Page 2 of My Craving

She pushes back her chair and rises with practiced grace, smoothing an invisible wrinkle from her dress. For Maria, this is just another evening.

“You’ve spent years building the reputation of a cold-hearted businessman.” She picks up her purse and slips the strap over her shoulder. “No one will question it when they find out you killed yourself and your son.”

The words slice through the haze clouding my mind. Declan. My eyes find him again. His little body is slumped over the table, completely motionless.

Maria reaches out and runs her fingers through his dark hair with almost maternal tenderness. I lunge for her, or at least I try to. My arm barely lifts from the table before it crashes back down, useless.

“I know your last big deal pushed us into billionaire status.” She laughs, the sound hollow and cruel. “Well… it made me one, I should say.”

Then she turns and walks toward the front door. Leaving my son and me to die. The front door opens and closes. Silence. Every second matters, but my body is becoming less responsive by the moment. My vision tunnels until all I can see is the phone sticking halfway out of my pocket. Move, I scream in my head.

My fingers finally cooperate on the third attempt, and I pull the phone free. The screen blurs, but muscle memory finds the number I’ve dialed a thousand times before.

I find Kieran’s number through the blur and hit call. The phone rings once before he answers.

“Duncan?”

“Poison…” The word scrapes from my throat. My tongue feels swollen. My lips barely move. I drag in a shallow breath and force out the only words that matter.

“Help… Declan.”

The silence on the other end lasts only a fraction of a second. Then Kieran roars into the phone.

“Duncan! Stay with me! Duncan!”

I try. God, I try. But my grip gives out. The phone slips from my fingers and cracks against the hardwood floor. I turn my head one last time. Declan hasn’t moved. His small body is folded over the table, his cheek resting beside the untouched peas he was stacking into a mountain only minutes ago. My little boy. The last thing I hear is my brother screaming my name. The last thing I feel is absolute failure. Then the world goes black.

My limbs weigh a thousand pounds as consciousness claws its way back. Declan. His name is there before I can remember anything else. I force my eyes open, but the lights overhead stab through them and make me squeeze them shut again. The sterile smell and fluorescent lights tell me I’m in a hospital, and the memory of Declan slumped over the dinner table comes back hard enough to send my heart pounding against my ribs.

I force my eyes open again and try to sit up, but every muscle protests. A monitor beside me erupts into a rapid series of beeps as I claw at the blankets.

“Calm down, Duncan.”

Strong hands grip my shoulders, trying to force me back against the mattress, but I barely register them. “Declan?”

“He’s fine,” Kieran says. “Still asleep. He’s in the bed to your left.”

My head snaps in that direction. Declan lies curled beneath a thin hospital blanket with an IV taped to the back of his tiny hand. His chest rises and falls in a slow, steady rhythm, and some of the pressure crushing my ribs finally releases.

I stare at him until I’m certain he’s alive, watching each breath and the steady rhythm on the monitor beside him. Declan is the one person I have never been able to think of as replaceable. He’s my son. Mine. Maria almost took him from me.

“Maria did this.” I stare at Kieran, the words tasting like poison she fed us. “To her own child.” I shake my head once. “For money.”

Kieran holds my gaze for a long moment before speaking. “I know.” His voice is calm. “You were mumbling about it when we found you.”

Found us. My eyes flick to Declan’s sleeping form. The monitors continue their steady rhythm. He almost died because of her.

“Where is she?” The question comes out low, each word scraped raw from my throat.

Kieran’s expression doesn’t change. “She won’t be hurting anyone again.”

I meet his eyes. He knows exactly what I’m asking and what I want. “That wasn’t what I asked.”

Kieran exhales. “Alessia found her before I did,” Kieran grumbles. “Maria tried to hurt her family. I couldn’t talk Alessia into waiting for you.”

My sister-in-law handled it. There will be no trial. No prison sentence. No chance she’ll ever breathe another breath. I should feel cheated and deprived of my revenge. I look at Declan sleeping beside me. I listen to the steady beep of the monitor proving he’s still alive. I don’t care who ended her life. Only that she no longer has one.

Chapter 1 Nash