Page 81 of Irish Reign

His body feels like stone behind me, like I’m tied to a cement block, sinking to the bottom of the sea. Bitter cold spreads through mysegno, icing my entire body. Russo’s clamp on my throat cuts off my breath, and a hive of bees explodes in my brain, frantic, desperate to be free.

The door of the study flies open.

Braiden spins into the room as if I conjured him with my dying wish. His shirt is askew. His jacket flares behind him like a cape. His hair stands on end like coal-black straw, and he’s the most beautiful man I’ve ever seen.

“Drop it!” Russo barks, and I realize Braiden holds a weapon. It’s a shotgun, or it was, before someone sawed off a foot of the barrel. “Drop it,” Russo says again. “Or I’ll kill her.”

He shoves his pistol against my head, hard enough to bring tears to my eyes, but I can’t gasp, can’t sob, because his grip on my throat is too tight.

Braiden shifts his fingers on the shotgun’s stock. He holds the weapon out to the side, hand clear of the trigger. He kneels slowly, setting the gun on the floor. “Let her go,” he says, once he’s standing.

“Vaffanculo,” Russo says. “Kick that over here.”

Braiden keeps his hands high, proving he’s no longer a threat. He kicks the gun hard enough that it comes to restagainst my feet. Russo’s grip on my throat eases just enough that I can swallow.

“Let the bitch go,” Braiden says. “This isn’t about her. It’s never been about some slag.”

“Easy for a man to say, when he cannot keep his wife in his bed.” But the pistol eases away from my head. Russo no longer needs me as a shield, not with Braiden disarmed.

“You and me,” Braiden says. “We don’t need New York or Boston to tell us how to divide Philly. We’ll work out our territory, once and for all. Just send the cunt away so we can talk like men.”

“You hear that,cara?” Russo says. “This is what he thinks of you, the man you chose to marry.”

Of course Braiden calls me that word. I came here in the middle of the night. I’m standing here naked, in the home of his enemy. I know what it looks like. I know what he believes.

There’s no heat in Braiden’s gaze. No anger. Nothing. He’s a soulless computer, ticking through the options, adding up what he can get for his Fishtown Boys. He’s buying and selling. Nothing more. Nothing less.

“Put the gun down,” Braiden says.

“Easy for you to say.” Russo shifts his weight behind me. “When I have a weapon, and you have none. In fact, I have a family, and you have none. I have a kingdom, and you?—”

“Samantha,” Braiden says, and his voice is different now. It’s loud and it’s sharp, and it rings with absolute authority. “Beg!”

I drop to my knees by reflex. That’s the lesson Braiden taught me, the first night he spent in my home, when he ordered me to eat even though I couldn’t stand the thought of food. It’s the lesson I learned in the office he gave me, on the second floor of his home. It’s the lesson I mastered in the greenhouse, in our bedroom, in the pool house I thought was my refuge.

He orders.

I obey.

And this time, I hit the floor so suddenly that Russo is taken by surprise. He’s lost his shield, squandered his bargaining chip, the one thing he was so confident he owned that he dropped his guard.

And now that I’m on my knees, I can grab the shotgun. I’ve never fired a long gun before, much less an illegal sawed-off weapon that looks like it’ll knock me flat with recoil. But my fingers know how to work a trigger, and I barely need to aim.

I clutch a single steadying breath and sweep up the shortened barrel. I jam it hard into Russo’s crotch, digging deep into the soft pit of his balls. I slip my finger past the trigger guard and pull—slow and steady and absolutely certain.

The report is the loudest sound I’ve ever heard. It fills my head and stops my heart and folds my brain in cotton.

But I can smell—blood and shit and the gunpowder tang of sweet, burned plastic. And when I force my eyes open, I can see—shredded black pants and minced red muscles, streaks of bone and the pink-red-gray sheen of mutilated organs.

Somehow, Russo’s still alive. His hands open and close over his chest like the claws of a blind crab, and I wonder if he dropped his gun before or after I shot him. Dark red bubbles spill over his lips, staining his chin.

I push myself to my feet and dig my bare toes into his side. I don’t know if he squirms by reflex, or if he still has enough control over his body to try to get away. His movements, though, drown his lips in a sticky crimson river.

“That was for Eliza, you motherfucker,” I say.

It was more than that. It was for my father, too, and my mother. And it was for me. But he’s dead before I have time to say all that.

I stare at his mangled body like this is a horror movie. Like he might come back to life. Like he might torture the people I love, all over again.

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