Chapter 27
27
brAIDEN
M y piscín .
My beautiful girl.
Ruined.
I rip the dressing off, ignoring Samantha’s hiss of pain, and her tattoo sours the whiskey in my belly. That woman’s face in a nest of snakes… Those three legs, bent like they’ve been cut off crazy circus girls…
Of course I’ve seen the mark before. All Russo’s men wear the monster.
But my Samantha…
I drop her arm and stagger back, putting the chair between us. “What the hell were you thinking?”
“I was thinking I need Russo to trust me if we’re going to put him away.” She tugs her top back into place, yanking hard to emphasize her words. The fabric must be rough against her sensitive skin, because she winces.
I say with deadly calm, “If you want that shitehawk to trust you, then flatter him. Use your words. Not your fucking body.”
“Sometimes words only go so far. Sometimes people need symbols.” She bends at the knees, graceful as a swooping hawk, and she retrieves her collar from the ground. Holding it out to me, she adds a single syllable, pointed and heavy: “Sir.”
I swipe at the necklace, sending it back to the floor. It lands in the pool of whiskey that spilled from my glass. “Fuck symbols.”
“Braiden,” she says, her voice low and dangerous, warning me I’ve gone too far.
But she didn’t warn Russo. She didn’t tell that dry shite to stop before he marked her permanently. So, I point to the necklace. “Pick up your fucking collar.”
Her chin tilts up, and her shoulders stiffen. My cock presses against my zipper, even harder than when I held her on my lap. “Or what?”
“Or I’m shoving you out that door so fast you’ll be halfway back to your dago boss before you catch your fucking balance.”
“Jesus Christ!” she explodes. “Madden said the same thing for months, and you know he was a fucking liar. For the last time, in short words you’ll be sure to understand: Russo is not my boss. Russo has never been my boss. I want to lock up Russo as much as you do. That’s why I did this. That’s why I got the tattoo. So I can see his papers.”
“Fine,” I say. “Let’s see them.”
“What?”
“Let’s see the papers. Show me what the gobshite’s been hiding.”
She wipes her hands down the front of her trousers. “I don’t have them yet.”
“ What? ” The question rips out of me, so loud and sharp she jumps like I slapped her.
“He says he’ll give them to me next week.”
“And you believe him?” My Samantha’s always been stubborn, but she’s never before been stupid.
“Of course I don’t believe him!” she shouts, almost loud enough to match my rage. “But what was I supposed to do? How was I supposed to convince him, without giving away the entire game?”
“This is all a game to you?”
“Don’t be a fucking idiot,” she says.
“Watch your mouth,” I warn her.
“Or what? You’ll spank me? Tie me up? Beat me with a cane?”
“I’m your fucking Dom.”
“Watch your mouth,” she says sweetly, mimicking a bratty sub.
I snap my fingers, giving her one last chance. “On your goddamn knees, piscín. ”
She laughs, a hollow sound that echoes to the center of the earth. “That ship just sailed, motherfucker. You’re a bully, Braiden Kelly. I swear to God I can’t tell where you stop and where Antonio Russo begins.”
“Here’s a hint: I’ve never shoved a pistol up your gowl.”
“No. You’re more the mind-fuck type. Call me a whore, because Russo makes you feel like a weak little man. That’s your game, isn’t it? You led Fiona on because you were afraid of Kieran Ingram. You kept Birte locked up, because her brother shamed you. You can’t manage the men in your life, so you take it out on women. And the whole time you’re fucking us over, you tell yourself you’re such a big man, such a kind man, such a brave man. But you’re really just a scared little boy who can’t get his peepee up unless your woman’s tied like a Sunday roast.”
“Jesus Christ,” I say. “You’re a vicious cunt.”
She still hates the word.
That’s why I use it.
She settles her hands on her hips but thinks better of the gesture when it pulls her top against her damaged skin. Shifting her weight instead, she balances on the balls of her feet and looks me in the eye. And then she says, very low and perfectly even: “Fuck you.”
“No,” I say, and I don’t care that I’m standing in spilled whiskey, that I’m grinding the platinum chain of her collar beneath my heel. I pinch her arm between my fingers, hard. “Fuck. You.”
She kicks at my shoe, at the necklace trapped under my sole. But when I don’t release her arm, she wipes all hint of emotion from her face. She ratchets her voice into a robot’s creaky tone. “Whatever you require,” she says. “Sir.”
Blindly, mechanically, she reaches for my trousers. She purses her lips like a blow-up doll and says, “Let me make you feel good, Sir. Fuck me real hard, Sir. Want me on my knees now? Take me up the ass? Want to hit me hard? Sir?”
I drop her arm like it’s riddled with disease. “Get the fuck out of my house.”
She twists her fingers together, one hand over the other, and it takes me a moment to realize she’s wrestling with her rings. There’s the Fishtown knot I gave her when we faked our engagement in front of Russo. And there’s the gold band I put on her finger at St. Columba’s.
Is liomsa tú , the second one says. You are mine.
But that doesn’t keep her from throwing both rings at my face.
I don’t give her the satisfaction of watching me duck. After hitting my cheek, the gold clatters on the floor, like a boxer’s teeth knocked out in the final round.
Samantha doesn’t look down. Instead, she moves toward the door with her head high and her back straight. She doesn’t deign to straighten her clothes, so I can still see that fucking tattoo where her top hitches over her trousers.
Her fingers settle on the doorknob.
This is it. This is the moment I can say I was wrong, that I spoke in anger. I can change everything by dropping to my knees, by begging.
But I’m her Dom.
I don’t beg.
Instead, I say, “Walk out that door, and you’re never setting foot in this house again.”
She flexes her wrist, and the knob turns.
“You’re on your own with Russo.”
She opens the door.
“You’ll never see another penny from me.”
That makes her stop. She shakes her head like I’m a drooling eejit. Or like she pities me.
“Don’t even start telling yourself that lie. It was never about the money, Braiden,” she says. “Not ever.”
And she’s gone.