Page 84 of Broken Blood Ties

My father’s glassy stare meets mine, and I twist my arms together in front of my chest before he acknowledges me with a simple nod. Then, he and his two men walk out of O’Brien’s, not looking back.

What the heck?

“Lizzy. Ye’ll have to hold down the pub tonight. Anything ye need, ask Cormac.” Kieran’s words break through the line I’m staring after my father strode through those double pub doors.

I look over my right shoulder. Lizzy, in all her frazzled copper-hair glory, is putting the top-shelf liquor bottle Kieran and my father drank most of back on the shelf. She pulls down the white button-down shirt riding up to expose her midsection. “You’re leaving?”

“Aye.” He glances in my direction. For the first time, red leaches over his cheeks, and he’s suddenly become extra interested in his shoes.

Lizzy’s eyes dart between us, and her mouth splits into a grin. “All right. No problem.” She bends over, disappearing behind the bar, only to come back up with two black plastic crates in her hand. She huffs out a breath, mumbling something about Cormac being worthless—I’m not sure I catch it all—before she turns and lugs her containers to the kitchen.

The air crackles with tension as I study Kieran. The silence swirls around us, accented by the clangs in the kitchen and doors slamming in the back hallway. But up here, in the dining area, the quiet stretches taut between us until I can’t take it anymore.

“I don’t understand,” I say, cracking my bruised and scuffed knuckles. It’s a habit I’d thought I’d broken when I ran to Boston, along with others, but it seems this entire day has threatened to undo the past several years.

Finally, Kieran’s face lands on mine. Somewhere in the depths of his forest gaze it seems anger wars with pity. Immediately, my own defenses erect walls around me.Don’t pity me, I want to say. Before I can pick an expression that accurately displays my annoyance and disdain, he opens his mouth.

His sharp jawline juts out proudly and utterly devastating, no matter how much I’d like to toss my fist across it. “He’s gone, isn’t he?”

Umm … yes. But one, he lied to my father. And Salvatore Buscetta is not someone you can lie to. Trust me, I’ve tried it. Multiple times.

Once, when I was fifteen, I snuck into his office. It was always off-limits to Luna and me, which made it alluring and dangerous enough to elicit a thrill thrumming when I picked the lock. The windows were shut, so it was dark, and there was a lingering cigar smoke that I greedily inhaled because … well, I thought it was cool. I wasn’t looking for anything in particular but ended up running my fingers over the cold steel of a revolver and needing to feel the dense metal in my hands, took it off the stand it sat on behind my father’s desk.

When the door flew open seconds later, my father was dripping with ire. He asked what I was doing and how I got in there, which I replied, “The door was open, and nothing.”

I knew he wouldn’t buy my lie the moment it left my mouth, and my father made me sit at his desk for the remainder of the day, loading and unloading the revolver until my fingers were blistered.

Looking back, it wasn’t as bad as he treated Luna, but still, that man does not like to be double crossed, blindsided, or have smoke blown up his ass.

“He’ll know.” I follow up on Kieran’s question. “You think he won’t have the Italians in this city reporting back to him. From the sounds of it, Marco is eager to worm his way back into the Cosa Nostra bloodlines, so what makes you think he won’t tell him as soon as I leave Boston and come after you?”

Kieran smirks. “Ye aren’t leaving.”

“Excuse me?” I step forward and watch as his fists bunch together at his sides. “I thought you told him we were engaged to get him out of here?”

“I did.”

“Then …” I let the words hang there.

“Ye’re right. He’ll check up on us. He’ll have his lackeys in the city watching us. The best bet, for ye, is we do this whole engaged façade. We’ll make a point to be seen a few times in public, let the underworld think the youngest Buscetta is marrying into the Irish Mob. After he comes back in three months and sees the pretty picture we’ve painted, I’ll help ye go anywhere in the world. Ye just need to play along.”

I swallow the thickness in my throat. It’s the same glob I had to choke down when I decided this morning I needed to leave Boston. The thoughts are unwelcome, but part of me wonders if he’d care I left. Now that he knows who I am, what I’ve brought into his life, would he want to keep me? I mentally shake myself from this rabbit hole. No, he was angry and definitely disgusted by my former identity.

I’ll help ye go anywhere in the world.His words echo in my mind while the growing tension around us crushes me. Everything that may have been between us before this moment, before he found out my blood ties, seems to be devoured in the new lie we’ve perpetuated. The mouthwatering almost kiss on his yacht. The simmering annoyance I coaxed from him only for it to turn it into something more, maybe flirtatious. It’s gone. Replaced by an additional responsibility, like I’m his duty now.

I realize why he was practically red cheeked when my father left. He wasn’t blushing. Kieran doesn’t blush. No, he was embarrassedforme.

“So, we aren’t really getting married then, right?” My heart thumps as I ask the question. I’m not sure I know Kieran well enough to actually marry him, but honestly, if there was anyone my mind could conjure to be the husband of my dreams, it’d be him.

“I’m not in the habit of forcing marriage.” He strides toward me, chin held high, and those piercing eyes burn a permanent spot in my temples. He’s never looked more powerful, more in control. His boots run into the tips of my feet, and I sway at the scent of sweat-slicked leather that seems to linger under his suit. What did he do before this? Run a marathon?

Kieran flicks out a pointer finger and I nearly go cross-eyed following it to where he tucks it under my chin and lifts. He lazily traces over my face.

“Get yer coat. We’re going home.”

Having a mind of its own, my tongue darts out and I lick my lips. His gaze drops to my mouth, and while I’m relieved his stare no longer probes mine, heat bubbles to the surface in my stomach.

“Home?”

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