Page 95 of Steel Rain

“I need you to bend for me, love,” I whispered. “I need you to trust me.”

Ajax was huffing, his breaths heavy like he had run a marathon. Maybe he had sprinted here, if he heard the cracking of the whip, worried that Eoghan had gone back on his word.

“Bend for me,” I whispered again, bringing Ajax’s palm up to my lips, and kissing the line that marked us as man and wife. The small wound in the palm of his hand.

How easily he relented. How easily he bent and kissed my forehead, before taking one last glance at the broken, beaten Eoghan Green. Then he left to do as I asked.

Alone again, I heard Eoghan’s slow, pained weeping.

“I love her, Shiny.” His voice was so fucking quiet, it was more terrifying than a scream. “I love her. I can’t let anything happen to her. I cannot let her die like my mother.”

All of a sudden, he wasn’t old man Alastair Green’s son. He was his mother Isla’s son. The woman with dark eyes and gentle hands who had stepped in when my mother was absent. The woman who was the beating heart of the Green household. A heart that stopped the moment she was found on the brink of death on their doorstep. A message from the bratva to fold out of New York City.

Then I realized what I had to do. What I had to request.

“Make a blood oath,” I whispered, staring at the slice on my palm. “Swear to me that you’ll let her go.”

“If she decides to leave me after the war with the Italians is done, then fine.” He straightened. All that previous anguish disappeared, and his mask was back in place. “I’ll let her go. But onlyafterit’s safe.”

He took his dagger out from his belt with his blood soaked hand, and he placed the tip on his palm, ready to make an oath.

“I swear that to you, Shiny.” He began to dig the point into his skin. “If she wants to leave, I will let her go.”

“Let her, andhersgo.” That phrasing was important. It meant that he would let her, her friends, her family all go. Anyone that could be consideredherrelations, her allies, her kin. “You will let her and hers go.”

He narrowed his eyes, but before I could let that thought fully form, I interrupted him.

“Make the vow, or I will not tell you a thing.”

He nodded, realizing that I held all the cards now. I held them because myhusbandhad made it so when he sliced his palm and made us one. Ajax had put me in a position of power over this man. He had made me strong.

“I will let her and hers go, unharmed, if she chooses to,” he said as he opened the palm of his right hand with the blade.

He let the crimson rivulets trail down his fingers to the ground.

“May God strike you down if you don’t keep it,” I whispered, accepting his vow.

Maybe it’s medieval and insane. Maybe we are in a cult. But a blood vow was still a vow. This would be enough.

Speaking comes hard to those of us who have spent our lives in silence. I opened my mouth three separate times to push the words out, but each time, it halted in my throat. But when the words escaped, they came out in earnest.

“You have a son,” I said. My voice was hoarse, and full of something that I couldn’t identify. Regret? Maybe? For my part in all of this? I wasn’t sure. “She named him Cillian.”

“Cillian?” Eoghan said the word as if it confused him. As if he didn’t know where that name came from. As if it wasn’t a part of his own name, and the name of his grandfather before him. “I have a son?”

Chapter 43

Ajax

Christ,Iwasunderdressedas a groom. I had put on a suit. The same one I wore when I had to go to a bank. It was tailored, and not bad looking, but it wasnothingcompared to the fancy shit everyone else was wearing.

Eoghan had a deep green suit, with light plaid patterns. The green was so dark it was almost black. An emerald-colored handkerchief poked out of the pocket. His black shirt made him look sophisticated, with an old-world air that made him look like he stepped from a different century. Or maybe that was just the dangling chain of the pocket watch. It was hard to tell, now that I was deep in the bowels of their twisted world.

When I had found him bleeding in his office, my wife standing like a ghost in her bridal gown … I almost fucking lost it. I saw red. I was ready to kill the head of the Irish mafia. It was only her soothing hands that had stopped me. Her request that I bend to her.

Her touch had calmed me like a cool cloth on a fevered forehead.

It wasn’t until then that I realized that Eoghan was the only one bleeding. That his back was lashed, and not hers. That her gown and veil were still bleach white, and not marred with crimson.

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