Page 6 of Iron Blade

“It was your portrait of your mother.”

Thank you, Aoibheann, for stating the bloody obvious.

“You’re best when you’re silent!” I barked, walking away and slamming through the dining room doors.

I could feel my stepmother staring after me, with hurt in those blasted green eyes.

Did she deserve my wrath? No. But she had it all the same. She was there, and another witness I had to ignore as I stumbled through life under my father’s boot. Christ, I couldn’t wait for the old man to die.

Malinda tried to follow. I stopped her with a wave of my hand as I took the stairs two at a time, up to the living quarters and into my chambers.

The women’s sympathy was maddening. They wanted to coo, and caw over me like I was a fucking pet they had to comfort through a thunderstorm. They were the ones in need of protection, not me.

I didn’t need that painting. My mother never saw it. There was not a single brush stroke that I couldn’t recreate. There wasn’t a single smile, or tear, that wasn’t imprinted in my memory. I didn’t need a painting to remind me of her because every hue and every blemish lived in my head.

Hell, I could even remember every detail on that stupid fucking book. Beauty and the Beast. A fairytale with a happy ending… but not for her.

I lived with these images every day. All of them. All at once. Every single moment that I was in this wretched house.

I slammed my bedroom door shut and walked right into the adjoining room - to my studio. To the mercifully blank white canvases on easels, and the white, blank sheet that covered a fainting couch where I could bring a model in to sit.

The marks of the last woman’s blush and foundation stained the armrest where she had rested her cheek. Malinda. The housekeeper’s daughter.

I was lonely, and a fool, and she had thrown herself at me with a reckless abandon that I needed. She’d ridden my cock with an eagerness that relieved my aching balls but disgusted me in equal measure.

What a mistake.

A mistake I would not make again.

I needed to leave this blasted house. I had to get out of Middlebrook, and back to the city where things made sense. I had to get out from beneath my father’s humiliating control.

This haunted mansion was a mockery of my childhood, of my mother, and of any memory that I held dear.

The memories my father blackened with every vile encounter.

I opened a window, allowing the scent of the rose garden to come in with the cool spring air. I pulled cigarettes from my pocket, along with a zippo. A Celtic cross was emblazoned on the silver shell.

I put the Dunhill cigarette to my lips and lit up, feeling the nicotine infiltrate my blood and relax my muscles - evaporating the rage that brewed just below the surface.

It was just a painting. It meant nothing.

My father was a crazy old man. He would die soon, and none of this would matter.

And Kira Kekoa was just a woman, with full lips. I wondered if she would smell like roses. Would she taste like sin? Would her body mold to my hands like a pliant sculpture? Would she pose for me? Would she scream?

I smiled to myself as I knew, in my heart, that she would do it all - I would make her.

Chapter three

Money Laundering

Kira

Ihunched over my office desk, staring at a catalog of art we were supposed to receive. Not a single one of them was even remotely inspired. My forgeries were better than these hacks. Even the descriptions bugged me – they read like a pretentious MFA student’s final project.

“These images are tinged with mystical escapism, memory shrouded by the overarching dominion of tormented dreams…” I read the description out loud as I rolled my eyes.

These whackos had more money than brain cells.

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