Page 46 of Steel Rain

Then the threat finally made sense. If Keith hurt her in any way, then they’d be bound by their insane conventions to cover it up. They’d need to make it go away.

“I know,” Eoghan said, his eyes growing distant. “I know the rules.”

“I’m not saying it for you, cousin,” Dairo’s eyes turned to me. “I was making sure that the coach knew where we all stood in this little world of ours.”

Dairo had been in the SAS, the British Special Forces. He had escaped this gangster life. He had stake in one of the best Security Companies on the eastern side of the Atlantic. He had fully escaped but had given it all up for his wife. For Rose Legaspi.

So, hemustknow how insane all of this was. He must understand that this whole pantomime of blood oaths and clans were made up, enforced by men and women whogaveit weight. All they had to do to break the spell was to simply … stop. The way Dairo had stopped.

Dairo’s cool blue eyes looked back at me. Then he turned to Eoghan, who was in his own little world.

“There are rules in this game that we play by,” Dairo sighed. “Even me. Even him. Like the value of a dollar, it’s power and weight come from our tacit agreement that it means what we think it means.” He looked over to his cousin again, whose eyes seemed to have rejoined the conversation, focusing on the glass before him, even though he said nothing. “It is a tool by which you and I, and Eoghan, and all the others can communicate, and exist. It’s the laws and codes that we abide by to make our society work.”

“We are all the creators of our own cage,” Eoghan whispered. “Do you know that chickens cannot fly?”

I almost flinched with the abrupt change in topic.

“But most chickens can flap their wings enough to get over a fence and find their way to freedom.” Eoghan didn’t wait for a response from me. “But in that freedom are the wolves, and fishers. The bears and predators that would tear us apart.”

He took the glass to his lips, downing the remaining contents, before slamming his glass back down.

“Either we learn to become predators ourselves, or we de-claw the creatures that wish to eat us.” He bit down on his lower lip, before pulling out another cigarette, and sparking his zippo. “We do that, before we talk about trying to dismantle the cage that keeps us in, and the wolves out.”

He took a puff of the cigarette, and I felt the chill as the air came in from the windows, and flew through the room, flowing to the other side. It was going to snow again soon. Snow. Snow. And More snow. That was the mountains of upstate New York.

“And where does that put a person like Sinead?” I asked, directly. “Where does she fall in this predator and prey, and gilded cage…”

“Our cage isn’t gilded,” laughed Eoghan. “Our cages are made of iron and steel.”

Then he leaned forward, pointing at me with his cigarette between his fingers.

“And she is both predator and prey.” Eoghan’s voice had turned vicious. Like he was some warlock giving words of wisdom, and warnings of doom. “She has to pick a side before someone else picks one for her.”

Dairo ran an unsteady hand through his hair and looked up at the ceiling. “I think the time for her to choose has passed. We have to force her hand.”

I didn’t like any of this one fucking bit.

Chapter 22

Sin

Theyhadcalledfora morning formation. The kind where we lined up in rectangles, with Lieutenants in front. Keith was standing in front of his own formation, his snickering little men behind him. Thank God, the man I had in front of me was Kieran.

I hadn’t really gotten my head around the strange rank structure they had. It did not resemble the Army, where I had been a field artillery Captain. So, I plodded along, with little guidance.

We waited in the morning sun, as it slanted from behind the mountains. The morning dew had frozen on fallen leaves. The trees had a slight sheen of ice, and cold. Barren of any leaves, they looked like thorns.

We stood straight, at attention. My eyes should have been straight ahead, just like my comrades. You stand at attention, your face and eyes forward. But my eyes had never been good at staying still, even if my face didn’t change it’s direction.

Eoghan, and his clone cousin, Alastair, walked down the little road, dressed in black from head to toe, like the bad guys in a Star Wars film. Their strides took on a matching rhythm, though even from here, I knew their footsteps the way you might hear two distinct voices in a choir.

Eoghan was languid, almost deceptively lazy in his movement. There was a false casualness in his manner that he’d worked on since he was a child. Dairo, on the other hand, was tall and proper. Exactly what you would expect of a British man.

Dairo and Eoghan’s fathers were brothers, and those brothers had bestowed the two with their handsome looks. But I could see with amazing clarity that it was their mothers who had shaped the two of them. Dairo was Irish and artistic because of Isla. Alastair, British and musical, because of Judy.

The sounds of little movements, the miniscule fidgeting, or the shuffling of weight ceased the moment the two of them were in front of us. Was that sudden stillness out of respect or fear? Or both?

“Sinead Flanagan,” Eoghan said, his black eyes turning to me, a corner of his mouth turning as he curled an index finger in acome hithergesture.

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