Page 9 of Iron Bride

“Who did it?” he asked so casually that he might as well have been inquiring about my dinner plans.

Blood. So much fucking blood, I could smell it. I could taste it.

The iron taste, like their iron blades.

“Who did… what?” I swallowed the bile creeping up my throat.

He rolled his eyes, flipped the iron in his hand, and slipped it back in its sheath.

Suddenly I could breathe again.

“Who stabbed you, Wife?” Did he make his Irish accent thicker?

Jesus, he was born in the United States. His father had an accent, but he was born in Derry, so that tracked. But him? His mother was born in Hawaii and had no accent whatsoever. So, I knew that this was a put on.

He looked at me like I was some kind of simpleton, as he probed, “Well?”

“It was a mugging,” I said.

“A mugging you say?” And the accent grew thicker still. Was that how he got chicks? “And yet you have your phone, wallet, your keys. Your bank accounts haven’t reported a cancellation of stolen cards. So–”

“Are you stalking me?”

“Stalking?” His chuckle was sardonic, and cruel. So why did it warm me? Why was his cruelty so pleasant to my ears? “Love, you seem to be under the impression that you’re not, in fact, a prisoner on a very long leash.”

There it was.

The secret none of us mentioned because it wasimpoliteto discuss. They had access to my accounts. My mother’s accounts. The Morelli and Durante fortunes were undertheirguardianship to ensure that my mother and I didn’t mutiny against our circumstances.

To the victor go the spoils. And I was a spoil of the Irish-Italian Mafia war.

Engaged to their prince, as a condition of surrender.

“Who stabbed you?” Cillian asked again, and I knew that not answering would just incur his wrath.

“What will you do if I tell you?” I asked, quietly.

I knew that whoever did it was Italian. If they knew that, they’d take it as an excuse to disrupt what limping power we still had. The Greens would punish us all, indiscriminately, just as they did during the war that our fathers fought.

“No one touches a Green without consequences.” Cillian practically sung their family motto.

“I’m not a Green.” I couldn’t stop the words from slipping out.

It was habit. A phrase I had repeated and again to my own people. But now, it was a lie.

“Oh, but you are.” Cillian winked, an evil glint in his eye darkening to something… lustful. Or… sadistic. I wasn’t sure. “Tell me who did it.”

“No.”

“No?” There was a lift of that eyebrow again, delightfully surprised that I had defied him.

His mouth straightened in what was almost a frown, as he stalked towards me until his shadow darkened my vision.

“I’m not in the habit of making requests, sweetheart.”

“I’m not your sweetheart.”

“No, you’re right. You’re a wife.” He held out his hand and stroked the pad of his index finger from my forehead to my temple. Then, he gently tucked a strand of hair behind my ear.

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