Page 54 of Iron Cross

Aaron snorted, his hand momentarily stopping his gentle caress on Cillian’s face.

“I like his interpretation,” he said, quietly.

I bent down in front of them, coming to my knees on the floor to push Cillian’s blond hair from his face. I kissed his cheek and my son moaned with contentment, smiling in his dreams.

“It’s an interesting interpretation,” Aaron said quietly. “Does he get that from you?”

Why did those words feel like lightning coursing through me?

“No,” I whispered. “He got that from his father.”

I looked up at this man… this Aaron Jackson.

“Got some ID?” I asked, suddenly suspicious again.

What if he was Irish? Or Italian? What if he was tied to the Greens or the Durantes? What about the Vasilievs?

There was a war happening in the city, and not all the players could ever be known.

He pulled out a bifold and handed it to me. I took it and opened it, looking at his driver’s license. The name was right, but nothing else. There were no credit cards in it, but there was cash. That made my hackles rise.

“I keep my credit cards in my car,” he said by way of explanation. “Always scared I’m going to lose it, so I just keep it in there until I need to use it.”

“It seems suspicious,” I admitted. “How do I know you’re not going to hurt us?”

The danger of having a man in my house was still immense. But then again, he didn’t know the danger he was in as well.

If my husband found out a man had been alone in my apartment, he would rip him to shreds. It was like that damn painting he’d loved so much. The Francesco Hayez.The Kiss. There was danger lurking all around, but he was unaware of it.

I stood up and went over to my laptop on the kitchen counter. I lifted the screen, and opened the anonymous browser, and with shaking fingers, typed in “Eoghan Green”, finding news articles and gossip sites. There was Eoghan, his arm around a slim woman with tan skin and fierce eyes.

I bristled.

She looked similar enough to me that… that I felt the first possibility that I had been replaced. That I was no longer a Muse. That maybe love had been one sided. That all the oaths of being his one and only, of him never having another…

Eoghan Green was, at this moment, at a gallery exhibition in New York City - at the same Gallery that had once been my home. He wasn’t here. Surely, if I had been found, if this man worked for him, then… he wouldn’t be at a gallery opening right now.

“It does beg the question,” Aaron said quietly, so as not to wake the baby, “what kind of security do you have in here?”

A gun, a blade and a fucking panic button.

The gun and blade were my primary emergencies. The panic button was great, but no one would get to me fast. It was just a beacon and last resort.

I pulled the blade from where I kept it in the kitchen junk drawer. The same place I had tucked a certain emerald ring away, lovingly folded into a silk handkerchief. I felt the weight of the iron blade in my hand, and shut my eyes. How had Eoghan used this? When the jagged edges of it were so harsh against my palm?

I ran my thumb along the initials - ECG. How similar this would be to what he would give my son, when he was old enough. Or would that tradition be long gone? I pressed down on it, as if the initials could leave an impression on my skin, and I could feel his skin once more. C was for Cillian. It was for the part of him that was my son.

“You do have a knife.” Aaron looked pleased, as he stared at me from the other side of the couch. “That’s good.”

“That’s an unusual knife,” he said, a single brown brow raising up, and my heart sank.

I kept it because my husband had told me to. He’d said, “Love, please trust me. This blade will be your protection.”

I believed it. That somehow, this would keep me safe.

“Anna?”

I missed him. I longed for him. I dreamt of him so often, and it only got worse over the years. Worse over the last few days, whenI could feel his presence all around.

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