Page 64 of Irish Reign

“Jesus Christ!” she explodes. “Madden said the same thing for months, and youknowhe was a fucking liar. For the last time, in short words you’ll be sure to understand: Russo is not my boss. Russo has never been my boss. I want to lock up Russo as much as you do. That’s why I did this. That’s why I got the tattoo. So I can see his papers.”

“Fine,” I say. “Let’s see them.”

“What?”

“Let’s see the papers. Show me what the gobshite’s been hiding.”

She wipes her hands down the front of her trousers. “I don’t have them yet.”

“What?” The question rips out of me, so loud and sharp she jumps like I slapped her.

“He says he’ll give them to me next week.”

“And youbelievehim?” My Samantha’s always been stubborn, but she’s never before been stupid.

“Of course I don’t believe him!” she shouts, almost loud enough to match my rage. “But what was I supposed to do? How was I supposed to convince him, without giving away the entire game?”

“This is all a game to you?”

“Don’t be a fucking idiot,” she says.

“Watch your mouth,” I warn her.

“Or what? You’ll spank me? Tie me up? Beat me with a cane?”

“I’m your fucking Dom.”

“Watch your mouth,” she says sweetly, mimicking a bratty sub.

I snap my fingers, giving her one last chance. “On your goddamn knees,piscín.”

She laughs, a hollow sound that echoes to the center of the earth. “That ship just sailed, motherfucker. You’re a bully, Braiden Kelly. I swear to God I can’t tell where you stop and where Antonio Russo begins.”

“Here’s a hint: I’ve never shoved a pistol up your gowl.”

“No. You’re more the mind-fuck type. Call me a whore, because Russo makes you feel like a weak little man. That’syourgame, isn’t it? You led Fiona on because you were afraid of Kieran Ingram. You kept Birte locked up, because her brother shamed you. You can’t manage the men in your life, so you take it out on women. And the whole time you’re fucking us over, you tell yourself you’re such a big man, such a kind man, such a brave man. But you’re really just a scared little boy who can’t get his peepee up unless your woman’s tied like a Sunday roast.”

“Jesus Christ,” I say. “You’re a vicious cunt.”

She still hates the word.

That’s why I use it.

She settles her hands on her hips but thinks better of the gesture when it pulls her top against her damaged skin. Shifting her weight instead, she balances on the balls of her feet and looks me in the eye. And then she says, very low and perfectly even: “Fuck you.”

“No,” I say, and I don’t care that I’m standing in spilled whiskey, that I’m grinding the platinum chain of her collar beneath my heel. I pinch her arm between my fingers, hard. “Fuck. You.”

She kicks at my shoe, at the necklace trapped under my sole. But when I don’t release her arm, she wipes all hint of emotion from her face. She ratchets her voice into a robot’s creaky tone. “Whatever you require,” she says. “Sir.”

Blindly, mechanically, she reaches for my trousers. She purses her lips like a blow-up doll and says, “Let me make you feel good, Sir. Fuck me real hard, Sir. Want me on my knees now? Take me up the ass? Want to hit me hard? Sir?”

I drop her arm like it’s riddled with disease. “Get the fuck out of my house.”

She twists her fingers together, one hand over the other, and it takes me a moment to realize she’s wrestling with her rings. There’s the Fishtown knot I gave her when we faked our engagement in front of Russo. And there’s the gold band I put on her finger at St. Columba’s.

Is liomsa tú, the second one says.You are mine.

But that doesn’t keep her from throwing both rings at my face.

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