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Chapter five

It's Not Regal to Have a Knife In Your Back

Cillian

“ W hat have you found?” I mumbled as I stared at the large red painting that my father made from the blood of his enemies.

The painting had once hung in our family home, but now, it was in the Grand Kintyre’s foyer, serving as a reminder to all that no one laid a hand on a Green without consequences.

Most people thought the thing about blood was just a story. But we knew the truth.

My father had kept Giovanni Morelli hostage for years , bleeding him to make paint.

I delighted in that bit of sadism.

But now that I looked at it, I wondered if it still belonged here, where my wife would need to see it every single day. Was it just? To punish her with such a macabre sight?

“It’s not good.” Randa fished a phone out of her pocket, unlocked it, and began to play a video.

“Who is that?” I said, as I stared at the man on screen.

He was olive skinned, with jet black hair that pulled back behind his ears.

“Unsure,” Randa said, taking her phone back. “He was at every surrounding business the hours before the attack. Then he was there again afterwards, with a limping Giovanna in his arms.”

I froze. Something squeezed at my heart. An unpleasant ache that I didn’t want to give name to.

“Her lover?” I asked, quietly.

“I have no real indicators of that but, possibly.”

Then I’d have to kill him.

I turned away and led Randa down a corridor into the conference rooms where all Green Fields Enterprise business was discussed.

The two of us took seats at the conference table, leaning over on our elbows.

This was the New York City war room. The place where all our great plans for world domination were decided.

Randa gave me a sideways glance and smirked. “Would that bother you?”

I narrowed my eyes. “I don’t know what you mean.”

“Sure, you don’t, champ.”

“How do we know he wasn’t helping her? That he’s not…” I swallowed as the bile rose up my throat, “The hero in our little princess’s tale?”

Randa leaned back and stared at me with her peculiar shade of navy-blue eyes. They were unsettling. Interesting, but slightly off-putting.

“A feeling? A gut instinct?” She pursed her lips to the side. “When you hear hooves, you think horses, not zebras.”

“And you’re hearing horses?” I wasn’t sure I was understanding her point, but I was trying to.

“A fucking stampede of them.” She leaned forward on her sharp elbows, chestnut bob falling from its perch behind her ear and obscuring half of her features. “She was stabbed four days before your wedding. Who would benefit from the alliance not holding?”

The list was long and distinguished. Antoine Morelli, my wife’s distant cousin. Luis Durante, a distant uncle. Hell, even Ariana Bournes, a former lover of a man my father executed for treason… Though, strangely, an Irish villain didn’t seem to fit the mold for this misdeed.

No, it would be one of my Gia’s compatriots. I was sure of it. The rambunctious Italians who never wanted to see us wed. The ones who did not want to surrender.

The ones who whispered that vendetta was an Italian word.

Little did they know that revenge was an Irish hobby.

“That explains why she’s protecting them,” I concluded. “Because they’re one of her own.” I scoffed, almost disappointed at her naivete.

Oh, sweet ice queen. It’s not regal to have a knife in your back.

I reached my hand for Randa’s phone, and I put in her code to open the photo again.

“I have seen this man before, I think,” I whispered, as I examined the man’s features.

I snarled, looking down at the ground as the embarrassing truth hit me square in the chest.

“You’re sure?” Randa asked.

“I’m certain of it.” I fidgeted with the cuff link on my silk shirt, as I considered my next move.

Another deception, dear ice queen of mine?

This was becoming a habit. One that would land her over my knee, if she wasn’t very, very careful.

“Looks like me and the misses are about to have a long tete-a-tete.”