saving him a lot of disappointment.”
“By not letting him have a relationship with his father?” Brendan narrowed his eyes accusingly at me. He had every right to.
“I genuinely thought you ditched me that night at the party. I assumed that was the kind of father you would make.”
He brushed a hand through his hair and shook his head.
“I would never desert my own flesh and blood.”
“I didn’t know that. I knew nothing about you.”
My lips quivered. I knew more tears were coming. I felt helpless because I couldn’t help my son, and also because Brendan hated me now.
But then he grabbed me by my hips and pulled me in. He used his thumbs to gently wipe my tears away.
“We can talk about all this later. Right now, we just need to focus on finding Davey.”
“How much longer will it be?”
“I don’t know. I’m waiting to hear from my brothers, but none of us will give up until he’s asleep in his own bed safely.”
I nodded. Tears still rolled down my cheeks, but he was there now to catch them. I wasn’t sure if he would ever forgive me for all the wasted time. For missing Davey’s birth, for missing his first steps and his first words. But for now, there wasn’t anyone else who I could rely upon more.
Mom was right—I had been wrong about Brendan all along.
I looked up expectantly at him, hoping he would kiss me, but he released me and turned to look out of the window again.
“Come on, kiddo, where are you?” he mumbled under his breath.
I watched his reflection in the glass. He looked determined and enraged as he stared out at the streets. I pressed my eyes close and whispered to Davey that I loved him.
Twenty-Six
Brendan
Even though it seemed like a long time, it hadn’t been that long that we were waiting at the apartment—probably like half an hour—before all my brothers showed up.
Tristian had spread the word.
When the rest of the Dohertys found out that I had a son who had been kidnapped by Aldo Baron, they all wanted to be there to do their part.
Rosalie was lying on the couch, curled up and softly sobbing when the rest of my clan stormed her apartment. She sat up with a jerk, surprised to see so many of us together.
But there was no time for introductions or niceties.
Aidan and Tristian were the only ones to even acknowledge her presence there, while the others just jumped on the problem at hand.
“We have men on the streets, trying to collect information on where Aldo could be holing up with the kid,” Killian said.
“I’m collating a list of all his local warehouses and holding cells,” Nolan added. “We’ll check every one of them.”
“He wouldn’t have taken him to one of his usual sites of business. Besides, we’ve already done rounds of those when we were searching for him,” I said.
Over Tristian’s shoulder, I saw Rosalie still on the couch. She looked shell-shocked. She wasn’t expecting to be surrounded by my brothers, and I was sure we probably looked intimidating to her when we were gathered together like that. We looked intimidating to everyone.
“But if we have no other leads on where to start looking, we’ll have to hit up the warehouses and storage facilities,” Aidan said.
I clenched my jaws and nodded.
“And we will burn them down,” I growled.
My brothers stared at me. They knew what the implication of those actions would be—yeah, we had been at war with the Barons for a few months now, but burning down all their holding cells would be a direct act of violence. It would give the Barons the excuse they needed to retaliate. But kidnapping an innocent child was worse in my books.
Once we started burning each other down, there would be no stopping the extent each family would go to win. There was only one way to end something like that once it snowballed—total and complete annihilation.
“I don’t give a shit what happens after this. I’m going to do everything it takes to bring Davey back. I’m not letting him go,” I continued.
Tristian slapped a hand on my shoulder.
“Neither are we, brother. We just wanted to make sure we are all on the same page.”
