Page 66 of Bad Bishop

Yanking the door open, I shouldered past the wall of Tiernan’s soldiers and took the steps down. The men were so stunned, they just stood there and watched. I didn’t make it four steps before my husband scooped me up by the back of my dress, boxing me against the wall between his huge arms.

He still smelled of her. A mixture of cloying, flowery perfume and a Victoria’s Secret body mist.

“She speaks.” He looked like the least surprised man on planet Earth, grinning devilishly. “What a fucking miracle.”

I slapped him hard, glad his soldiers witnessed it. Maybe he’d finally hit me back.

I hoped he’d hit me, and I’d be able to tell my brothers, and they’d kill him.

His face didn’t budge a millimeter, his good eye didn’t flinch. He was immune to pain, to emotions, tohumanity.

“I figured out what it is,” he said conversationally, scooping up a tear on my cheek with his index finger and popping it into his mouth.

I stared at him with faux boredom, my heart nearly racing out of my chest. Every muscle in my body screamed at me to hurt him back.

Tiernan leaned forward, his lips moving slowly. “You’re deaf.”

All the air left my lungs.

No one knew this. No one but Mama and Imma. How did he figure it out?

“Your speech was the final nail in the coffin,” he explained, watching me watch his lips. “Though I had my inkling for some time now. You never seemed to acknowledge me unless I was right in front of you, where you could read my lips. I tried dropping shit whenever we were in the same room—mugs, hardcovers, small furniture—waiting for a reaction that never came.”

I gulped. I always found his clumsiness to be out of character whenever I found a shattered glass in the kitchen.

Did he find my speech funny? Weird? I wished it didn’t matter. Itshouldn’tmatter to me. Yet it did. Because, as much as I hated it, I cared what he thought about me.

“I speak ASL,” he said after a beat. “Tierney, too.”

I reared my head back, surprised.

What were the odds? And why on earth did the twins learn ASL? I was starting to suspect they weren’t with their father and older brother the entire length of their childhood.

He snapped his fingers once. His soldiers evacuated the hallway. The Camorrista hesitated for a moment, deliberating, before Tiernan shot him a glance that sent him stumbling downstairs.

We were alone.

Tiernan signed to me, “Tell me something. Anything. Now.”

His movements were smooth. Confident. It was the last nail in my lie’s coffin. The temptation to speak with someone who wasn’t my mother was too great.

I raised my quaking hands to answer him. “Go to hell.”

“Grew up there. Never going back. Let’s try again.”

“I hate you.”

“I tolerate you.” The admission seemed to slip from him without permission, because his jaw locked in annoyance. “AndI don’t tolerate people very often. Third time’s a charm. Say something.”

“Get rid of your whore.”

It was the first time I saw him smiling with mirth, not sarcasm. All the other times, his smirk was tainted with darkness. Still, he didn’t blink. I wondered if he closed his eye when he slept.

“That’s better, Gealach.”

He marched back into the apartment. I followed him. The receptionist was standing outside my room, reapplying her lip gloss, using her smartphone as a mirror.

I wasn’t a violent person, but she knew he was married with ababyon the way. I was pretty sure I could kill her and get acquitted by the jury.