The Wrong Way and The Right Way
Genesis stared at Kiefer as if he’d suddenly sprouted an additional head.
“Are you kidding me right now?”
“What?”
“You’re going to try to pin this shit on me? Kiefer, you knew your sister was an asshole. You knew Laoise was an even bigger one. I begged you on my hands and knees to stay with me. I cried when you touched me, and it caused me pain. It is not my fault you are a selfish bastard too absorbed in your own shit you couldn’t see what was blatantly in front of your face.” She pointed her finger in his face, “for someone who thinks I’m going to somehow forgive him for his hand in the most horrific moments of my life, you’re really going around it all wrong. You need to dig your head out of your arse, Kiefer O’Reilly and really examine yourself and the shit you’re spouting. I will not allow you to gaslight me into believing any of this is my fault. I did. nothing wrong. I did what was necessary to protect my son and my life. Fuck you.” She whispered the last part aware Egan was still nearby.
“What is going on here?” Tadgh interrupted moving closer to them from where he’d been off in the distance with Jerren and a few security agents. “Genesis looks ready to rip off your cock and force feed it to you, Kiefer, with her son only a few feet away. What have you said now, brother?”
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“Tadgh, mind your business,” Kiefer shot back.
2/9
“He’s trying to pin his lack of attention and overall stupidity. from seven years ago on me. Idiot,” she crossed her arms over her chest enraged.
“It was not your fault at all Genesis. It was entirely our fault. We fucked up,” Tadgh shot Kiefer an angry glare. “Whatever you’re saying to her to try to assuage your guilt, stop. I didn’t protect her the way I should have before because I deferred to you because you were her husband. I won’t make the same mistake. Go spend time with your son, Kiefer since you’re the one who insisted we wait for you to be able to be with him if you can’t be appropriate with his mother.”
Kiefer sighed, “Gen, I’m sorry. You know.”
“I don’t know anything. Leave me alone. You want to spend time with your son, get at it.”
Tadgh put his hand protectively on Genesis’s shoulder and glared at his brother, “this is not the way to fix this shit. I swear to God when Dad gets here, I hope he beats you into the fucking ground.” He looked at Genesis, “there is a café here. Why don’t we let Kiefer and Egan see the turtles and penguins together and you and I go grab a cup of coffee until you can get your anger under control, Gen. Don’t let Egan see you this angry and ruin a good experience for him.”
“Sure.” She let Tadgh guide her away. She shot another hateful glare at Kiefer who called her name before sighing to go follow
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Egan through the exhibits. “God, he’s an insufferable ass.”
“Agreed. He’s feeling guilty and it’s not an emotion he knows how to process.”
3/9
“Don’t make excuses for him. He had the fucking nerve to suggest the fact I didn’t confide in him was some kind of trust issue and how he would have stopped the abuse if I’d told him.”
“He’s wrong.” He walked to the counter of the café and ordered two coffees and then motioned for her to follow him to the end of the counter to wait for their order. “Genesis, there is nothing about what happened which is on your shoulders. Do we wish you’d told us? Absolutely. Is it your fault you didn’t? Not at all. It’s on us. We created and allowed an environment which put you in a spot where you didn’t know who to trust, rely on or even turn to. I was so caught up in my own anger at both you and Kiefer I spent all my time trying to avoid you both. That was my anger and my response. Not yours.”
Genesis took the paper cup of black coffee and moved to the little counter holding the milk and sugar and fixed her coffee up before taking a seat at a small two–seater bistro table in the corner of the room. Tadgh’s words felt like a balm to her soul after the things Kiefer said to her. She was still furious with Tadgh as well and insisted to herself he was merely a pawn in her escape game, but she allowed herself to accept his quietly delivered words as the comfort they were meant to portray.
He took the seat opposite her and stretched his long legs out under the table, his foot near hers. “Are you okay?”
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“No. None of this is okay, Tadgh. Why couldn’t he have let me be?”
“Genesis,” Tadgh sighed loudly shaking a sugar packet before ripping it open to dump in his coffee, “if it was only you, if Egan wasn’t involved, I think he would have let you go. In Burbank, when he came back from his drive and found out you were gone, he was going to take you back to the hotel. Realizing how fucked up everything was, how much we hurt you as a family, he actually said to me and Jerren to simply put a man on you to ensure you were safe but to let you go live your life. Then he got the report back from hospital and realized you’d been carrying twins, and it was highly likely you were hiding another child from him, well it changed everything. The minute he knew there was another baby, he was a man possessed.”
“How did he find me so fast? Was my backpack tagged?”
“No!” he laughed at her question. “We realized you grabbed it when we pulled the surveillance from the house to see how the hell you got out. We found the busted lamp and knew you were desperate to get back to whoever it was you left back at home.”
“Then how?”
“The guy you stole the motorcycle from,” Tadgh laughed, “he was the entire reason we were in Burbank. For three months we were watching his house where he lives with his mother. We bought the property to keep an eye on him. He is a filmmaker, and he made the mistake of filming some shit he shouldn’t have. He’d tried to extort Dad with the information but then he realized who he was fucking. with and backed off. We were trying
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to get our hands on the originals, but he keeps his house where his mother is locked up tighter than tight. We have his entire place under surveillance, and he knew it, so he was being careful. Our security system caught you scaling his fence and stealing his bike. It was super hot, by the way.”
She looked away at the compliment, “shut up.”
“It was. My dick was stone from watching you straddle a bike far too big for you and drive it down the hill into the city.” He chuckled as she flushed and wrapped her middle finger around her coffee cup and flexed it in his direction. “Tsk, tsk, Gen. Not nice. Anyway, you stealing the bike was a godsend. We recorded the entire route from the house to the city pretty much covered with surveillance and we kept his bike bugged. We were able to trace you to the coffee shop.. Then from the coffee shop we were able to track the license plate to Seattle. We figured you went north to throw us off, so we presumed you’d make a beeline back to Ohio. However, we have some guys working for TSA and also for border services. One of them got a hit.”
“Huh.”
“Oh, don’t be so disappointed.”
A notification on her phone made her pull it from her pocket and she frowned. A confirmation her DNA sample was registered and the tracking information for the package was included. At least Astra didn’t completely forget her. If somehow, she ended up dead, she wouldn’t be a Jane Doe for too long.
The Wrong Way and The Right Way
“Everything okay?” Tadgh asked curiously.
“Fine. It’s an email notification.”
“Work?”
“No.”
“Don’t want to share?”
She shrugged, “Astra submitted my DNA. It was an email telling me they received the packaging information and will notify me when the sample reaches their office.”
He quirked an eyebrow, “why on earth would she submit your
DNA?”
“It’s been part of our plan from before Egan was even born, Tadgh. You and Kiefer are the Iron Force Gang. I turned your second in command over to the FBI and ran away. Best case scenario if you ever caught me is this.” She waved around them, “worst case scenario, Aoife and Laoise convinced you I commented far worse crimes than they did, and I’d go missing and only parts of my body would be found. If she was going to be looking for me while hiding Egan, the plan was for her to have my DNA in a data base for police forensics if I needed to be identified.”
He sat back in horror, “Genesis, you actually believed we might kill
you?”
“I snitched and I left a man who has more pride in his pinky
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finger than most do in their whole body. I didn’t have high hopes for surviving.”
7/9
“It’s why you fought so hard.” He looked as if he were struggling.
to breathe. “None of us could have killed you.”
“Your sister and Laoise.”
“They are not us.”
“Yes, but you have a lot of dissension in your ranks, Tadgh. When the trifecta running this family are at odds it’s bound to trickle down.”
“What do you mean?”
“I mean everyone here knows Kiefer was sent to America to prove himself because your father didn’t trust him yet to run. the family when he dies and there was talk an uncle was going to take it. You and Kiefer were at each other’s throats while you were here in America. Everyone saw the three of you were not aligned. You have people supporting a new leadership because you three can’t seem to get on the same page. I’m a snitch, Tadgh, regardless of my reasons and by killing me, it meanst Kiefer proves his strength.”
Tadgh pushed his coffee cup out of the way and reached across the table and took her hands in his, “I promise you, at no time did Kiefer, me or Jerren or my father ever consider you needed to be put down, Genesis. Not even when Kiefer realized you were running with his son, did he consider killing you. You are loved and while we did an abysmal job of showing it, something we
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8/9
will rectify, some of us faster than others. What we will demonstrate to the entire family is we are all on the same page. You are the mother of the incoming heir to this family. Egan is our future, and you are his mother. All the respect in the world will be afforded to you.”
“Your mother doesn’t get the same respect.”
“My mother baby trapped my father with twins, refused to sign a prenup and was fucking someone else within weeks of our birth. She refused to care for us and left us with my grandparents and father. The fact you ran to protect your son already puts you in a class far superior to her. Do not compare apples to oranges Gen.” he played with her fingers. “How are you feeling now? A little better now you’ve ingested some caffeine and a break from Kiefer’s desperation?”
She snorted, “I guess.”
“Then let’s go see the penguins and spend some time with our family.”
As she followed him back towards where her son and Kiefer were, she realized this might have been the first real conversation she’d ever had with Tadgh O’Reilly and, for a man who’d turned a blind eye to her torture, he wasn’t a complete. asshole. So, when he held her hand while they walked, she let herself enjoy the moment of being protected, even if she knew deep in her heart it was going to be short–lived.
