Page 2 of Irish Vice
“Say it,” I order. “I need to hear you say it.”
“It was Birte.”
“And it was Birte playing the piano?” It’s strange to talk about her in the third person, as if she weren’t sitting right across from me. But she doesn’t react to her name. She merelyhums to herself and sips her overly sweet tea, and I wonder what in the world could have happened to make her act so strangely.
“Birte plays the piano,” Braiden says.
“And it was Birte I heard crying, the night…” The night Braiden and I first had sex. The first night I slept in his bed. When I sat up in the middle of what I thought was a dream, and Braiden calmed me. Soothed me. Lied to me.
“Samantha…” Braiden says, and I hear him searching for a path out of the crater he’s blasted for himself.
“Stop!” I snap. He’s the only one who calls me that, who uses my full name. I used to love it, because I’m Sam to the rest of the world. But now… “You don’t get to say my name. You don’t get to tell me more lies.”
“I never meant?—”
“How the fuck will you finish that sentence? You never meant to lie to me? You never meant to hurt me? You never meant for me to find out you have another wife living in your goddamn attic?”
I consider throwing my cup at him. It’s filled with tea, after all, and he knows I hate tea. He only poured it out of habit, because he was serving her.
Forget about tea. I want to throw my plate. I want to hear the china shatter. I want to see egg and coagulated cheese slime the wall.
Even that isn’t enough. I want to grab my knife, close my fingers around the grip, and press the edge against Braiden’s throat. The blade is too dull to cut flesh, but I could lever it into his windpipe, cutting off his air so he’d never tell me another lie again.
But all of it—tea and egg and stupid useless butter knife—will just make a mess. Braiden will get up and walk out of the room. He’ll go to his office and run his criminal empire, and I’ll be left sitting at the table with Birte. Eventually Fairfax will arrive, the elfin man who keeps this entire household runninglike one of those printing presses that spits out sheet after sheet of perfect hundred-dollar bills.
As soon as I think of Braiden’s chief of staff, I realize he’s as guilty as my husband. Fairfax must know that Birte lives on the third floor.
Who else is in on the secret? Aiofe, Braiden’s ten-year-old ward? Grace Poole, the Irish woman who looks after Aiofe? What about Braiden’s brother, Madden? All his men, who are constantly in and out of the house for meetings?
“It’s complicated,” Braiden finally says.
“I’m sure it is.” Each word is as bitter as cyanide.
I married Braiden because I thought I had no choice. Mafia kingpin Antonio Russo had just murdered my cousin and announced he was coming for me.
Braiden was the only man I knew who could keep me safe—and he got to goad his arch-rival at the same time. We had the ideal marriage of convenience, one made more perfect by the discovery that Braiden and I were more compatible in the bedroom than I ever could have dreamed.
Braiden likes to issue orders. And I—much to my surprise—like to follow them.
Likedto follow them.
I can’t imagine getting down on my knees in front of Braiden Fucking Kelly ever again. I’ll never put on the emerald collar he gave me. I won’t submit to the twisted things he likes to do. The twisted things he taught me to crave.
Itrustedhim. I knew he’d never hurt me—not in any way I didn’t long for. He was my husband. He called memo chailín maith—his good girl.
His. Good. Girl.
I’m not any of those things.
I’m not agirl. I’m a grown woman who figured out how to escape my birthname of Giovanna Canna, how to flee my own Mafia-infested family. I left Philadelphia and took on a new identity—Samantha Fucking Mott. I put myself through lawschool and became general counsel of the largest, most prestigious freeport tax haven in the state of Delaware.
I’m notgood. Eleven years ago, I made the worst mistake of my life—That Night. My college graduation, when I drove drunk and crashed my car and killed two of my cousins, along with a stranger. My secret was safe until five weeks ago, when Antonio Russo revealed it to the world. I’m still grappling with the fallout, paparazzi stalking me, my law license in jeopardy.
But more than anything else, I’m nothis. Braiden doesn’t own me. He never did.
I was an idiot, letting Russo reveal the truth about That Night. I thought I was saving Braiden. I thought I was protecting his criminal enterprise. I thought I was being true to the man I loved.
The only saving grace in any of this is that I never said those words out loud. I never told Braiden Kelly I loved him.