Page 19 of King of the Dawn

“Antagonizers is a kind way to say it,” I grit the word between my teeth.

“Subtlety isn’t your strong suit, is it Jericho?” Eoghan almost laughed, but he didn’t.

He looked like a man so defeated that it was difficult to truly understand what was going on in that troubled mind of his. The haunted mind that came up with a painting made of blood, that was tacked on top of his foyer wall.

“Not really,” I responded as my sister stepped forward to take control of the conversation.

“We want to speak to Mary and Malinda Brock,” she said in a clear voice.

I noted, with a hint of pride, that my sister was as tall as Eoghan. She looked him eye-to-eye. No fear. No surrender. That was my sister.

“Mary, Brock’s sister,” Eoghan shook his head. “I don’t know if I can allow that, and she’s been a recluse since she became ill. Dementia, unfortunately. I don’t think she’d be of any help. But Malinda is here.”

Eoghan waved a finger, telling us to follow him deeper into his creepy haunted house.

“I cannae let you torture the girl,” he said, his head shaking. “She’s not likely to know anything about it either. But I’ll let you question her.” He took us down a butler’s pantry into a lavish, white stone kitchen. Then he took us down further, to a staircase that led to a basement to a… second kitchen? What the hell? “You’ll understand, though, being as we come from similar worlds, that the girl is under my protection. I’ll need to be present, to ensure her safety, and dignity.”

I snorted. There was no dignity for a people that believed in something as undignified as what they had done to my Eve.

Eoghan’s beady little black eyes turned to me for a moment, before he looked away, leading us to an office. It was his office, obviously. Leather bound books, a globe, and a fireplace, with a large, ornately carved desk with shamrocks on every crown molding was a testament to the Green branding - Irish to the last. Clovers all over.

He gestured for me and Yuliya to take a seat on one side of the desk, as he walked around to the large, high-back leather chair, and picked up a phone.

It beeped, then he demanded, “Send up Malinda, please.”

The person on the other end didn’t have a chance to respond before the Irishman hung up, and looked at us from behind his steepled fingers.

“How is my stepmother?” He asked, his blank face giving away nothing.

“My wife is doing fine,” I said, ready to punch him in the face for simply breathing.

“Aye,” Eoghan nodded, not annoyed at my correction. “I’ve apologized to her, and I meant it. I did not know what was happening to her.”

“How could you not?” I wanted to throttle the bastard. I didn’t believe a single word that came out of a Green.

“I don’t owe you an apology, Russian,” he said, his lip curling at the words. “But maybe I owe an explanation.”

What could he possibly say that could explain away the disgrace of the Greens?

“My father was a good man once,” he said, his head nodding. “What you don’t know is that he loved my mother with a true, and honest heart. When Anton Vasiliev, your father, took her and left her to die after days of torture… my father was the one who had to help her pass. To put her out of her pain, and misery. She begged to die.”

I tried not to scowl, to not scream that Anton Vasiliev was as much a father to me as Alastair Green had been a husband to my wife. They did not belong in the category of family.

“He was slowly going mad without her. We all were. We all… are.” He said with a long sigh. “All I knew was that my father was insane. There was a new woman in place of my mother. And I did not care for any of it. I spent more time in the City, eager to cast a blind eye to what happened in this house. Aoibheann suffered. So did my wife. So have I.”

His black eyes lifted from his table, to look me straight in the eye, as he leaned forward in his seat.

“I have pledged myself to Aoibheann, for as long as she might need me to help with her revenge,” he said, his finger tapped on the desk to emphasize his point. “I mean it, Jericho. I do not want my people stuck in the dark ages of the past. I want us to move forward, into the light, out of the shadows. But first, I must put the past to rights.”

The door behind us opened as a woman with fiery red hair, a touch more orange than my wife’s, came in, wearing a black sheath dress with long sleeves and a white apron across her lap.

“Eoghan, you called for me?” She had the lightest Irish accent, as her eyes lit up to see her boss.

“Malinda,” Eoghan didn’t look at her directly. Instead, he stared at something at the corner of the desk, as he waved her in. “This is Jericho and Yuliya Vasiliev. They’ve come to ask you a few questions.”

I turned in my seat to look at the woman, as her eyes darted between me and my sister.

Her lips parted, and she visibly looked to Eoghan as if he was her savior.

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