I Woke Up at the Altar and Said No to the Mob Heir Who Let Me Die, but He Remembers Too novel · Chapter 3 of 40

Chapter 3: The Tape

Cormac gives back the tape he took at dawn and asks nothing, Orla refuses the dying old man to his face and takes her father's money, Cormac tells the family that anyone who touches her answers to him, and Senan texts her a welcome to freedom.

"Turn around," I told the driver. "Back to the house."

"Lady, the meter..."

"I'll pay the meter."

Only one other person alive knew about that false bottom.

I had told him myself, in his study, five years from now, with the tape in my shaking hand.

He hadn't even looked at it.

The cab pulled up behind a line of black cars. The family was coming home.

Aunts in big hats stood on the lawn among my clothes, whispering. A cousin had picked up one of my bras with two fingers.

I walked through them all with the toolbox in my arms.

Nobody said a word to my face.

The study door was half open.

Cormac stood at his father's desk with his jacket off and his tie gone, staring at nothing.

He looked up when I came in.

I set the toolbox on the desk and opened the false bottom so he could see the empty dust.

"Where is it?"

He didn't pretend.

He unlocked the top drawer of the desk and took out a black cassette tape with a white label, blank.

He set it on the blotter between us.

"I took it at dawn," he said. "Before anybody was up."

"Why?"

"Because the last time, it's what got you killed."

My throat closed.

"And because the last time, you put it in my hand and I locked it in a safe without listening."

He pushed it across the desk toward me with two fingers.

"It's yours. It always was."

I stared at him.

"What do you want for it?"

"Nothing."

"Everybody in this house wants something."

"I know." He didn't look away. "I don't get to want anything from you, Orla."

I picked up the tape.

It was warm from the drawer, or from his hand.

I put it in my bra, because the cousins had taught me which pockets get searched.

Then a nurse in blue scrubs leaned into the doorway.

"Miss Kilbride? Mr. Devane is asking for you. The father."

The old man's room smelled of lavender and machines.

He was propped up on four pillows, with the oxygen hissing, and he looked smaller than he had in church.

My ring sat on the table by his bed.

"Sit down, girl."

I sat.

He held out a fat envelope.

"Your father's insurance. Forty-one thousand. I held it for you so you wouldn't spend it on shoes."

I took it.

"I would have given it to you on your wedding night," he said. "As a present from him."

"Thank you."

"Orla." His big hand closed over mine. It was shaking. "Your father drove me for twenty years. I promised him nobody would touch his daughter. The only way I know to keep that promise is the name."

"I know you meant it kindly."

"Then marry the boy. Go back next Saturday. I'll say you had nerves."

I looked at him for a long moment.

He had believed my father was a rat for nine years, and he took me in anyway.

He had also never once asked me what I wanted.

"No," I said.

His face fell.

"Your name didn't keep me safe," I said. "I'm going to try mine."

He let go of my hand.

When I came out into the hall, the whole family was there.

Philomena by the stairs. Senan leaning on the banister with a drink. Aunts, cousins, the priest with a plate of party food.

They had been listening at the door.

"Well," Philomena said. "Did you get your money?"

"Yes."

"Then get out of my house."

"Mother."

Cormac had come out of the study behind me.

He didn't raise his voice. He never had to.

"Today was my fault," he said to the hall. "Not hers. I gave her every reason to say no."

Somebody's aunt gasped.

"Cormac," Philomena hissed. "Not in front of..."

"In front of everybody," he said. "So nobody can say later they didn't hear it."

He looked from face to face. His uncle's. His cousins'. His mother's.

"Orla walks out of here today with everything she came for. Nobody follows her. Nobody calls her a name. Anybody who touches her answers to me."

The hall went silent.

Senan raised his glass, smiling.

"Course, son. Course. Nobody's touching anybody."

I didn't thank Cormac.

I picked up the toolbox and walked out the front door.

The cab driver had loaded my clothes off the lawn into the trunk, God bless him.

The broken machine sat on the back seat.

I got in.

We were halfway down the drive when I heard the shout.

"Orla! Orla, wait!"

Nessa was running down the gravel after the cab, barefoot, her rabbit swinging from one fist.

Her face was red and wet.

"Stop," I said. "Stop the car."

But before the driver could brake, Cormac came out of the house at a run.

He scooped her up mid-stride.

She screamed and kicked at him.

He didn't let go. He just held her against his chest and stood in the drive and watched us, and he didn't wave.

I turned around and faced forward.

"Keep going," I said.

My voice wasn't steady.

The driver kept going.

We were on Blue Hill Avenue, heading for nowhere I'd decided yet, when my phone lit up on my knee.

A text from a number I knew.

Senan.

"Welcome to freedom, sweetheart. Don't be a stranger. Your da never was."

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