Chapter 10
10
SAMANTHA
B raiden Kelly is a domineering, egotistical murderer. But he has a surprising streak of kindness too.
He didn’t have to go back to the church for my pocketbook—especially after a night of dealing with Russo’s violence. But I very much appreciate the fact that he did. Just having my phone in hand makes me feel more human.
It almost makes up for the fact that I’m still wearing my wedding gown when I walk into the kitchen.
“Fairfax,” Braiden says as we enter.
There’s a man juggling pots and pans on the eight-burner stove. He’s small enough that I mistake him for a child before Braiden calls his name, but when Fairfax turns around, I see that he’s old enough to be my grandfather. His fine features are set in a web of wrinkles, as if he spent several decades working outside. His lips are thin and his nose is pert. His eyes are a much lighter version of Braiden’s blue.
“Samantha Kelly,” Braiden says. “This is Alec Fairfax. Fairfax is chief of staff around here. He’s in charge of the house, the grounds, pretty much everything.”
Braiden and I haven’t talked about my changing my name. I haven’t told him I won’t do it. But I don’t have time to protest because Mr. Fairfax is already wiping his fingers on a nearby towel, extending his hand to shake.
“Mr. Fairfax,” I say.
He shakes his head with a kind smile. “No ‘mister’ involved. Just plain Fairfax.” His words are dusted with an English accent, something sharper than Braiden’s Irish lilt. “Welcome to Thornfield. It’ll be lovely, having a bit of female influence over things.”
My lips purse, because I can’t imagine having much of an influence over anything in Braiden’s life.
But Fairfax is already turning back to the stove to shake a heavy iron skillet filled with hash. “Go on, then. You’re all set up in the dining room. No reason for everyone to cram into the kitchen now, is there?”
Before I have a chance to wonder who makes up “everyone”, Fairfax shoos Braiden and me toward a swinging door. “I’ll be right in with the food. Just get your tea from the sideboard.”
It’s coffee I want, coffee I need , to begin making sense of my strange new life. Because I’m just starting to grasp that I have a chief of staff at my disposal. And I’m staring at a dining room table large enough to serve twenty. It sports three massive floral displays—huge flowers and shining greenery, all of it real. And there are full place settings on one end of the table—multiple plates, glasses, forks, and knives that all shout I won’t get away with gulping down a container of yogurt and calling that a meal.
But the real reason I need coffee?
A child sits at the table.
She’s ten years old, maybe eleven. Her bright red hair tumbles around her face in exuberant curls. Freckles splash her pale cheeks. Her huge eyes are so green, I wonder if she has colored contact lenses. She’s wearing a bulky green sweater over a white button-down shirt. Even though I can’t see beneath the table, I’m somehow certain she has a plaid skirt and thick black tights and heavy lace-up shoes.
“Samantha,” Braiden says. “This is Aiofe Mason.”
Aiofe. My ears hear the Irish name as Eefa, but I know the spelling. “Good morning, Aiofe,” I say, making a point of looking directly in her eyes. “You can call me Sam.”
“Aiofe prefers to stay silent.” Braiden says.
“Excuse me?”
“She doesn’t speak.”
Before I can question the incredible strangeness of that—or who the child is, what she’s doing here, what the hell have I gotten myself into?—Braiden turns toward the massive breakfront on the far wall. “Thank you, Grace,” he says. “You may take your meal in the kitchen.”
I startle, because I hadn’t noticed the woman standing in the shadow of the mahogany hutch. She’s impossible to describe—not tall and not short, not slim and not fat. Her blunt-cut hair is a nameless color, not brown, not blonde. It matches her eyes, which don’t seem to blink.
As she steps away from the wall, Braiden says, “Grace looks after Aiofe.”
“Hello, Grace,” I say, but she doesn’t answer. Instead, she ducks her head and slinks around Aiofe, passing through the swinging door into the kitchen.
Braiden scowls as he heads over to the sideboard where a massive samovar stands amid an array of teacups, saucers, and spoons. “Do you take milk?” he asks. “Or sugar?”
I take coffee.
But I don’t say it, because he already looks so brittle. “Milk,” I say. “Just a little.” I can’t believe I’ve married a man who doesn’t know how I prefer my caffeine.
Then again, I’ve married a man who has a surprise child sitting at his table, so I’m surrounded by proof that I haven’t thought this through at all.
Braiden brings me a cup, and then he prepares one for Aiofe—a splash of tea in mostly milk. His own is black, so dark it looks like ink.
He takes his seat as Fairfax bustles in from the kitchen. The man looks like a cartoon character, with three serving plates balanced on his left arm and two in his right hand. He hums as he offloads bacon and sausages, a bowl of baked beans, fried eggs and mushrooms, grilled tomatoes, and a monstrous pile of hash. Before I can say a word, he darts back into the kitchen, only to return with three silver racks for toast and generous pots of butter, marmalade, and raspberry jam.
“Thank you,” Braiden says.
“Shout if you need anything,” Fairfax says before he ducks back through the door.
“Please,” Braiden says to me. “Help yourself.” But he watches like a vengeful eagle until I have some of everything on my plate.
He serves Aiofe everything but mushrooms. I wait until he’s got his own fork in hand before I say, “Just so I understand. Is Aiofe your daughter?”
I force a tight smile as I ask. It’s not the girl’s fault this is the first I’ve heard of her.
“My ward,” Braiden says—like that’s an ordinary word used in everyday conversation by normal people everywhere.
“I see.” But I don’t.
And nothing becomes more clear as Braiden turns toward a stack of newspapers, neatly laid out beside his place. I catch a glimpse of the The Wall Street Journal, The New York Times and The Washington Post. He’s got The Philadelphia Enquirer too, and at the bottom, The Irish Times. He flips to the Journal’s stock reports, shaking the pages into place with brusque authority.
Annoyed to be dismissed when I already don’t want to be eating, I turn to Aiofe. “So,” I say. “Are you in school, Aiofe?”
I know she hears me, because she looks up from corralling beans onto her fork with a piece of bacon. But she stares at me so blankly that I wonder if she speaks English.
“Aiofe prefers to say silent,” Braiden says, using the exact same tone and rhythm as the first time he told me.
“How old are you Aiofe?” I ask. I put down my own fork to hold up all my fingers. “Ten?”
She chews slowly, like she’s counting to some secret number inside her head.
I give up and eat my breakfast.
I can’t get past the absurdity of the situation. Braiden sits at the head of the table like some lord in an English manor, poring over his newspapers as if they hold the secret to the universe. Aiofe eats steadily, shoveling in more food than I ever imagined a child could manage. I can hear Fairfax in the kitchen, his voice rising and falling, and I imagine he’s talking to Grace.
And I’m sitting in my wedding dress, chewing and swallowing and washing down breakfast with tea, certain I’ve made the biggest mistake in my life.
But Braiden was right about one thing—I needed food. I was too upset to even think about opening the refrigerator in the safe room. With our afternoon wedding, I barely ate lunch yesterday—a turkey sandwich and chips shared with Alix in the church basement before we did my hair and makeup. My only breakfast was a gallon of coffee—hot, rich, with just a shot of cream.
So I clean my plate. And I go back for more hash. I finish by slathering my toast with butter and preserves.
And I refuse to look abashed when I catch Braiden sitting back in his chair, a slow smile curling his lips when I finally place my napkin beside my plate.
“Ready to see your room?” he asks.
I am. I want to know where I’m going to live. And I want to take a shower and change into normal clothes and get on with my life. “Please,” I say.
We’re halfway out of the dining room before Braiden thinks to turn back to Aiofe. “Go on, then,” he says to her. “You have more than an hour before Mr. Bell arrives. Go to Grace.”
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 fucking infirmary here,” 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, you will be 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.
“Good girl,” Braiden says as he sets me free.
I’m not a girl. And nothing about this situation is good.
“Come on,” he says, and his voice is normal again. “Let me show you your bedroom.”
I follow him down the hall, flexing my wrist to get feeling back into my hand. My pulse pounds harder where his fingers burned me. It takes a conscious effort not to look over my shoulder at the forbidden door.
I know I’ll try it again. When my husband isn’t watching over me.