Page 24 of His Forced Irish Mafia Bride

His gaze lifted slightly. “That depends.”

“It’s about Sean.”

When the name landed in the space between us, the room felt different immediately. Father Michael didn’t respond right away. I watched him closely now, my attention sharpening in a way that had nothing to do with patience.

“My father’s debt to him,” I continued. “Their past. Whatever this is. Why him? Why my father? Why does everything keep circling around him without anyone saying what he did?”

Father Michael exhaled slowly. Not with frustration, But restraint. “Some things don’t have clean explanations.”

“That’s not good enough.”

“It rarely is.”

I leaned forward slightly. “Then give me the dirty one.”

That earned me a long silence. Long enough that I knew I was getting closer to something real. When he finally spoke again, his tone had changed, more careful, more controlled.

“There were betrayals,” he said.

I didn’t blink.

“The wrong people were trusted. Lives were lost because of decisions that didn’t belong to just one person,” he continued.

“That’s still too vague.”

“It has to be,” he replied quietly. The way he said it made me pause, not because it answered anything, but because it confirmed the avoidance. I watched him more closely now, tracking shifts in his expression instead of words.

“Sean was part of it?” I asked.

Father Michael hesitated for barely a second, but I caught it.

“Yes,” he said finally. “But not in the way you think.”

That answer made everything worse, not better. I sat back slightly, frustration building under my skin.

“Then explain it properly.”

“I can’t.”

“Youwon’t,” I corrected him.

He didn’t deny it. And that silence was its own kind of answer. My mind started connecting patterns I didn’t like—the way he paused before answering, the way his expression tightened when Sean was mentioned.

He was protecting someone, carefully and intentionally. I looked at Father Michael for a long moment.

“You’re not hiding the truth from me. You’re hidingsomeone.”

His expression barely changed, but it was enough. I leaned back slowly, the realization settling in with uncomfortable weight. I just didn’t know who Father Michael was protecting.

The silence from Father Michael pushed me further. I shifted in my seat slightly, eyes locked on him in a way that removed all softness from the conversation.

“If Sean was involved,” I said carefully, “then what happened to him? Why is he the one who called in my father’s debt?”

Father Michael exhaled through his nose slowly, like he was weighing whether even being here was a mistake.

“That’s not a simple question.”

“Nothing about this is simple,” I replied immediately. That earned me a pause, a longer one this time.