Page 26 of Irish Brute
She scurries into the kitchen. So she does understand English.
And just like that, Braiden is back to the man I’ve known for years at the freeport—relaxed and friendly, always ready with a hint of a smile. As he leads me back toward the front door, he says, “The original house dates back to before the Revolution, just two rooms where the kitchen is now.”
We’re standing in the foyer now, looking up at a magnificent flight of stairs.
“The owners added on in stages—this wing, then the other. There were originally only two stories. Roger Thorn, who named it Thornfield Hall, added another in the 1920s. The family lost everything in the crash, though, and the house sat empty for almost a decade. My grandfather bought it after World War II.”
He sounds proud as we climb to the second floor. At the top of the stairs, he gestures to his left. “My office is down there. Yours too.”
“May I see it?”
“Of course.” He takes me past several open doors. There’s a pool table in one. An elaborate set of free weights in another, along with an elliptical, a treadmill, and a stationary bike. There’s a cozy den with overstuffed furniture and a massive television screen and a conference room with a table for ten.
There’s an examining room, like you’d find in a doctor’s office.
“What’s this?” I ask, standing in the doorway. The table is lined with crisp white paper. Metal jars line the counter with clear, printed labels: Gauze Pads, Syringes, Butterfly Closures. More labels are on the drawers and cabinets. A defibrillator hangs on the wall, next to a container for sharps.
“The surgery,” he says. “Er, doctor’s office. Sometimes my men can’t go to a regular hospital.”
Of course they can’t. But I shudder, all the same.
“And this,” he says, drawing me down the hall. “Is your office.”
My desk is a lake of polished glass on sleek steel legs. My chair is black mesh, severely fashioned into ergonomic support. A stark ebony credenza is deep enough to hold dozens of client files. Boxes are stacked on the floor—a pair of gigantic monitors, a laptop, and enough peripherals to open a computer store.
“Declan Fitzgerald is our tech expert,” Braiden says. “He’ll set things up however you want. Just tell Fairfax to bring him in.”
The man’s a billionaire. I know that. That’s the reason he came to the freeport in the first place, why he became my client.
But I’m honestly touched by the care that’s gone into every item in this room. It looks like my dream office, every item chosen just for me. There’s nothing soft, nothing floral. No pampering I don’t deserve—just excellent, high-end versions of the tools I need to do my job.
“Thank you,” I say, even though those two words don’t sound like enough. “This is…perfect.”
He’s embarrassed. I can tell, by the faint touch of red at the tips of his ears. He backs out of the doorway and gestures down the hall. “And that’s my office.”
I glimpse his own desk—a hunk of carved wood large enough to anchor the Queen Mary. There’s a leather chair behind the desk, and at least two upholstered ones for visitors. Bookshelves line the wall. Everything is heavy and bold and very, very male.
Surprised by the twist of my belly, I look away. “What’s that?” I ask, pointing to the one closed door across the hall from his private domain.
“Nothing.”
I laugh, because that’s an obvious lie.
“No, seriously,” I say, crossing over to the heavy oak planks. “What’s so secret that you?—”
His fingers clamp onto my wrist as I reach for the fist-size doorknob. “I said, nothing.”
His grip is tight enough to bruise. I try to tug away, but he doesn’t let me go. “You’ve got a fuckinginfirmaryhere,” I say. “And you don’t try to keep it secret. But this door?—”
“You’ve seen more of my private life in one day than anyone else I’ve ever brought to Thornfield,” he says. “I meant what I said in front of the altar yesterday. Good times and bad. Sickness and health. You are mine. But if you disobey me, if you so much as touch this door again, I swear by the ring on your finger and the vow I took to the Fishtown Boys, youwillbe punished.”
Tension radiates down his arm, through his hand, into the granite band of his fingers around my wrist. It’s the other side of the passion I felt when he kissed me in the church—darkness and danger and a deadly solemn vow.
“He killed three girls. I’ll kill six.”
Braiden has never made a secret of who he is. I know the brutality he’s capable of. I grew up surrounded by men like him.
I let my fingers fall slack.
