Page 73 of Iron Crown

“I knew I should never have trusted you with her name,” Blink groaned, wiping his face with his large hand.

“Are we talking about Astrid?” Yuliya came out of the door, also in the same uniform, strapped with weapons along her muscular body.

Holy hell, she looked frightening. I would not want to end up on the wrong side of her.

She was just as tall as Blink, her shoulders just as wide. Somehow,becauseshe was a woman, it made her twice as intimidating because she would have had to work twice as hard to get into that kind of shape.

“Yes,” I said with a smirk.

“Oh,” Yuliya laughed. “I’m waiting for that drama to happen. In the meantime, Eoghan—” She nodded to my husband, the first to acknowledge him since we got here. “You and I will be together for this little shindig. Let’s have a word inside.”

“Aye,” Eoghan said, looking at me, then Blink. “In a moment.”

“Come on, Irish,” Yuliya said, grabbing him around the bicep and dragging him away. “You and Andres can measure your dicks later. Right now, we have a war to kick off.”

She dragged him away, into the warehouse, and he spared me just the briefest of looks before disappearing into the darkness inside.

“Is something going on between you two?” Blink looked agitated. “You look… upset.”

He gestured for me to go through the door, and I did. “I am upset. We’re about to start a war, my shit machine isn’t here, and my husband seems ready to die for me.”

“Shouldn’t all husbands be ready to die for their wives?” Blink said, as if he were the voice of reason.

“Not like that,” I said, suddenly feeling under-equipped. I was assured that the weapons would be here when I arrived.

I let out a sigh as we entered a hallway, and I wasn’t quite sure what to do. I stopped, pivoted, and almost slammed into an oncoming Blink. He jumped back, his hands up, as if making sure he didn’t touch any part of me.

“Woah, warning next time, Picasso!” he said, with a laugh, “or your husband is going to skin me alive.”

I didn’t respond to that. Instead, I said the thing that I needed to as fast as I could.

“Thank you,” I whispered. “If you hadn’t trained me as well as you did, I’d be a widow or worse by now.”

I looked away from him, staring at the ground. I didn’t want to say it out loud, but it had to be said.

“If you hadn’t been so hard on me, I could have lost Cillian.”

Blink didn’t say anything. He didn’t need to. It wasn’t his way.

Instead, I just turned around and walked on.

Everything that had to be said was said. Or, at least I thought so, until I heard him chuckle. “You’re staying with him, then?”

It wasn’t really a question, was it? He already knew. Everyone knew.

“I am,” I said, quietly. “We’re a family.”

Blink grunted, as the small hall of the entrance opened to an expansive open bay, where men with equipment, cots, and weapons buzzed around us.

The place was a hive of paramilitary operations, reeking of espionage and surveillance. I stood still, realizing that this was the most of my colleagues I had ever seen in one place.

“Well, this is the Paradigm family,” Blink said, gesturing to the large space with his arm. “You’ll finally get to meet some of the people you’ve only seen as screen names!”

He waved me on, and I followed him, walking slowly to take in the expansive operations that were around us.

“This isn’t all of us, of course,” Blink said. “But we are putting a real effort into this upcoming fight with the Mafia.”

He smiled proudly, as he took a deep breath, and surveyed the place like he was a king looking at his kingdom.

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