Page 62 of Iron Blade

“I’ll bring it to you.” Her voice was breathy and melodic.

She was as Irish as me and my father, from a small fishing town called Port Stewart.

The sister of the head of the Boston Irish, she usurped my mother’s throne with the grace of a peasant girl trying to fill the shoes of Catherine de Medici.

My mum was barely even cold in her grave before she was flung into our house.

“Thank you,'' I gritted out.

This woman made my guts roil in disgust and irritation.

She had never done anything to me. She had never been cruel or mean. It was just that her existence was everything I deplored. She was a useless, whisper-soft person that could be blown away in a light breeze. Weak. I hated seeing it.

“Will you have a wedding soon?” By Christ, Aoibheann was speaking more now than she had in the decades I had known her. I preferred her when she was silent.

Dairo raised a brow at me. He knew as well as I did that I was playing with fire, introducing a woman to the conversation that they did not know.

Kira didn’t have an Irish bone in her body as far as I knew. They’d expect me to bring her home and beg for permission to propose to her with the ring. Or to propose to her, and then seek approval before marriage.

I intended for my mother’s ring to be on her finger long before she ever stepped foot on this property.

“What about you, Dairo?” my father said, staring at his namesake.

“No woman for me,” Dairo said, with a small chuckle.

“Peculiar… a young, good-looking man like you. You should have at least one, if not many, women, by now,” my father said in that heavy speech.

Dairo pulled at his tie and cleared his throat. “I’m no priest, but I haven’t found the woman to hold my attention.”

“Hmm,” my father grumbled. “Just make sure that they can give you children. A life without children is…”

He didn’t say anything past that. He just let it linger in the air and fade away, in front of the son he preferred not to have, the nephew who wanted nothing that he could offer.

A peculiar look passed in front of Aoibheann’s expression - as if her barrenness gave her joy.

My witchy stepmother has a secret…

“Morelli has been asking questions about our enterprise,” my father said, his fork scraping over his porcelain plate. It sounded like nails on a chalkboard. “When you and Dairo return to the city, I want him handled.”

“He’s the consigliere to Eugenio Durante,” I said, dropping my fork onto my plate and staring at my father in disbelief. “That would be a declaration of war.”

“When have we not been at war with Eugenio Durante?” His nostrils flared, and I could see the white hairs moving with his exasperated breath. “Are you going soft, boyo?”

I clenched my teeth. I knew those words. “Are you going soft?” was code for “Do I need to toughen you up?” On its own, those words meant nothing. But in the mind of my father, who was insane, it was a threat.

My father’s wrinkled, thin lips snarled.

“What type of questions has he been asking?” I said, after taking a breath.

“He’s asking about the legality of your Gallery with the District Attorney,” my father said, chewing through his food. We had a spy in the DA, so his source came as no surprise. “It seems he has designs on stopping our source of funding.”

Rage simmered in my body.

“How dare they.” My fists clenched. “They know that if they come after the gallery, I will come after their clubs.”

They were not-so-subtly participating in human trafficking and prostitution. It was far more criminal than anything that could be found at Gallery Four.

Suspicion leaked into my veins - was Cosima Durante trying to keep my Muse away from me?

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