Chapter 3
Chapter three
Blood-Valentine Nocturne
Róisín
Iwake up in silk. That’s the first thing I notice—how smooth it feels against my skin. Cool. Expensive. Wrong. My lashes flutter open and I’m met with a ceiling that’s too high, too ornate, moulding curling along the edges like it belongs in a place that never apologises for its power.
Not my flat. Not my choice.
I inhale sharply and pain answers back—dull, tight, stitched. My hand flies to my side, fingers brushing fresh bandages beneath the fabric of the nightgown. Ivory silk. Thin straps. Soft as sin. The sort of thing someone chooses carefully. The sort of thing meant to calm.
My jaw tightens.
I push myself upright and the bed shifts beneath me—massive, carved dark wood, the mattress deep enough to swallow a body whole.
Someone has tucked me in. Someone has cleaned the blood from my skin.
My hair is braided. Neat. Careful. Like I was a child again, all sharp edges temporarily dulled.
The rage hits slow and then all at once.
Finn. My family. My da.
I swing my legs over the side of the bed and stand, swaying just slightly before steadying myself. I pace the room barefoot, anger burning hot and bright now that I’m conscious enough to feel it properly. Everything here is deliberate—heavy drapes, thick rugs, furniture chosen to last generations.
A house built to keep things in. A house built to trap. My hands curl into fists. He kidnapped me. My own father agreed to it. Sold me like stock to settle debts and buy time, wrapped it up in talk of survival and honour like that makes it cleaner.
I laugh, bitter and breathless. Of course he did. I cross to the mirror and barely recognise the woman staring back at me. Pale. Furious. Silk-clad like a bride already halfway to the altar.
“I’ll kill him,” I whisper—to Finn, to my da, to anyone who thought this was acceptable. “I’ll burn them all.”
The promise steadies me. I straighten my shoulders, chin lifting. Pain or not, stitches or not, I will not be quiet. I will not be soft just because they dressed me like something precious.
I turn toward the door and quietly open it.
I don’t shout. That would be giving him something.
So I walk. Bare feet on stone. Silk whispering against my legs.
Every step measured, spine straight, face composed like I’m heading into a meeting I intend to win.
The house watches me as I move through it—lads pausing mid-conversation, eyes tracking, the air shifting as word spreads without a single word being said.
She’s awake.
I don’t rush. I don’t falter. I follow the corridor I remember from years ago, past rooms that smell like leather and smoke and old decisions, until I reach the office at the end.
The door is ajar. I push it open. Finn is seated behind the desk, sleeves rolled, jacket discarded, posture relaxed in that infuriating way that suggests he owns not just the room but the air inside it. Three of his crew are with him—leaning, talking low, maps and papers spread across the desk.
Every single one of them looks up. Finn’s eyes are already on me. They don’t soften. They don’t widen. They don’t flick anywhere else—not to the silk, not to the bare feet, not to the bandage beneath it all. Just my face. Steady. Assessing. Possessive as hell. The room holds its breath.
“Out,” he says.
One word. Calm. Absolute. No one hesitates. Chairs scrape back. Papers are gathered. No one looks at me twice. They file past like ghosts, shutting the door behind them with a quiet finality that lands somewhere deep in my chest.
Finn never breaks eye contact. The silence stretches as I step fully into the room and close the door myself.
“Did you sleep?” he asks.
The question is neutral. Not kind. Not cruel. Like he’s asking about the weather. I stop a few feet from his desk. Fold my hands loosely in front of me. Lady Malloy, called to order.
“Where’s my Da?” I ask.
His jaw tightens. Just a fraction. “Safe.”
“And satisfied?” I continue. “Happy with the price he got for me?”
He stands then—slow, deliberate—rising to his full height behind the desk. He doesn’t come closer. He doesn’t need to. “You wore yourself out last night,” he says. “I won’t have you tearin’ stitches again.”
I smile. It’s not pretty. “You don’t get to tell me what I won’t do,” I say calmly. “You don’t get to decide my body. Or my life. Or who I marry.”
His mouth curves. Sharp. Familiar. Dangerous. “Already did.”
The room feels smaller now. Tighter. Like the walls are listening. I tilt my head. “You really think I won’t put a knife in you again?”
That does it. He moves—not fast, not slow. One step around the desk. Another toward me. He stops just inside my space, close enough that I can smell coffee and smoke and him.
“I think,” he says quietly, “that you’ll try.”
I meet his gaze, unblinking. “Then you’re stupider than I thought.”
A beat… then he smiles. And I know—bone-deep, sinking—that the war has well and truly begun. He doesn’t answer my threat. Instead, he turns away from me. That alone rattles me more than if he’d grabbed my throat again.
He crosses the office to the far wall, where a low cabinet sits beneath the window. He unlocks it without looking back at me. One clean motion. No flourish. Then he lifts something out. My breath catches so hard it hurts.
The violin. My violin.
Dark wood. Worn edges. The faint scratch along the lower bout from when I dropped it rushing out of the chapel all those years ago. The case is gone. The instrument bare in his hands like it belongs there. Like it belongs to him.
“You didn’t,” I say, the words coming out wrong. Thin. Stripped.
He turns then, finally looking at me again. “I did,” he replies. “Pulled it from your old place before it got cleared out.”
My chest tightens. Rage and grief tangle together until I can’t tell them apart. “You had no right.”
He steps closer and holds it out—not offering. Presenting. “If you’re going to scream at me all week,” he says calmly, “at least stay in tune.”
I don’t move.
He tilts his head. “Go on.”
“You don’t get to use that,” I snap. “You don’t get to touch it. That’s mine.”
A corner of his mouth lifts. “Everything in this house is mine.”
He places the violin on the desk between us. Gently. Reverently. Like he knows exactly what it cost me to leave it behind. “Play,” he says.
“No.”
His eyes harden. “Róisín.”
The way he says my name—low, controlled—lands like a command pressed into my spine. I step forward before I can stop myself. My fingers tremble when they touch the wood. Fury surges hot and fast, flooding every vein.
I don’t tune it properly. I don’t breathe. I play. The sound that rips from the strings isn’t pretty. It’s sharp. Violent. Notes dragged too hard, bow biting deep, melody fractured and furious. Every stroke is accusation. Every scrape a wound reopened.
I pour everything into it—betrayal, rage, the echo of blood on stone floors and hands that won’t let go. The room vibrates with it. I don’t look at him at first. I don’t need to. I feel it.
The shift in the air. The way his presence tightens, thickens. When I finally glance up, he’s leaning back against the desk, jaw clenched, eyes dark and fixed on me like I’m something feral and holy all at once.
His breathing has changed. Slow. Heavy. Deliberate. His hand grips the edge of the desk hard enough that the wood creaks.
I drag the bow across the strings one last time, deliberately rough, letting the note die ugly and unresolved. I lower the violin. Silence crashes down. His gaze flicks to my mouth. My throat. The way my hands are shaking.
“That’s it?” he asks, voice rougher now.
I meet his eyes. “You wanted noise.”
Something hungry flashes across his face—gone as quick as it came. “Careful,” he says quietly. “You keep playin’ like that and you’ll forget who’s in control.”
My pulse hammers. I set the violin down between us, carefully this time. “I haven’t forgotten a thing,” I say.
He smiles. And the way he looks at me now tells me I’ve just started something neither of us can stop. He doesn’t move at first. Just watches me like he’s weighing how much damage I can do with six inches of wood and horsehair.
“That mouth of yours gets you into trouble.”
I laugh, sharp and humorless. “Funny. I was thinking the same about yours.”
He steps closer. One slow step. Then another. The space between us tightens until the air feels thin, brittle, like it might shatter if either of us breathes wrong.
“You play like that on purpose?” he asks. “Like you’re daring me to lose control?”
I tilt my chin up, refusing to give him the satisfaction of looking away. “You don’t have control,” I say. “You just pretend you do.”
Something dark flickers behind his eyes—approval or anger, I can’t tell which. He reaches out before I can stop him, fingers brushing the inside of my wrist where my pulse is jumping like it’s trying to escape.
“Still shaking,” he murmurs. “Every time you lie.”
I jerk my hand back, but not fast enough. His thumb lingers, dragging just enough to make my skin prickle.
“Don’t touch me,” I snap.
“Then don’t play for me like that,” he shoots back, stepping in fully now. We’re chest to chest, my violin forgotten between us, his presence overwhelming—heat, leather, something metallic underneath.
“I didn’t play for you,” I say. “I played to survive you.”
His hand lifts, stops just short of my face. Not touching. Never quite touching. Like he knows exactly how much distance will undo me.
“Say that again,” he whispers. “Look me in the eye and tell me you don’t feel this.”
My lips part before I can stop myself. His gaze drops there instantly. The world narrows to breath and inches and the unbearable pull between us.
His mouth moves closer. Not fast. Not slow. Deliberate. Close enough that I can feel the heat of him. Close enough that my body betrays me, leaning in just slightly, traitorous and weak.
“Finn—” I start.
The door slams open.
“Boss—”
The word cuts through the moment like a blade. We jerk apart as if burned. Finn turns, all warmth gone, replaced by something cold and lethal in a heartbeat.
“What,” he says flatly.
I don’t wait to hear the rest. I grab the violin, my hands shaking now in a way I refuse to acknowledge, and storm past them both.
Down the hall. Through the door of the bedroom they’ve assigned me like a guest, like a prisoner.
I slam it shut behind me and lean against it, heart pounding, lips still tingling like they’ve been kissed anyway.
I hate him.
I hate that he knows exactly how to pull me apart without ever touching me at all. And worst of all, I hate that part of me was already leaning in when the door opened.