Page 29 of Iron Blade

A glass bottle came at my head, and my father’s large fist followed after. I crashed to the ground, the broken glass splintering around me as the Redbreast Whiskey splashed along the wooden floor.

“You worthless little welp!” My father beat me, blow by blow along my temple, my head crashing on the floor.

“Alastair!” Aoibheann came, trying to fling her waifish form against his fist, but he shrugged her off. She went hurtling against the table. She would have been better off staying seated.

He grabbed me by the collar, straddling me to the ground.

“Don't you ever compare Isla to the useless Durante and Vasilievs.” Punch. Punch. “Don't compare her to this witch! Never!”

My father’s madness and temper always teetered on the edge of anger, waiting for any reason to snap. I had just given him the perfect excuse.

I threw an elbow against the side of his head kicking him off. He fell backwards, crashing into his chair as I staggered to my feet, wiping the back of my hand against my lips. My hand and sleeve came away, covered in my blood.

“It would have been better had I not been, right? That’s what you mean, old man, isn’t it?”

We had been a loving family once. My mother had filled this house with other family, children to give me and Dairo a sense of normalcy and community. She had kept the cobwebs and darkness at bay with her light.

He blamed me. I knew it. We all knew it.

Isla Green was dead because of me.

“Your cousin was already born, we didn’t need you!” My father came to his feet, blood on his knuckles as he clenched a fist and waved it at me. “Dairo would be a better head of Green Fields than a soft little fucking artist like you. At least he knows how to fight a war.”

If Dairo had joined the Peace Corps, he still would have been considered better than me. There was no winning with my deranged progenitor.

“Too bad, old man,” I said, my body shaking with the need to murder the man who gave me life. “You’re stuck with me now.”

I spat blood onto the wooden floor. I picked up my white linen napkin and wiped my bleeding mouth, as my father scrambled back into his seat at the head of the table, his eyes never leaving me as I washed down the cuts in my mouth with the whiskey.

I turned away, pushing through the dining room’s double doors, opening them with such force that they crashed against the adjoining wall.

I hated this house. I hated the memories. I hated the fact that my father was a madman, who took his own misfortunes out on anyone, and anything he could.

“We have the blood oath tonight!” My father called after me. “You’re expected to be there.”

I didn’t answer. I stormed back to my room where I lived like an exile. The space that was mine, and mine alone. It was the only place that was safe in this haunted house.

The only place where the good memories could live, safely, outside of my father’s poison.

Chapter eleven

Run Away

Kira

Cosa looked at me from behind the rim of her wine glass.

Her family restaurant wasn’t a Mom and Pop. It had high ceilings and plush, leather seats. The food was decadent and rich. The lines were long, and the reservations impossible to get unless you had a contact.

A platter of oysters sat in front of her, and she delicately picked up a shell and swallowed the morsel between her thin, pink lips.

“Eoghan Green isn’t a good man,” she said again, for the third time today.

“So you’ve said.” I rolled my eyes. “He’s just an artist, Cosa. You still haven’t told me what he’s done.”

I know, but I want to know what you know.

“They say that he bled one of his enemies and used it to make his paint,” she whispered.

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