Page 7 of Iron Bride

My New York apartment bustled with the sound of foot traffic, bars, and the markets below. But this room was absolutely silent.

Cold. Controlled. Just likehim.

And yet, I felt the warmth of relief spread over my chest. My foolish, stupid, traitorous chest.

You’re a traitor to Morelli!

No truer words were ever spoken.

I thought the Serpent Prince was a dream. A dark angel who watched me from a black and gray armchair, hidden in the shadows. An avenging angel of my sad, little girl fantasies. The boy who I secretly hoped would look at me with warmth. With the promise of happy endings as he led me from the darkness.

Before I could stop myself, I whispered, “Are you here to save me?”

And in a blink, the warmth was gone, as the weight of reality crashed down.

I was too old for things like hope. Or dreams. Or happy endings.

I was born in blood. I would die in blood. Just like my father and grandfather before me.

That was my curse.

He leaned forward, the lamplight casting shadows over his face. His lips peeled back into a menacing, predatory grin.

“Sorry to disappoint,Wife,” he growled as his black eyes bored into me, as molten as his touch. “What—and I cannot emphasize this enough—thefuckdid you think you were doing?”

His voice and his Irish accent sent vibrations under my skin, tingling at the small, romantic place that I needed to kill if I was to have my revenge.

“I-I-I…” I had no idea what I was supposed to say. “I don’t know what you mean.”

“You passed out in the middle of‘I’ll Be Home for Christmas,’” he said with that sardonic bite to his Irish lilt. “Care to explain to me why my bride fainted in my arms, when I wasn’t doing anything particularly romantic?”

If he and romance met in a dark alley, he’d stab her and piss on her corpse.

“It was just a bad cold.” I pulled my legs up, my fingers searching for the edge of the blanket so I could get the fuck out of this prison of duvets.

“Is that right?” His expressionless face seemed to darken, even when he didn’t move a muscle.

“Yes.” My frantic searching turned into a panic. I was drowning in blankets.

I finally found the edge and pulled it off of me, exposing my naked legs.

What happened to my tights? My shoes? My dress?

My underwear? Fuck! Where were my…

I was in a huge t-shirt that drowned me down to mid-thigh. A gray Vasali University shirt.

“A cold?” Cillian tapped his finger on the arm rest, as he stared at me with his strange, obsidian eyes. The same ones as his father.

The last eyes my father, Giovanni Morelli, saw before his throat was slit by that iron blade. The iron, handleless blades of the Greens. That was their legacy, and their tradition.

The blades that served as their decoder rings, membership jackets, and secret passcodes. It also served as the marker for their mostsignificantmurders.

“Yes, a cold,” I said in frustration, as my feet touched the ground.

In a flash, he was on me, hand on my throat, his dark eyes a black fiery void of hatred.

“Do not lie to me,wife.” His fury made me clench my thighs as his possessive hold on my throat tightened. My nipples pebbled and begged for his menacing touch. “I will take it as an insult. Now, lie down.”

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