This Union of Bastard Blood

"Do you still dare claim that child carries Donnelly blood?" I sneered.

Cillian snatched the report from the floor, his eyes scanning the page in disbelief. Disbelief quickly curdled into raw, shocked fury.

"Pathetic!" Ronan laughed. "You thought you could secure your position with a bastard, and it turns out he has nothing to do with us. You'd better double-check if that kid is even yours. You'll be the laughingstock of Chicago, raising another man's child."

"Shut up!" Cillian roared. "Don't try to drive a wedge between us! India would never betray me! The child is mine! Your sick games won't work!"

Ronan just scoffed as I signaled my men to throw them out.

A few days later, I was scrubbing out from a complex heart surgery at the clinic when my assistant entered with a small, heavy box. "Doctor, this was just delivered by Mr. Rafferty's men. They said it's a gift for you."

The box contained the shattered porcelain of an angel statue—the one that had watched over my mother's grave. My phone rang, the shrill sound cutting through my shock. It was the groundskeeper from the family cemetery, his voice panicked, reporting that my mother's tomb had been desecrated.

A white-hot rage, laced with grief, surged through me. That he would go this far. That he would defile the memory of the one person who had always been kind to him.

I shot to my feet, my chest heaving. "Gather our men! We're going to the Rafferty estate!"

Thirty minutes later, a convoy of black sedans sealed off the estate's gates. I stormed through the front door with a dozen of our family's soldati, my fury a palpable force in the air.

Cillian greeted me with a defiant smirk. "Did you like my gift?"

I closed the distance between us in three strides and slapped him hard across the face. The sharp crack echoed through the grand hall as a red handprint bloomed on his cheek.

India screamed. "How could you hit him? If you're angry, take it out on me! He did nothing wrong!"

She lunged at me, but I simply sidestepped, letting her momentum carry her stumbling to the floor. Cillian scrambled to help her up, his eyes spitting pure hatred at me. "You vicious bitch!"

Ignoring his bellows, I signaled my men. They moved with grim efficiency, placing a dozen wooden crates in the center of the room.

"You enjoy digging up graves?" I said, my voice as cold and hard as steel. "These are from your family's ancestral tombs. Enjoy."

I turned and walked out without a backward glance.

My mother had doted on Cillian when she was alive, treating him like a son. This was how he repaid her memory—with a betrayal sharper than any blade.

The next day, as I began the systematic process of dismantling his businesses, preparing for their complete and utter ruin, Cillian burst into my office, his eyes bloodshot with madness. "You venomous woman! Where did you take India and my son?"