Page 32 of Iron Crown (Will of Iron #3)

Chapter twenty-two

The Inner Circle

Kira

H e’d held me in my sleep and woken me up with the gentle nudge of his nose on my throat.

He peppered my cheek with loving kisses as he ran his fingers through my hair.

He dressed me the next morning. It was sweet, and I savored it far more than I ever had in the past. Even if it was just into cargo pants and body armor.

It wasn’t as sensual as when he gently dragged stockings up my legs, his skin grazing my skin in that tender seduction that ruled our co-existence.

All was right in the world when he held my hand, as the two of us walked out of the Green Mansion, weapons slung across our chests, into the armored SUVs that his men used as transport.

“If something happens to me, promise me you will call Dairo,” he told me. “He’ll have instructions for how you and Cillian will be taken care of.”

I looked up at him, my brows pinched together.

We were going to start a Mafia war, but considering the plans I’d seen, and the men we had at our disposal, there was no reason for this morose talk.

Victory would be violent but assured.

“Nothing is going to happen to you.” I shook my head, correcting myself. “Nothing is going to happen to us.”

What happened to him also happened to me. I was not whole without him.

He tugged me closer, putting an arm around my shoulders.

“I want you taken care of if… when…” He let his words trail off. “It reassures me, Love.”

I wanted to pull away, but knew that if I did, he’d read the wrong thing into it.

“Promise me you’ll lean on Dairo if anything happens to me. He’ll take care of you. He’ll… I just trust him. Okay?”

He looked away, and I tried to examine his face. I tried to do what Blink would do and assess the twitch of an eye, or the movement of a muscle, to detect the true meaning beneath his words, but I came up short. Maybe he was too handsome for those tricks to work?

“You’ll never have to work another day in your life. You and Cillian will want for nothing. You understand?”

His jaw clenched, and he looked at me as if that was the most natural thing to desire. Comfort, over love.

“What aren’t you telling me, Love?” I whispered, dread seeping into my skin.

“I’m just saying you don’t ever have to be without resources. If you want a brand new life, it’s yours. I’ve made sure of it. If I’m not around, then Dairo will—”

“Why wouldn’t you be around?” I held his hand tighter, until my knuckles turned white. I held on so tight that my hand began shaking.

He looked down at my gorilla grip, and he didn’t pull away.

“I’m just being practical, Love. That’s what husbands are meant to be, no?” He pulled his hand up to kiss my fingertips.

“Eoghan…”

Nothing was ever as it seemed with Eoghan. Everything hid something deeper, like the fucking bowels of his mansion.

Like the depths of his paintings, including the masterpiece in his foyer.

“Eoghan, what aren’t you saying to me?” I reached out with my free hand to turn his face to me. “I thought we said no more secrets.”

He looked at me, his eyes forlorn. A confirmation that he was, in fact, keeping something from me.

“Nothing, dear Muse,” he said flatly, leaning down to kiss my forehead.

“You…” My heart was aching again. “You just… lied to me.”

He would consider it an insult if I lied to him… so what did that say about him lying to me now?

“Eoghan…”

He kissed my nose. “I’ve grown more forgiving of… discretion.”

I felt the weight of my own lies as I stared at him, unblinking, my mind churning with possibilities of what the hell he could mean. What was he saying to me? What was going on? What wasn’t he telling me?

Before I could ask for more, the car came to a stop. The partition between us and the driver went down, and Kieran O’Malley looked back at us. “Sir, we’re here.”

“That’ll do Kieran,” Eoghan said, not taking his eyes off of me. “Give us a minute, yeah?”

Kieran gave him a nod, lifting the partition. I felt the car sway with his weight as he stepped out of the car.

“If you give me nothing else, Kira,” he said quietly, holding my hand in his, his thumb caressing the life line in the palm of my hand. “Tell me that if something happens to me, you’ll talk to Dairo. Let him give you what I leave behind. You’ll be a rich woman, as my widow.”

Widow. Widow. Widow.

“No.” I laughed in disbelief, because I did not want to cry from hurt.

“You told me that you would never rely on anyone for anything ever again. You said you’d never be poor.”

He was reminding me of the night I had been in his penthouse, his face bruised, as he downed absinthe like it was mother’s milk.

“You told me that you would never beg for the kindness of strangers, or be at someone’s mercy.

Well…” He gestured, as if indicating the car and the world around us.

“As my widow, you would have everything you need to do whatever you want. You would have everything you desired and more.”

“Eoghan…”

Those words uttered so long ago seemed so foolish now. The words of a woman holding on to loneliness and pain.

“As Mrs. Green, you answer to no one, even when I am gone. Neither will Cillian.” He cupped my face, his thumb rubbing a slow circle over my cheekbone. “ Let me give this to you .”

He was staring at me, his eyes pleading for me to accept.

“I don’t want to be a widow.”

“Aye,” he chuckled, as he kissed my nose. “There are a great many things I do not want. Yet, they happen all the same.”

“Eoghan–”

“Promise me, Kira.’

“Eoghan!”

“Promise me!”

“No.” I grabbed the door handle, and with a hard yank, opened it.

If he wanted me to let him go quietly into the good night, to give him comfort as he did something that would end his life, then he would have another thing coming. He didn’t get to do this. He didn’t get to bring me back, just to leave me. He didn’t…

“Blink,” I said, on a gasp.

Andres Lutkus was there, in his tactical gear, his back against the small door of a large warehouse. His eyes flicked to me, then his brows pinched together. He tilted his head. “What’s wrong?”

“Nothing,” I said, wiping my face quickly, in case tears fell while I hadn’t noticed.

His dark, almost black, hair was slicked back, his eyes a deep brown, and his face free of any tell-tale signs of what would pass for an expression. But his lack of expression did not mean a lack of feeling. That was a mistake a lot of people made when it came to Andres “Blink” Lutkus.

I knew him. I knew him as well as I could know anyone.

“I see you won’t be leaving the James Bond-ing to me,” he said, in his flat, British accent, his eyes cold as he looked me over.

Then he looked over my shoulder, at what I knew was an irate Eoghan Green.

“Famous last words, right?” I said, with a noncommittal shrug.

“I hate to say I told you so, but… I told you so.” The slightest inkling of a smile ghosted his lips, but was gone in a millisecond.

“You love to say ‘I told you so’,” I scoffed.

“Touche, Picasso.”

Footsteps came up beside me, halting to my right. I did not need to look to know that it was Eoghan.

“Are you able to function without your little shit machine by your side?” Blink teased.

Eoghan tensed, looking at him strangely. I admit, our conversation style had grown weird over the last few years.

“Don’t make me start talking about Viper ,” I said with narrowed eyes. “And his name is Cillian. Not shit machine.”

Blink rolled his eyes, his nose wrinkling in response.

“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, because she 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.