Page 4 of Iron Blade

“Name the great leaders of all time!” His growl implied that I had been in my own head, and that this wasn’t the first time he’d made this demand.

I floundered. His questions never had simple answers. There was a right and wrong response. I had to figure him out. Not passing his tests could have bloody consequences. Blood had stained this white linen enough times since my mother’s untimely, and brutal passing.

I wracked my brain for people with great battle victories.

“Henry the V, Alexander the Great, Charlemagne.” I was spouting off names, trying to hedge my bets. “Von Clausewitz…”

“Wrong!” My father slammed a meaty fist on the table.

Aoibheann, my so-called stepmother, shut her eyes.

Was she about to cry? Why? It was just a little thump. The woman would overreact to anything…

My father sat back, his chuckle filling the room like a poisonous gas.

“The greatest leader was Vlad ?epes.”

Of course it was. Vlad ?epes, also known as Vlad the Impaler. The Vlad of the Dracula myth. It was a disturbing choice on so many levels.

“Don’t look at me like that, boyo,” he said with a sneer.

I used to love it when he called me son, boy, boyo… but now it was riddled with disdain. Especially now that I was almost thirty, head of a criminal organization, and still seen as a child.

“Under his reign, a man could have dropped a bag of gold on the streets of Wallachia, and it would still be there in a week.” My father wagged a thick finger at me. His wrinkled, dry lips had the slightest bit of cranberry red gravy, resembling blood. “The man led with fear.”

The butler pantry to the kitchen opened, and out came the red-haired maid in her black dress. It wasn’t a maid’s uniform in the usual sense. The Green mansion was staffed by men in black suits, and women in black dresses with the logo of a four-leaf clover on the breast. Outside were guards in paramilitary gear, all black, with the same logo on their breast pockets.

Everyone was branded on their skin, our palms marked with the oath of allegiance.

I looked at the horizontal slash on my hand, the scar long faded from red to white.

“Thank you, Malinda,” I said to the maid as she poured me another drink.

She smiled and I had to keep from wincing at the memory of my old transgression. I had shit where I ate, and it was going to take a lot of maneuvering to ensure that it didn’t blow up in my face.

Malinda was a good girl. A good, infatuated girl who I couldn’t – and shouldn’t – fire for the cardinal sin of sleeping with me when I was drunk and in need of comfort.

I didn’t linger on that thought long as my father was far into his tirade.

“He opened copper mines, made monetary, and border reforms, and made Bucharest the capital city that it is today.” He pointed a finger at me, as if the fact that I hadn’t built a city was a deep personal failing as a son. “He was a smart economic mind, as well as a ruthless military leader. From his cruelty came the security needed for Bucharest to grow. You would know that, if all this art and education hadn’t made you… soft.”

And who had insisted on this education, Da?

I was barely a man when my mother died. When the black cloud above our heads formed. When my father went from being the father I adored – an Irish Atticus Finch – to the person he was now. Just another Dracula, here to bleed us dry.

Mum’s death was the blood-soaked albatross around all of our necks.

His fists clenched on the table, and I knew exactly what he was thinking.

If he had been more ruthless with Anton Vasiliev, then my mother would still be alive. If he hadn’t allowed my mother to make him a peacemaker, then she’d still be in this house, walking up the halls, singing songs about heather and thyme.

And her melody still lingered.

She was a ghost in this house. I’d turn my head and the edge of her skirts would float around a corner like a specter. I would smell her lavender perfume in the air, drifting around me before it disappeared.

At night, I’d hear a voice echoing from a distant place down the hall. But the halls were empty.

I was alone.

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