Page 96 of Steel Rain

I got Dairo, and he came downstairs in that strange, calm stride of his, even after I told him that Eoghan was bleeding.

He didn’t even blink when he got into the office, and his cousin was standing with his hands out to his side, blood dripping down his extended fingers like a martyred saint.

“Right,” Dairo said, looking at Sin with a raised brow. “I think you two should probably leave before you get stained … it’d be a shame to get blood on Aunty Isla’s veil.”

God knows why, but we did leave. We walked right out, holding hands, as she recounted what the fuck happened. More fucking insanity. All of it.

More insane, was that when Dairo and Eoghan came out, they were both clean. There wasn’t a single drop on them. Eoghan was in a new suit, with his pocket watch, and was standing straight as if his back wasn’t covered in slices.

Standing in the hallway, we waited to enter the room with Dairo and Eoghan at our side. Inside the dining room would be all the men of the Irish Mafia, in their best outfits, to celebrate our union. It wouldn’t be the drunk fest that had been at Sinead’s oath. Eoghan wouldn’t allow that. He insisted on a reception, but I suspected it was for more than just us.

“Brace yourselves,” Dairo warned, as the cousins took a knob each on the double doors, and in one unified movement, opened it to the romantically lit, decorated dining hall.

Sure, I had thought of it as a big dining room in the numerous times I had been in it with Eoghan and Alastair, sharing drinks and chatting, as we looked out at the rose garden. But the way it was decorated now, with candles, and votives, great wreaths and boughs, it was nothing short of a regency era marvel.

Eoghan and Dairo pulled out two seats at a head table and gestured for us to sit there. Dairo sat beside me on my right, but Eoghan remained standing.

“First, we should all thank Malinda for her hard work in putting together this feast!” Eoghan said, raising a glass of his dry vermouth. The rest of us had champagne flutes.

Malinda looked at Eoghan with infatuated emerald eyes.

There was a smattering of applause, as she blushed.

I noted that for later. There was something off about it. Eoghan was a married man, after all.

As a housekeeper, she was dedicated to her work. The Green mansion dining room was lined like a royal banquet, with long tables forming a u-shaped pattern. We all sat on the outside, looking in on one another. There was a crimson table cloth, and it was covered in festive, green boughs and garlands, with red berries as accents, and gorgeous candle centerpieces.

At another table in the middle of the room was a buffet. Though,buffetwould be an understatement. There was a huge duck in the middle, it’s sides pre-sliced to perfection. Silver trays of potatoes in various forms, along with vegetables,moremeat, and stews were waiting for the hungry people to devour it.

Softly, there was a song played on a distant piano. I recognized it as one that Eoghan often hummed to himself.Black is the color of my true love’s hair …

Eoghan was standing, having made us all charge our glasses with alcohol, as he led us through the toasts.

“We welcome Ajax to our illustrious company, now that he is bound to us by blood,” he tilted his glass towards me. “And I welcome back my own, dear, childhood friend, who I love like my own sister, Sinead. Shining like the bride I knew you’d one day be.”

I wondered if he had prepared this speech, or if this was the type of thing that he came up with on the fly. Or maybe he meant it. I wasn’t sure.

Along the tables that ran down the sides of the room were all of his lieutenants, captains, and all the other men of positions in his Army. Men I had trained. Men who I had sparred with.

They looked strange in their black suits, with their glasses in front of them. Some of them had partners and wives dressed in the requested deep green colors that were the theme of the day. Green like the fir of a pine tree.

Eoghan stood between me and Sinead, putting a hand on each of our shoulders.

“From the moment these two laid eyes on each other, Dairo and I knew there was a spark there.”

He was smiling. Though, on his face it looked predatory.

Dairo and Eoghan didn’t know that she and I had met before the fight. That we had been intimate in an alleyway after barely half a drink. But that would ruin the magic, I suppose. I’m sure the version of the story we’d tell our grand kids would be something similar to the version Eoghan knew.

“There was Sinead Flanagan, standing in the octagon, alone, against the world. Our very own little sister, now a woman,” Eoghan’s eyes gleamed with something akin to pride. “It took a while to recognize her, now that her hair had changed, and she had gone from being our little princess to being our Amazonian Queen. But no matter. For blood is blood.”

He took his hands off our shoulders, reached over Sinead to grab his glass and raised it in a toast.

“Now, we celebrate their union as they join our ranks. Where traitors carved darkness into our midst, these two shall bring light.” There was a sudden murmur among the guests as they tried to understand who the traitors were.

Was it one of them? Was Eoghan going to kill someone right at the dinner table? I bet that would be his style. Sick fuck.

“Some have asked where Keith Bournes, John Grimes, and Billy O’Rourke have gone, and I’m here to say that those three have betrayed us all.”

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