Page 39 of Iron Blade

He placed his warm hand on top of mine, sandwiching my palm between his cheek and his firm, rough hand. “What happened to your father?”

His intense eyes looked at me, as his free hand reached to grab a strand of my curls, twirling them around his index finger.

“I… I co-signed for all his bills, because he couldn’t afford them, and he was in so much pain he couldn’t work. But he found out how much it was costing, and how much debt I was incurring and he…” I felt the sadness in the pit of my chest, staring like a small ache, and threatening to blossom into a pain that would be unimaginable. A pain I ignored before it broke me.

I had signed his bills with my left hand - my true self. But the loan shark I had needed to continue his treatments, when I was denied a bank loan again and again? Those I had signed with my right. My lying hand. I forged fake papers of an artist who didn’t exist. The signature that was at the bottom corner of half a dozen canvases in rich homes of the Upper West Side, under made up names.

But even as I traded my integrity for my father’s life, it wasn’t enough. I couldn’t keep up with the high interest and payments. Not to the Mafia.

I never stood a chance. We never stood a chance.

My father never stood a chance.

“He chose to stop treatment, and go into palliative care, because he didn’t want it to cost me so much.”

I tried to keep my voice even, as my left hand touched Eoghan’s face. My true hand. But I was failing. I was losing the fight so fast, that it was breaking me.

“The worst part is that even palliative care costs a lot.” I pulled my hand from his grasp, and covered my mouth as a sad, painful laugh bubbled from my chest. “Even dying costs money, doesn’t it?”

I couldn’t look at him. I couldn’t look at anyone after I told them my story. The look people gave me was always a combination of sympathy, shock, and shame. Everyone thinks they could have chosen better. Everyone believes that they would have found a way to pay the medical bills and keep their loved ones alive.

I was one of those people, once. I was determined to do whatever I needed to for my Dad.

“I spent hours on the phone with HMO, medicare, charity organizations, everything I could. I almost lost my job because I was always on the phone desperately trying to find any relief but… but…”

A fat, disgusting tear streamed down my face, falling down to my thigh, staining my skirt a slightly darker black.

“Maybe I was a failure,” I finally said, as if Eoghan wasn’t even here. It was words I had said to myself over and over again. Words I had cursed myself with.

I was crumbling. I was falling apart, until warm arms pulled me into an equally warm chest. He brought me into his embrace, and I tried to squirm out of it, but he didn’t let me. The best he would let me do was turn away so that my back was to his chest, and his arms encircled my waist.

“Are you still in debt?” I felt his whisper on the shell of my ear, and it sent a shiver down my spine.

“No,” I said, on instinct, pulling my left hand away.

There was a flash of a memory. A letter opener in my hand. Blood on my fingers, on the floor. On the loan shark’s body with his trousers below his hips, his ass hanging out, his dick swinging. A dick he’d ordered me to suck, before I plunged a knife into his ribs.

Blink, opening the door and looking at the room with impassive eyes as he told me to help roll him up in the rug. Blood. Blood in the water as we dumped him in the Hudson. The price I had to pay.

Was it a price, or a blessing? Jury was still out.

Another pained laugh escaped my lips. “No, we settled that just fine. If I hadn’t, would you pay it for me?”

“Why not?”

“At what cost? I’d have to be your live-in whore?”

“I haven’t asked for any of that, Kira. I’d give you the money, free and clear.”

“Why? How could you possibly be okay with that? Its not fucking human.”

“I’m not human,” he said with a low, seductive chuckle that I felt rumble through his chest, into my back, sending a tingle to my ribs. “I’m a monster. But I’ll be your monster, if you like, love.”

“God, you’re so… so…”

“Devilishly handsome? Charming? Irresistible?” His lips hovered in the space between where my neck met my shoulder. I could feel his warm breath, and the heat of his skin. It was such a small, simple thing to feel his breath over my bare skin. But the effects were enormous. “Monstrously well endowed?”

I scoffed, trying to pull away, but he tightened his arms until his massive biceps crushed me against his hard pecs.

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