Page 19 of Daring Wicked Love (Wicked Dade #2)

“I’ll be right over here if you need me.” I tucked a stray strand of hair behind Pen’s ear. “Go and have fun with the other kids, and whenever you want to go home, we’ll go, okay?”

She nibbled on her bottom lip, eyes darting between me and the group of excited children jumping in and out of a bouncy castle.

From the second Penelope woke up, she had been acting strange, and it didn’t take a genius to figure out that she was worried.

When she woke up, Frederic was still in the house, pacing the kitchen like a caveman ready to go out hunting for a kill.

It was his second day in family court, and though he kept that knowledge away from Penelope, she picked up on her father’s anguish the second she saw him.

We both did.

Everything about him screamed panic. The heavy bags under his tired eyes, the small cut under his bottom lip from where he was too heavy with his razor, and the constant twisting of his platinum ring, which I was slightly concerned his finger was going to fall off.

As much as I was still recovering from him rejecting me, watching him try to swallow the pain while having breakfast with his daughter brought tears to my eyes.

I had to excuse myself and let the two of them eat alone, because every time Frederic looked at Pen, it was as if he was trying to memorize everything about her, as if it was the last time he’d get to see her.

And gee whizz, it was killing me.

I believed Penelope felt it too. She was quiet from the moment Fred left and didn’t speak to either me or Hank during our drive to a birthday party she had been invited to.

“Can’t we just go now?” She fiddled with the pink bow at the end of her braid. “My tummy feels funny.”

Dropping to my knees, I took her hands in mine. “Sometimes my tummy feels funny when I am worried or upset. Is that what’s wrong? Are you sad?”

Her bottom lip trembled.

“Oh, Pen,” I sighed softly. “It’s okay to be sad sometimes, it’s normal. Can you tell me why you’re sad?”

“I think my daddy is sad.”

“What makes you think that?”

“He looks sad. Sometimes when he thinks he is alone, I see him, and he’s sad.”

“Ah, well, see, the thing about your dad is…” I fumbled with my words.

“Him being so sad makes me sad.”

The pair of them was going to be the reason for the fracture lines etching deep into my heart.

The two of them were so freaking concerned about not letting the other one see them upset — she truly was her father’s daughter.

“Everyone gets sad sometimes, and that’s okay. I get sad too.”

“You do?”

“Of course, it’s only natural,” I said. “But you know what I do when I get sad? I let myself feel it for just a little bit, and then I do something that makes me happy.”

She sniffed, a tear trickling down her cheek.

“Come here.” I wrapped my arms around her and pulled her into my lap. Two little arms encased my neck. “We can sit here and feel the sadness for a little bit longer.”

It didn’t matter that the table full of parents nearby were sitting watching us with confusion, I held onto Penelope until she was ready to let go.

She needed me, and if it meant I had to sit there all day and night, then so be it.

Growing up, I never met my mother. She was apparently a married woman my father had an affair with. When she gave birth to me, she left me with my monster of a father and went back to her real family. I was a mistake she never had to think about again.

Niamh’s mother wasn’t much different, except she was my father’s personal assistant, who he had deported back to Albania the day after she gave birth.

Without a mother figure in my life, it should have been up to my father to fill both roles. Instead, he portrayed the image of a doting father to the outside world, while being a neglecting and abusive piece of shit behind closed doors.

Never did I feel one ounce of the love that Frederic had for Penelope.

He loved his child so fucking much, it just didn’t make sense to me why his ex-wife would want to take that away from him.

Penelope slowly let go. “I feel a little better.”

“Good,” I soothed. “Now you know what will really help? Going and jumping on that bouncy castle and then eating some delicious birthday cake until your belly aches.”

Balancing a paintbrush between my teeth, I silenced my phone for the fifteenth time of the day.

There were a lot of things I could call the man who created me, but a quitter wasn’t one of them.

I still wasn’t sure how he managed to find me, but in a blind panic, I deleted all my social media accounts and even resorted to closing my unsuccessful online art store.

No matter how many times I blocked his number, he simply harassed me from another phone.

He wasn’t going to give up until he found a way to Niamh.

A small part of me knew that my sister wouldn’t entertain him. However, the bigger part of me, the one that twisted my stomach until I was close to vomiting, feared that she’d willingly let him back into her life.

Whenever the victims of my father’s countless assaults came forward, I was the one who persuaded Niamh to talk to the police.

Although he had never laid a single finger on either of us, the years of emotional abuse were vital in painting a picture of the real Eamonn McShay.

Our father was a cruel man, often showering one of us with love and adoration while shunning the other.

I was more often than not the one shunned, resulting in my sister joining in on the tirades of abuse to remain in our father’s good books.

He pinned us against each other, twisting our relationship from sisters to competitors for his affection.

Niamh was distraught when they sentenced him. The years of manipulation and gaslighting had warped her young mind into still loving the man she called father and blaming me for stealing him away from her.

And she never let me forget it.

We went into foster care, moving from home to home, mainly because Niamh acted out. She fought with other children, accused our foster parents of inappropriate behavior, and at one point started a fire in a bedroom.

Every time we were moved, social services kept us together.

They hoped that I would be the driving force in helping Niamh find stability in her life.

Even when I begged them to separate us, even when I told them the reason I snuck out at night-time was to get away from my own sister, they insisted on keeping us together.

But all those years were spent listening to her blame me for everything.

It was my fault the police questioned her.

It was my fault that we were in care. It was my fault that we had to change our names to avoid being associated with the McShay Scandal .

It was then my fault that she couldn’t apply for a university loan under a fake name, hence why it became my problem to solve.

All the years of blame, all the countless insults and name-calling, I took it all.

Foolishly, I clung to the hope that as she grew, she’d realize what I did was for the two of us and all those victims.

I wanted nothing more than the only family I had left in the world to see me as her big sister and love me for it.

Maybe it was about time I got what I wanted.

Blocking yet another call, I tucked the paintbrush behind my ear and scrolled through my call log.

Niamh answered strangely immediately. “Hey, what’s the craic? Everything okay?”

“All good, I am just checking in on you. I wanted to make sure you’re safe.”

There was a pause. “You don’t have to worry about me. I’ll be fine, I always am.”

“I thought that about myself, but somehow, he managed to find me. I’m just worried, especially with you both being in Ireland. What if…”

“Orla, stop,” Niamh cut me off. “Look, you and I both know if he wants to find me, he will do it one way or another. It doesn’t mean I will speak to him.”

“Are you sure about that?”

“What is that supposed to mean?”

I exhaled slowly. “You’re my sister, and I love you, but we both remember our years in the foster system. You used to tell me almost nightly that you wished it were me who went away, not him. You did it right up until I turned eighteen.”

“I was a child,” she snapped. “A fucked-up child who didn’t truly understand what had just happened.”

“We’re adults now and you still treat me the same.” Apparently, my word vomit condition was getting worse. “You still blame me for everything, I know you do.”

“That’s hardly fair. You know I still have unresolved trauma from our childhood.”

I scoffed. “And I don’t? Shitting hell, Niamh, I’m just as screwed up from it all as you. The only difference between us is that I actually want to fix the damage to our relationship. I want to undo everything he did to us.”

Silence filled the speaker.

Maybe it was the fear of losing her to our father, or maybe it was being around a family that actually loved each other that spurred me into finally speaking the truth.

Whatever the reason, despite the wobble in my knees and uncertainty in my voice, it was about time Niamh heard the truth.

“You’re twenty-two now. You said it yourself, you’re an adult,” I said. “I’m going to transfer you one last payment; it should cover your remaining semesters. After that, no more. I refuse to shoulder the blame of our past any longer.”

“Orla, wait a second…”

“No,” I said firmly. “From here on out, if you want me in your life, it will be as your older sister, not as your personal bank machine. I really hope that you choose to forgive me, that you see that I was just a terrified kid who wanted to take us away from him. Everything I did was to protect you… Protect us.”

Holding my breath, I waited for her to say something. Anything.

A dead dial tone was all that responded.

Swallowing the wedge forming in my throat, I fought with myself not to ring her straight back and make her understand.

Couldn’t she see that all I wanted was for her to be my baby sister?

The front door slamming shut and echoing throughout the entire house had me putting down my phone and rushing down the stairs straight from one disaster into another.