Page 26 of Iron Bride

He was pathetic, his hands tied above his head, his toes barely grazing the ground, his calves shaking under the strain of holding him up in the stress position.

“I’m sorry. Forgive me. Forgive me.” His plea broke my heart.

“I do! I do!” I wailed, trying to go to him. “I forgive you!”

I looked around, frantic for anyone to hear.

“What the hell are you forgiving him for?” My husband bellowed; his voice held a level of anger I had never heard before.

“Anything!” I screamed back at Cillian. “Everything! I don’t care!”

Cillian tsked, turning around to look at Marco. “What were you trying to stop?”

“The Italians don’t want this marriage. The Mafia. The old families loyal to Durante. They don’t want—”

Cillian’s hard fist landed in Marco’s stomach, as he grunted in pain.

“You knew they were going to attack her, andyou let it happen!”Cillian’s words sent a cold shiver down my spine. “You could have killed her!”

Another punch. All the while, I watched the iron blade in his fist, the blade pointed out, as he punched Marco in the face, the stomach, the chest. Blood dripped down Marco’s face. Blood. Not drawn by the blade, but I knew it would only be a matter of time.

“You should have stopped her from going!” Cillian punched him again, and blood gushed from Marco’s nose.

“Stop!” I screamed.

Marco’s head bowed, and all the while his eyes didn’t leave me. “I’m sorry, Gia. I didn’t want to. I didn’t want to.”

“Don’t look at her!” Another punch with the fist that held his blade, the tip close to slicing Marco’s face.

“He didn’t mean to do it! I forgive him. Please! Let him go!” I begged.

I wept like a weak prisoner, hoping for a fate that would not happen.

I wanted to embrace him and hold him up, to take the weight of his body onto myself. To take his burden.

“Marco saved me! He still saved me! I’m alive!” I held onto that. I held onto it like it was the only raft on an open, angry sea.

Blood trickled down Marco’s face. Drops of it dotted the white tile beneath us, staining the pristine floor.

“You shouldn’t have needed saving in the first place.” Cillian pointed the blade at me, and my throat went completely dry.

The point of his iron blade was lighter than the rest. It shined from hours of sharpening. Hours of molding it into the most dangerous thing that it could be. A thing that would draw blood. A thing that had killed my father, and grandfather. And soon, it would kill me.

“Please, don’t hurt him,” I said through the desert of my throat.

“Don’t, Gia!” my mother warned, snarling not at me, but at the serpents that surrounded us. “There’s nothing you can do for him.”

“She’s right.” Marco winced, as his foot slipped from beneath him, the harsh binds on his wrist cutting into his flesh. “She’s right, Gia. You… you can’t do anything.”

His head slumped as the defeat of those words weighed us all down.

I knelt in his blood. In Marco’s blood.

My hands were soaked in it. My hands, my dress, my soul was soaked in blood.

But now they were mixed with something else as well. They were mixed with my tears.

Tears that had been dislodged by my own husband. A husband who promised that we could be different. That we could be allies. That we could be more—but that was a lie.

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