Chapter 27
27
SAMANTHA
I t’s after ten by the time I get back to Thornfield. The second Mousetrap podcast has spawned more protesters and signs that weren’t there this morning: No One Should Die Like a Dog in a Ditch. Drugs Kill. No More Victims. John 3:16.
The knot of paparazzi sends out tentacles the moment my Mercedes comes into sight. Cameras flash, and the two most persistent reporters stake out positions directly in front of the gate.
This is the first time I’ve needed to negotiate the bloodsuckers on my own. Braiden and Liam have always made it seem simple, keeping a slow, steady pace to the property line, as if they’re easing past rabid dogs in the middle of the road.
It’s harder than it looks. Too fast, and I chance clipping one of the crazies with my front bumper. Too slow, and they can swarm my windows, blinding me with their cameras.
I finally make it to the gatehouse without causing a disaster. An extra man stands inside the shelter, his hands locked on a machine gun. Looking toward the house, I realize three more guards wait just inside the fence, similarly armed. Thornfield looks like it’s under military siege.
Swallowing hard, I place my sweating palm on the electronic reader. I stare directly into the laser that scans my retinas. I focus hard so I don’t blink.
A century goes by before the gate starts to roll back. The extra guards scowl at the paparazzi and the protesters. They don’t shift their weapons as I drive past, not even a millimeter.
Somehow, I expect Liam to be waiting at the garage, but he’s nowhere in sight as I back the Mercedes into its bay. I start to return my keys to their hook on the wall, but then I hesitate. This morning, I taught Braiden how easy it was for me to take my car. Given my refusal to respond to his voicemails and texts, I’m certain I’ll have a much harder time leaving in the future.
I pocket the keys and slip out of the garage.
The guards at the gate must have let Braiden know I’m home. I imagine him waiting for me in the dining room or—worse—in the bedroom we once shared.
I can’t confront him tonight. I’m stiff from sitting in the car for so many hours. My arms are tired from gripping the wheel. The roof of my mouth hums a little, now that I’m finally free of the moving car’s vibrations.
Tomorrow is soon enough to face Braiden Kelly.
Making my way around the corner of the house, I take the path to the back, to the pool, to my own private apartment. I miss the lock on my first try. I’m even more tired than I thought. It turns easily, though, on my second attempt.
I kick off my shoes the instant I step over the threshold. Crossing to the sink, I fill a glass of water from the tap and drink it down without stopping. I haven’t eaten a real meal all day—just a few spoonfuls of yogurt before breakfast became a battle—but the thought of food leaves me nauseated. I hang my head and dig my fingertips into the nape of my neck, trying to massage away my miserable day .
“House. Rules.”
I catch a scream at the back of my throat, already recognizing Braiden’s voice before I turn toward the bed. He’s sitting on the edge of the high mattress, dressed all in black—jacket, shirt, trousers, even his necktie.
“Jesus,” I say. “You scared the crap out of me.”
“That was my intention.” His voice is flat, as if he’s reading lines from a cue card. He repeats his first two words: “House. Rules.”
I stifle a groan. I’ve broken every one of his fucking house rules today. I didn’t eat all my breakfast. I worked long past six—if confronting the woman who threatened my life can be called work. I’m still dressed in my charcoal suit, no hint of the flowery skirt I’m required to wear at the end of every day. And I am absolutely, positively wearing panties.
“Not tonight, Braiden,” I say. “I’m exhausted.”
“Do I look like I give a fuck how tired you are?”
“Fine,” I snap. “Tie me up. Smack me around. Want to beat me with your belt? Go ahead. Just get it over with. I don’t need my collar.”
There once was a whore, wore a collar…
He rises from the bed like a cobra striking. One hand clamps my left wrist. The other pinches the nape of my neck. Before I know what’s happened, he has me bent over the edge of the bed.
I know how to defend myself; I’ve taken classes and worked one-on-one with trainers. I understand how to turn toward a captor, how to shift my body so I can use his weight against him. I’m well versed in going for eyes, for the soft flesh beneath a nose. I can jam the heel of my hand into a man’s Adam’s apple or drop him with a sharp blow to the crotch.
But Braiden’s too big for any of that. He’s too big and he’s too heavy and he’s too furious for me to shift him even one inch. He’s crushing me, all his weight on the small of my back. With my cheek pressed into the mattress, I can barely draw a breath, much less fight for freedom.
“Open your eyes, Samantha.”
I didn’t realize I’d closed them.
He squeezes his fingers around the base of my skull. “Open your goddamn eyes.”
I do. And for a moment, I can’t figure out what I’m staring at. The room is too dark. My heart is racing too fast. I’m fighting too hard to draw a full breath against the weight of the man on top of me.
But I blink. And I look again. And I realize I’m staring down the barrel of a pistol.
It’s on top of the comforter, nestled amid tulips and honeysuckle. Braiden can reach it easily from his position on my spine. He could plant the muzzle at the base of my skull and pull the trigger. The bedclothes would catch most of the mess.
I want to close my eyes again, but I won’t give him the satisfaction.
I was raised in the lap of the Mafia, side by side with my cousin Eliza. Antonio Russo raped her with his gun, then tore her apart with a single bullet just because he could. Braiden saved me from that madman’s grasp; bringing me to Thornfield and telling the world I was his bride.
But in the end, violent men use violent means. I pushed Braiden over the edge at breakfast this morning, and now he’s proving who he really is.
I’ll never let him see my fear. “So this is my punishment for driving around in my car? At least Eliza got to fuck her boyfriend before Russo shot her.”
His fingers tighten around my neck. He’s leaving bruises my collar would cover, if I ever agreed to wear his fucking emerald again. “This is what you get for breaking the rules.”
“You never said I couldn’t take my car.”
“I gave you a goddamn driver.”
“To go to the freeport. I didn’t drive to Dover. ”
“No. You drove to Boston. To Kieran Ingram. To my fucking general.”
“You tracked me?” My voice cracks with indignation.
“I wish I had. Then I could have sent a man to intercept you.”
“News flash, Braiden. It’s a free world. I’m allowed to drive my own car. I can go where I want. Talk to who I want. Heading up the Fishtown Boys doesn’t give you the right to change that.”
“Heading up the Fishtown Boys—” His voice drips with venom as he repeats my words. “Gives me the need to kill you.”
Need . Not right .
He’s already made up his mind. I’ve been tried, convicted, and sentenced, without a chance to say a single word in my own defense. That’s why he’s brought a gun to our game.
Braiden has done things to my body before, things I never believed I’d let a man do. Things I never imagined wanting. He’s left me bruised, left me battered, left me broken and spent.
But always, always , that’s been with my consent. Say red and I’ll stop . That’s been our rule.
“Let me go,” I whisper.
“I can’t do that.”
“Braiden, you’re scaring me.”
“If only you’d been scared before… Just a little. Just enough to follow my rules.”
“I followed your goddamn rules!” But getting angry won’t help here. No amount of shouting will make me big enough, strong enough to escape. So I try the opposite. I make myself very, very small. “I don’t understand,” I whisper.
“You went to Boston, right?”
“Yes.” My answer is barely audible.
“You spoke to Ingram, right?”
“Yes.” My answer is so soft, I wonder if he can hear it.
“You threatened him with the fucking FBI, right?”
I threatened Fiona . Not Ingram. His daughter. But I know I have to say yes. My mouth shapes the word, but I can’t say it out loud.
“He’s the general of the Grand Irish Union, Samantha. In charge of us all. He got there by facing down every threat that’s ever stood in his way, every challenge to his authority. What did you think would happen? What did you think Kieran Ingram would do when you said you’d call the feds on him?”
“That’s not what I said.”
“So Kieran Ingram’s a liar?” Braiden’s voice shreds like silk over sandpaper.
“I was talking about Fiona. Not about her father.”
But Braiden doesn’t hear me. He’s still talking. “Ingram’s heard all the stories. He knows all the lies, about all you’ve done for Russo. All the Fishtown secrets you’ve given away. And today you gave him the one excuse he needed. You made a threat he can’t ignore.”
I want to protest. I want to explain. But Braiden doesn’t give me a chance.
“He could have sent one of his own men to do it. He could have called someone over from Dublin. But it’s not enough for him to see you dead. He wants me to do the killing. He wants me to prove I’m loyal.”
“ Shoot her now, ” I whisper. “ Before she can holler .”
“What the fuck?”
“Fiona wrote it. She left a note on my desk before she cleared out of here yesterday.”
When Braiden finally speaks, his words feel like an ancient earthquake. “What note?”
I barely have the range of motion to nod toward my briefcase, where I dropped it by the door. “I found it this morning.”
Finally, he releases my neck, shifting his hand to grip his gun. He holds the weapon far out of my reach as he eases his body off mine, and then he slips the pistol into his belt, at the small of his back.
“Let me see,” he commands .
I grimace as I stand. I don’t know if I’m unsteady because of his weight, or because of my adrenaline, or because I haven’t eaten all day. Nevertheless, I manage to cross the room, and I retrieve the lipstick-marked note.
He scans the lines, all five of them, his eyes flicking from the end of one phrase to the beginning of the next. His attention lingers on the scarlet stain for so long I want to scream.
When he finally speaks, his voice is washed clean of every atom of emotion. “You didn’t bring this to me?”
“You weren’t here.” Asshole . I think it, but that’s another thing I don’t say out loud.
A muscle twitches in his jaw. “So you found this in your office. And instead of waiting for me, instead of mentioning it to Liam, instead of telling Fairfax for God’s sake, you hopped in your car and drove all the way up to Boston. To Kieran Fucking Ingram.”
“You. Weren’t. Here,” I repeat, packing each word with frustration.
“Did you think I’d driven off forever?”
“I didn’t know where you went! For all I knew, you changed your mind about Fiona. You could have been off to Boston yourself, making her the third Mrs. Kelly. Wait. She wouldn’t have been third. Because I wasn’t second.”
“Don’t start on that?—”
“Start on what? The fact that you lied at the altar? That you made me a laughingstock in front of your brother? In front of every one of your men? You set me up for Fiona.”
“I protected you! Father Brennan?—”
A wordless cry of frustration rips my throat. “No! Father Brennan wasn’t for me. Father Brennan was for you . So you could keep Birte and me both. So you could have a virgin in your attic and a whore in your bed.”
“I never treated you like a whore.”
“You bought me clothes. Gave me an office. Set your goddamn house rules so you could fuck me anytime you chose. ”
“I never laid a finger on you that you didn’t beg for.”
“Tell yourself whatever lies you need so you can sleep at night.”
“You could have stopped me with a single word.”
Red . I want to scream it now. I want to make him stop. I want to make him leave. I want him out of my life forever.
But I don’t need my safeword. I have another weapon. One he gave me a month ago, when I moved back to Thornfield after the last time we fought.
I have words that will silence him forever.
And then we can both get on with our lives. We can forget the worst mistake we ever made together—thinking we could love each other like normal human beings. Him—a mob boss whose daily life is so drenched in violence that he brought a gun to my bed. Me—a woman who killed three innocent people and lied for over a decade.
Enough. It’s time to end this farce.
I feel like I’m chambering a bullet as I ask, “Want to know the truth? Want the real reason I didn’t wait to give you the note?”
He glares.
I know my next words. It’s like they’re the truth, like they’re truly what I thought when I saw Fiona’s note this morning. I know exactly how deep they’ll cut. I cock the hammer, making sure to enunciate every word. “I knew you couldn’t help me. You can’t keep me safe.”
“I killed?—”
“Right.” I fake a yawn. “You killed a man for me. At the freeport. You’ve said that once or twice.”
I can still stop. I can still keep from shattering everything we have.
But if I back off now, we’ll fight again tomorrow, or the next day, or the day after that. We’ll be trapped on this same precipice forever—doomed mobster and lawyer, broken man and woman, ruined Dom and sub .
I need this pain to end. I don’t want to ever hurt like this again. So I curl my finger around the trigger of my words and I say, “That was a month ago. And we still don’t know who sent that man, because you shoved a gun in his mouth.”
“Are you honestly saying you’d prefer?—”
“I’d prefer being with a man who has some shred of impulse control. Someone who doesn’t shoot first and ask questions later. Someone who doesn’t storm away from breakfast like a petulant child.”
This is it. This is where I destroy him. Destroy us. This is where I say the words I can never take back.
I take a deep breath, and I fire.
“You think you’re a grown man, but you’re still the same six-year-old coward who hid first and counted bodies later. So, yes. Yes, I went to Boston. Yes, I tried to reach Fiona. Yes, I tried to protect myself. Because I couldn’t count on you to do a goddamn thing.”