Page 92 of Irish Brute

She has a piece of paper clutched in her hand.

“What have you got there?” I ask.

She hands it over, her face grave. It’s a drawing, torn out of her sketchpad. It’s a woman’s hand, a left one. And on the fourth finger, clear as day, is my signet ring, with its four-fold Celtic knot.

Aiofe sighs and leans her head back against my chest.

“I miss her too,” I say.

But it’s impossible to explain to a child why Samantha’s gone. I can’t tell her the whole tangle—Russo in one corner, Fiona in another, Samantha and me trapped in the middle.

There’s a crash overhead, loud enough to make both Aiofe and me jump. I sigh and push the child off my lap. “Go find Grace,” I say. Because that’s another problem I can’t begin to untangle.

Not with Samantha down in Delaware.

Not with my bank accounts short a quarter billion.

Not now.

39

SAMANTHA

I’ve been alone almost as long as I was married.

Five weeks ago, Russo detonated a nuclear bomb in the middle of my life.

I’ve lost the ability to go out in public. Now, paparazzi follow me if I set foot outside the freeport gates. They scream for my photo, for any statement I’ll make for the camera.

I’ve become a full-time industry, like that girl accused of killing her roommate in Italy, or the man who murdered his pregnant wife, or the woman who drove her two little boys into a lake.

The man from the ditch on the mountain doesn’t have a name. No one’s ever found his family. But everyone in the world has a theory about why I killed him, what I was trying to cover up.

I was his baby mama. I owed him money for my college tuition. He trafficked me in a sex ring. I was possessed by the devil.

Giorgia and Gianni are nearly forgotten. They were my cousins, after all. They should have known what they were getting into, when they joined me at the party.

I hire an attorney, Sonja Heller, to represent me in the Delaware ethics proceeding. On her advice, I refuse to answer any questions from the press.

But I’ve lost more than my privacy.

I’ve lost all the trappings of living with a billionaire—household servants, chauffeured drives, an endless credit limit to be spent at any store on the planet.

I lost a child who was finally starting to trust me.

I lost the only man I’ve ever loved.

Yes. I love Braiden Kelly.

He carried me to his Jeep in the middle of a snowstorm. He spared me from marrying Antonio Russo. He gave me my safeword, and then he showed me my strength, power I never dreamed could be mine.

He told me the truth in that Rittenhouse suite. He’s a bad man. Protection rackets, drugs, murder—he’s done all that.

But I’ve killed people too. My mistakes can never be redeemed, no matter how much I insist my name is Samantha Mott, that I’m not Giovanna Canna.

I can’t go back to Braiden. He’ll never trust me, not after I kept Russo’s threats secret. He can’t afford to take me back, not when he has to protect the Fishtown Boys. I can’t blame him. That’s part of what love means.

So my life has shrunk to a tiny box within the freeport. I live like a nun in Goldenrod Cottage, with no unnecessary comforts, with no uncalled-for extras.