Bad Bishop: A Dark Mafia Romance (Society of Villains Book 1) - Chapter 38

Chapter 38 Three months after their great escape, the twins reunited with their family in London. Tyrone was tall and regal and broken. Older than they'd imagined. He was handsome, but haggard in a way a man who had lost everything was. And Tiernan knew, on first sight, that his father had never gotten over his mother and never would. It was on his scrawny fourteen-year-old shoulders to steer what was left of the family from troubled waters. To put it back together and take over the family's business. One of Tiernan's many disappointments in his father was that he looked nothing like them.

He had dark hair and hazel eyes. It was also why he took an immediate liking to Fintan. His older brother looked like a slightly older, fuller version of him, with the same crimson hair and green hooded eyes. They flew straight to America, where Tyrone's secondary school friend helped him set up a business in Hunts Point. The twins spoke ASL to each other-hoping to leave Russia and the memories it held behind. They didn't know much English, and Fintan was the one to patiently teach it to them. Fintan talked relentlessly, making sure they heard his voice, accent, pronunciation, and slang.

He taught them how to pour Guinness correctly, with the pint slanted just so, and how to curse in Irish and "Amhrán na bhFiann." He read them books. Ulysses and The Picture of Dorian Gray and Gulliver's Travels. Made them watch, then recite, every Father Ted episode. He taught them how to play cards, how to cheat, and how to win. How to cook, do the laundry, whistle, and even how to have fun. How to steal a car. How to smile disarmingly at police officers when caught. He taught Tiernan how to flirt and how to steal a heart and how to break it.

In lieu of a fully functioning father, Tiernan leaned into his relationship with his brother. Adopted his Irishness and carved himself into something so eerily similar, no one could have guessed the brothers grew up in different countries. He loved Fintan something fierce. A love that was different than the one he had for Tierney. With Tierney, it was all laced with worry, and anxiety, and a cloying desperation to protect her. His love for Fintan was more free. He took, not just gave.

Unlike Tiernan, his twin sister couldn't find it in herself to forgive her surviving relatives for what happened. She reinvented herself as a New York siren. Her accent was American, all nasal vowels and laid-back intonation. Her clothes were Italian and French. She was cordial with Fintan and Tyrone, but kept her loyalty to Tiernan only. She blossomed like a rare flower tangled in ferns. A completely different breed from the men in her family. Flirtatious, careless, and extravagant. Disarming in a way only a woman who tasted the wrath of a lethal weapon could be.