CILLIAN
Astor Damian Archibald Fitzpatrick was born on the warmest day in Boston’s history. Warmer than the unfortunate day on our belated honeymoon in Namibia, when my wife fulfilled her dream to lie on a velvety yellow dune and look up at the sun defiantly. At one hundred and ten degrees, I sweated my balls off nearby, waiting for her patiently with a cold bottle of water.
It was so scorching hot, the power went down, generators had to be used to keep the electricity running at the hospital, and my wife looked like a liquid version of her former self.
Then he came into the world and everything ceased to matter.
“And my fourth-grade teacher said nothing would come out of me.” Persephone pumped the air when the doctor scooped the baby, laughing and crying at the same time, which, I’d learned during my time being with her, was apparently a completely valid thing to do for a human being.
“What’s her name?” I demanded. “I’ll make sure—”
“God, Kill, who cares about Ms. Merrill! Give me my baby!” There was definitely more laughing than crying now.
Astor did not come out kicking and screaming, as babies do, rejecting the very idea of leaving the comfort and warm safety of the womb in which they were created.
He came out quiet and stern. Too quiet, in fact. So much so, that the doctor swooped him away to a nearby table before we could see him properly and began patting him with a towel and suctioning fluid out of his mouth.
“I’m just trying to stimulate his first cry,” Dr. Braxman said calmly. “His pulse and color are fine, so I’m sure it is nothing. Probably just a tough, resilient baby.”
Persephone wrapped my hand in hers, squeezing me with the remainder of her energy, dripping sweat. After a twelve-hour labor, I was surprised she was still awake.
“Kill,” she moaned, cupping her mouth. I pulled her into a hug, craning my neck at the same time to see what Dr. Braxton was doing.
“It’s fine. Everything is fine. I’ll go take a look.”
She nodded.
As I made my way to the doctor, who was still patting and touching my baby, surrounded by two nurses, trying to make him cry, the escalating force of an impending Tourette’s attack crawled up my spine. My heart raced. My knuckles popped. My desire to protect my child burned so fiercely in me, I was pretty sure I could destroy the entire building with my two hands if something happened to him.
Just as I took the last step toward Dr. Braxman, Astor opened his tiny red mouth and let out a wail that nearly shattered the windows, curling his tiny fists and thrusting them in the air like Rocky.
“Ah. There we are.” Dr. Braxman wrapped my son like a burrito, then handed him to me, supporting his head. “Ten fingers, ten toes, a set of healthy lungs, and a lot of personality.”
The doctor moved quickly, settling back between my wife’s thighs, which had been covered with a cloth, and began stitching her up.
I frowned down at my son.
The so-called goal. The endgame. My mission after successfully ticking all the boxes on my way to taking over the reins of the Fitzpatrick family.
And out of all the feelings I had felt—joy, pleasure, awe, happiness, wild anticipation, and violent protectiveness, even a little fear tossed in—I couldn’t, for the life of me, see myself passing him the burden of going through what I had to go through to make my parents proud.
It wasn’t fair to him. To me. To Hunter’s and Aisling’s children, and all the future offspring we were going to have.
Studying his face, I admired his perfection. Nature had cherry-picked our best features for him. He had huge blue eyes like his mother, my dark hair, and a prominent nose like mine. But his ears were small, like my wife’s, and he had that look—the look that could make empires fall—that only Persephone Penrose had ever managed to hone.
A look that disarmed me.
A look that told me I might not be the bad cop in the household, after all.
“Excuse me,” Persephone sing-songed from her place on the bed, waving at me. “My apologies for interrupting, but is there any way I could see my own son, too?”
I laughed, walking over to her. Astor was still screaming and throwing his little fists at me. He had surprisingly long fingernails for a newborn, but they looked thin and brittle. I lowered him to her chest, which was only partly covered by her hospital gown.
The mother and the baby stared at each other, and the world around them stopped on its axis. Astor got very quiet and very serious. Persephone sucked in a breath, and I stopped breathing, the pressure of the attack easing down.
“Hello, little angel.” She smiled down at him.
He stared at her, mesmerized.
I know the feeling, son.
I stood back and watched them.
My own little family.
A perfect thing in this imperfect world.
Knowing I might’ve passed Astor the very thing that life had cursed me with because it was hereditary.
Knowing that, in all probability, my father had it, too.
And vowing to make sure Astor would never get locked in a church confession booth with his demons.
That he, too, would one day be able to bask in the light.
The End.