Page 5

Chapter three

I Will Make it True

Eoghan

T wo gunshots. Two . Upstairs.

The image of my son and wife, their eyes lifeless staring at the ceiling as the floor beneath their bodies flooded scarlet with their blood flashed through my mind.

My vision clouded with red. I ground my teeth together, staying still on nothingbut willpower alone.

I heard no screams. Jericho and Aoibheann were with them.

Surely, that arrogant Russian would never go quietly into the good night.

If there were four of them in the room, they’d need more than two bullets, and all hell would have broken loose.

There was a chance, the most fleeting of chances, that only the intruders, Mark and what’s-his-name, were dead.

Yes. That was a reasonable conclusion to draw.

Please, be a reasonable conclusion to draw.

“If you’ve done anything to my family,” I said to the intruder through gritted teeth, “you will unleash a hell of your own making.”

These bastards did not understand that if I had no wife and child, if they were ripped from me, they would unleash a bloody tyrant the likes of which history had never seen before—the kind that would make Vlad Tepes himself quake in his bathwater.

I would torture and impale them. I would drag them bloody in front of their children, and make their descendants weep…

The brown-eyed man’s gaze over the barrel of his gun blinked as blood splatter burst behind him, his hair scattering. His skull exploded in a shower of pink mist. Crimson covered my eyes as I frowned, shutting my mouth, wincing at the bitter, metallic taste of blood.

Fuck!

I ducked and grabbed my gun from the ground.

A second shot rang out, and a man to my right grabbed his throat, gurgling and sputtering as his artery sprayed blood in a horrendous shower worthy of Quentin Tarantino.

His fractured carpals and membranes mashed, like a blood orange stomped under a heel.

My finger grazed the trigger of my pistol, killing the third man who’d stood beside me.

Shiny looked over her shoulder, gun in hand, letting out a low, pleased whistle.

“What?” I asked, turning to follow her gaze. Bloody hell, I can’t read her mind. We didn’t have time for—

My wife was there, her purple hair wild, grazing her shoulders. Her eyes were cold and dark. As dark as my own, I feared. The eyes of a stone-cold killer.

It worried me.

“Cover us,” I ordered Shiny as I went to her, putting my own gun on safe, pointing it in a secure direction toward the ground.

She didn’t see me at first, her eyes on the men she had dropped.

“Kira,” I called, quietly, stepping toward her. She snapped from her stupor, her eyes landing on me, her face melting into a look of despair. “You’re alright? Our boy?”

Fear coiled into my chest, fearing the worst. Only her words could reassure me.

“Love?” I prompted, trying to get her to speak.

She nodded in a fast, shaky gesture.

“Cillian is fine,” she whispered, lowering her gun, but never once taking her finger off the trigger. “I killed the two that were coming for us.”

She was in shock. She had to be.

What the bleeding hell was Jericho doing sending my wife out to defend the castle, when that was what he was supposed to be doing? I was going to have harsh words with that Russian prick.

Kira’s eyes flicked up to me. The darkness there melted like black ice on concrete, giving way to the warmth that I was used to seeing.

She frowned, “You’re covered in blood.”

She reached her free hand to my cheek, wiping at the cooling, viscous liquid on my skin. I felt the need to reassure her, “It’s not mine.”

She pulled her hand away, staring at her bloody palm. I knew that it was sick and depraved, but I looked at the blood on her hand and felt the ache of knowing that we were not handfasted. Maybe she would be amenable—

“I don’t want my son to grow up like this,” she whispered, staring at the bodies on the ground.

There was too much blood. There had been too much violence, and they’d been here less than a day!

It was also reasonable to not cut your own hand, and take ancient, strange blood vows. In an instant, my hopes of a gesture that had meant so much to my parents, to my cousin, hell, even to Shiny and her husband, would never be mine. I was jealous of them.

She swallowed. I watched the tension in her neck ease, as she looked at me with the authority of a Goddess. “Get your men to sweep the other rooms. We need to know if there are more of them.”

“Aye,” I said, already hearing Shiny check in with the men. “Already done.”

I reached out my hand, my palm touched her cheek.

“We have to protect Cillian,” her voice was shaky as I pulled her into my arms. “My son… My son…”

She fell into me, her arms wrapping around my waist, her face buried in my blood-stained shirt.

“Shhh, Love. You did wonderful.” I rocked her gently, wanting to melt to the ground in relief, seeing her unharmed. “I’m in awe of you.”

I needed to just feel her warmth, her vitality. I needed to touch her, to know she wasn’t a ghost. She was here, with a beating heart. The only thing missing was Cillian.

“The training took over,” she said, with a small huff of a laugh, and she mumbled, “Famous last words…”

I already knew she’d had training—that much was clear as day, now. But who had trained her? And why?

I needed to ask those questions at a more opportune moment.

She straightened, her eyes falling squarely on me as she lifted her chin. “No one lays hands on a Green without consequences. That’s what you told me, once. Is that still true?”

“I will make it true,” I vowed.

“Good.” She ran her palm over my cheek. “There is nothing I wouldn’t do for my son, including killing every Durante Mafia man in New York City.”

Fuck, that made me hard.

Damnit, it wasn’t the time.

I needed my family together, in my view.

I needed to touch them, to know I wasn’t insane.

That I hadn’t gone into the madness my father had when he wept over my mother’s corpse.

Each morning in the months after her death, my father had woken up, thinking she was alive.

He’d searched for her in the rooms that were kept just as she’d had them, searching for her, calling out and asking why she hadn’t woken him up.

He’d forgotten that he had ended her life by his own hands. That she had died in his arms.

It was only when dust began to collect on my Mum’s easels that he realized she had truly passed, and he’d broken her studio into splinters, then set the room on fire. Now, it was just another guest room, painted and covered up as if she had never been there.

“Shiny,” I said quietly. “Will you take care of security? Kira and I must check on our son.”

Our son. Our son. My family.

“Sure thing, boss.” Already, I could hear the familiar stomp of our soldiers’ boots—it was a specific rubber sound on the old hardwood that was unmistakable to me. If my men were coming, then we were safe.

Even so, I felt some sense of relief that Shiny did not call me insane… if I had hallucinated that Kira and Cillian were alive, when they were dead, Shiny would say something. She’d give me absolute hell. We were secured.

Kira left my arms, rushing to the stairs. I followed close behind, not wanting her out of my sight. The urge to handcuff them both to me like they were state secrets was overwhelming. No one would convince me that permanently tethering both of them to me could be a bad idea.

She loudly pushed open the bedroom door, her fingers moving expertly on the tiny pistol in her hand to put it on safe. A pregnant Aoibheann held our boy in her arms, bouncing him lightly on her hip as she paced around, humming a soft tune.

“The noise woke him up,” Aoibheann said, with a gentle smile.

Whether it was forced, I wasn’t sure. I truly did not know my former stepmum well enough to read her expressions. She’d worn nothing but the look of forlorn fear the entire time she’d lived with us.

Kira slammed the gun into Jericho’s chest, letting it go before she reached out for Cillian, who reached back towards her, his hands opening and closing into little fists.

“ Spasibo .” Jericho caught the tiny pistol, and put it in a holster he must have had in the back of his trousers. He chuckled, “Not bad, Mrs. Green.”

“The house is clear,” Shiny’s voice came through the earpiece.

Thank God.

Cillian threw his arms around my sweet Muse’s neck, squeezing her close like he was afraid to let her go. It was a feeling I was more than a little familiar with…

I tucked my Glock into my belt so I could wrap them in my arms as well, forcing myself into their daily unit.

I kissed my boy’s temple, then my wife’s lips. Then I did it again, and again, until Cillian let out a sweet, innocent giggle. I tickled him in the ribs, and he giggled louder, his toothy grin the most gorgeous sight I had ever seen.

“Thank God, you’re okay,” I said out loud, more to myself than them. “I just got you back. I cannot lose you again. I cannot!”

In a show of faith, or maybe it was love—God, I hoped it was a sign of love—Cillian leaned his head against my shoulder, even as he held on to his mum.

I had never felt such fear and love. I had never thought such fright and relief could co-exist at once. The immense love threatened to suffocate me.

“My family,” I said, holding my son by the nape of his neck with one hand, and my wife with the other.

I looked at them both as they placed their foreheads together. Good God, I wanted to paint this. The two of them, so perfect and bright.

I kissed them both again, just because I could. Because they were here, breathing. That was enough. I could walk away from everything, so long as I had them.

“Nothing matters more than you two,” I whispered into my Muse’s hair, my nose in her wavy locks. I meant it with every fiber of my being.

“Is that true, Irish?” Jericho’s voice sent a shiver down my spine, cracking the little bit of heaven I’d been in.