Page 90 of Bartered Innocence

My eyes widen, her response unexpected. Aisling’s expression mirrors mine.

“You trust him not to tell Luca?”

Isabelle laughs, but it’s empty. “That bridge is burned.”

Aisling looks at me and I nod. “I’ll have Cillian bring him to the poolhouse.”

She smiles and kisses me on the cheek, her hand rubbing at the smeared lipstick before doing the same to Isabelle. Her hand then drops to Isabelle’s belly. “I promise to be back before this baby is born. I’ve missed so much, I won’t miss another birth.”

“We’ll pull you out if need be,” I tell her, agreeing with the fact that we’ve all missed so much. Most of us have spent time spread across the world gathering information, and it doesn’t seem worth much now.

“It was nice to finally meet you,” Isabelle says warmly just before Aisling slips out the door and heads to the back of the house.

I lean against the tool bench, rubbing my face in exhaustion. My wife leans next to me with crossed arms.

“I just realized it’s going to get worse, isn’t it?”

“What do you mean?” I ask her.

She sighs, moving closer to me. “Well now you’re officially the head of the family. They’re all going to come to you, come after you.”

Rubbing my thumb along my bottom lip, I look at her, amused. “Baby, I’ve been at the top awhile now. The only thing that’s gonna get worse is the respect from the traditionalists. They’re gonna blame me for everything that goes wrong and curse the fact that my father died. He was the last link to Ireland, most of us are too Americanized for their tastes.”

She grimaces. “Sometimes I feel like it would be easier to run away from it all.”

I pull her into my arms, hug her close to my chest, and kiss the tip of her nose. “Perhaps, but what a boring life that would be.”

Her eyebrows raise. “You say that now, but once we have a couple kids, life will be anything but boring.”

My cock twitches. “You're already planning for more, huh? I mean I don’t mind trying, practicing…”

She rolls her eyes, then glances around. “Like right now?”

Before I can even think about fulfilling that request, Aodhan opens the garage door and nods for me to come back in. “We have a special delivery.”

Isabelle’s nails dig into my arm. “If it's a dismembered body part, I will hurl.”

I look at Aodhan expectantly and he smirks. “It’s flowers.”

Laughing, I pinch her chin. “Such a bloodthirsty little mind.”

Isabelle scowls, pushing away from me and wagging her finger between us. “Don’t act like that wasn’t entirely possible.”

Aodhan leads us back to the side driveway, where there’s an obnoxious amount of flowers displayed.

I stare at the large vase, feeling a buzzing in my ear that starts to tingle through my skin. Aodhan approaches with a card, his jaw tight with anger, and I already know who they are from.

“My condolences. With sincerity, Luca,” he reads out loud.

Isabelle’s nails dig into my arm as I grind my teeth.

“He’s mocking me.”

“Is it possible he really means it?” she asks softly.

I scoff, shrugging out of her hold and gesturing to Cillian to give me the rigged lighter he always carries. He smirks and hands it over, then I glance at Isabelle.

“The whole point of an arranged marriage is to broker peace, and yet Luca continues to disrespect and undermine me. And went as far to attack my wife on his territory. We agreed to peace for the sake of our dying fathers and he spat all over it. Now he dares send flowers at my father’s wake? I’m going to kill the fucking bastard one day.” I spit at the flowers before pressing the lighter and dousing them in flames. They light up quickly, the growing fire eating at the wilting petals.

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