10. The Lady of the House
Chapter ten
The Lady of the House
Eoghan
I had to go back to the Green Estate outside of Middlebrook, outside the capital region, north of Albany. I hated going, as my home was no longer my home. Not since that strange, waifish red-haired witch took up residence in my mother’s place.
Ever since Aoibheann Murphy entered our lives, my father started going mad. The temperate, purposeful man he had been gave way to a paranoid, dictatorial ruler who governed Green Fields Enterprises with an iron fist. In his insane, old mansion that crumbled around him, he slowly drove himself mad in the company of the witch.
But when the king summons, you go. No questions asked.
“Eoghan?” A whisper-soft voice called out from behind a half-closed door. My “stepmother” as I was forced to call her.
The witch was only a few years older than me, and thrust upon us after my mother died, probably in the hopes of creating more heirs. We were in a dangerous line of work, even if Green Fields Enterprises was turning into a legitimate business. My father needed a spare, especially after realizing that my cousin, Dairo, had left for good. He’d joined the British Army, in total betrayal of his Irish roots. It was his only flaw, in the eyes of my father.
But I knew Dairo would come back, if I called. He’d fight by my side when the time to crush the Russians and Italians came.
I looked into the door, where Aoibheann’s thick, red hair was the only thing that was visible in the darkness. She looked eerie in the blackness of her room. Her strange behavior made the men titter about how she spoke to spirits. She certainly did nothing to dissuade them of that.
At times, even my father feared her powers.
“Yes?” I asked, impatiently looking at my gold pocket watch. It was something my mother gave me. It had the name Cillian engraved on the inside - my grandfather’s name.
Grandpa Cillian had been the original artist of the family. My mother was convinced that I had his gifts, which is why she insisted I be given his name. And thus, I was christened Eoghan Cillian Green.
“Please… I… I…” Aoibheann’s green eyes were glassy, near tears.
There was nothing unusual there. The woman was always one step away from weeping. I had no idea why. Aoibheann had everything she could possibly desire - wealth, power, and so much more.
I rolled my eyes. Aoibheann had started many conversations like this. A please, and a plea, but never finished a sentence. I had no clue what she wanted, or what the fuck she was on about. She lived in her own little world.
I wouldn’t be surprised if she believed in fairies from the old country.
“What do you want, Aoibheann?” I said, harshly, finally flipping my watch closed and placing it in my pocket.
She recoiled, as if I had raised my hand to strike her.
The door slammed shut, hiding her away in that dark room. I could hear the faint humming of her voice on the other end. It was a melancholy tune that she had put nonsensical words to. It was a strange, creepy melody that made my skin prickle.
“Eoghan!” Malinda, another redhead, came flouncing up the stairs in the black sheath dress that was the uniform of all the maids.
I almost backed away from her, remembering our last encounter, and feeling the guilt welling in the pit of my stomach.
She had stopped calling me Mr. Green, and was bold enough to call me by my Christian name. I didn’t have the heart to correct her.
“Your father wants to speak to you at dinner,” she said with a smile. “It’ll be served in two hours. That leaves some time to…”
I knew what that left time for. She was rather shameless in her attempts to seduce me, wanting to recreate our past encounter.
But I was an honest man. A taken man.
“Thank you, Malinda,” I said, walking past her trying not to make eye contact as I headed straight to my room. “That’ll be all.”
I slammed the door behind me, leaning against it like it was a safety net.
I shouldn’t have stuck my pen in the company ink. Not with her.
Malinda had roots as deep in the land as I had. Roots that extended all the way back to Ireland. Her uncle was in my father’s guards. Her mother was the head housekeeper, and she was likely to take over the job after her.
She was pretty and available. I was lonely. She asked me to draw her, and I obliged her seduction, as unremarkable as it was. After the post-coital cigarette, I was just as lonely as before, and still unsatisfied.
The memory of her felt dirty now, with Kira on my mind. If I had just waited, then that blemish wouldn’t be on my soul. Another week, and I would have met my Muse, and not had the complication.
Unfortunately, we couldn’t change the past. We could only move on from it.
I looked around my room. Dark, mossy green walls were bisected by mahogany board and batten. Floor to ceiling bookshelves framed large windows that led to a balcony, facing my mum’s beloved rose garden.
Paintings covered much of the green walls. There was a portrait of my grandmother by Grandpa Cillian. The old man had a singular focus in his paintings - every heroine bore my grandmother’s face and hair. I used to think it was silly, until I met Kira, and felt the same impetus to paint her as every great woman in existence.
My grandparents had lived to a good, healthy old age, and he had the same reverence for my grandmother when she was gray and pale, as when she was young and rosy-cheeked. I admired that. So had my mum.
“You’re a lover. You get that from me,” Mum used to tell me. “You will love so deeply; it will take over every cell of your body.”
“When?” I asked, impatiently.
At the time, I thought being a husband was the greatest thing a man could be. That was how my father always referred to himself. Before he was in charge of the New York Irish, and before he was the CEO of Green Fields Enterprises, he was Isla Green’s husband.
How different those times were from now.
Those memories lingered like ghosts. I could see them, like apparitions, when I walked through the darkened halls. This old house wasn’t haunted by specters. It was haunted by happiness that it would never have again.
I walked to the adjoining room, where the remnants of my studio were strewn about. The smell of turpentine and paint tickled my nostrils. There was stagnant water in glass jars with diluted paint, holding neglected brushes. I had moved to the City years ago, so my old studio was a neglected little shrine to a better time.
I had no need to paint here anymore. My better easels and brushes were in my penthouse, closer to my Muse - the woman who made me itch to put pencil to paper.
A life-size portrait of her, holding a bouquet of multi-colored orchids, in a bed of the same flowers would look great on the wall at the foot of my bed. I’d paint her nude, with her hair over her naked form like the Venus De Milo , standing on a bed of vibrant flowers, with a silken breeze.
I was lost in the images of how I would paint Kira Kekoa when the grandfather clock in the foyer chimed, filling the whole house with its ominous sound. Breakfast, lunch, and dinner, it beckoned everyone from their rooms and into the dining room so we could go through the farce of a family meal.
My father sat at the head of the table, his high-backed wooden chair like a medieval throne. His wife, Aoibheann sat to his right. On his left was an empty seat. The one my mother used to sit in. I was on the other side of that.
At the door were my father’s guards, Tanner Brock and Blaine Flanagan.
Flanagan was the father of my old friend, Sinead, who disappeared six years ago. It was a wonder how the man had done absolutely nothing to find his eldest child. He didn’t ask us to deploy our various resources to find his daughter. He had just allowed it to happen. It made me wonder why, but I also didn’t pry.
I hated thinking about Sinead. This room reminded me of the girl who had followed me around like an annoying sister. When I thought of her, I thought of my mother. In many ways, my mother’s ghost still haunted this room, including the rose garden that could be seen from the wall-to-ceiling glass.
Malinda came, plates in hand. She served me and my father first, before returning to the kitchen for Aoibheann’s meal.
My father dug into his plate right away, as I waited. Maybe that was a small, misplaced bit of politeness, waiting until everyone was served before I ate, but it had been instilled in me by my mother. As the years wore on, and the people I loved started slipping from my grasp, these rituals became sacred.
Flanagan averted his eyes from the women. But Brock Tanner… the way he looked at Aoibheann unsettled me. He was practically licking his lips as he eyed her up. It was bizarre.
“Malinda,” I called, before she could disappear out of the butler door.
She halted in her steps, presenting me with a wide smile, before she sighed my name. “Yes, Eoghan?”
While I gave the order to Malinda, I did it as a reminder to Brock so that he knew he was being addressed.
“Next time, serve Aoibheann before me. She is the lady of the house, after all.”
I stared right at him, waiting for him to notice he had been addressed.
He caught my eye, and flinched, then looked away.
Satisfied, I finally turned my eyes to Malinda. She looked chagrined, as she glanced at my father, who chewed his food with abandon, then Aoibheann.
My stepmother looked at me with such gratitude that it made me sick. I did not want to be kind to my mother’s poor replacement - the woman shipped over by the Boston Irish before my mother was even cold.
Malinda waited, like a statue at the door, looking around.
“That’ll be all.” I dismissed her with a shake of my hand, picking up the whiskey in front of me, before placing my plate in front of my stepmother.
Malinda disappeared from the room, and Aoibheann picked up her fork.
“Thank you,” she whispered so softly that I barely heard it. It was as if she was a ventriloquist, throwing her voice for only me to hear.
“Tell me about the Italians.” My father had an old, breathy voice that was still deep, despite his growing frailty. The man’s health was beginning to decline, but he stubbornly clung to life. I couldn’t believe his habit of evening cigars hadn’t forced him to kick the bucket yet.
“We sunk their last shipments, which means that Eugenio will have to scramble to pay his debts to the bratva,” I said with the slightest sadistic glee. “The Vasilievs are growing tired of their alliance with the Durantes, as Eugenio continues to fall short of his shipments and promises.”
He was falling short because I was sinking his shipments into the ocean or lighting them on fire. But that went without saying.
“And the Russians? What’s their status?”
“The bratva heir, Anton Vasiliev, is at odds with his half siblings. Jericho has come back to protest any alliance built on a marriage with his little sister and Eugenio’s brothers.”
“On what grounds?”
“As far as my little birds have said, he’s protesting the age difference.” I brought the whiskey to my lips and took a sip. I reluctantly admired Jericho Vasiliev for standing up for his sister. “She’s in her mid-twenties, and Eugenio’s brother, Dante, is twice her age.”
“What does that matter?” My father rolled his eyes.
I didn’t miss the way Aoibheann looked askance, her hand coming up her arm, hugging herself.
Aye, my father had married a woman young enough to be his child. Of course he would not see the problem with such a gap.
“What good is the cow if she can’t birth a calf?” I heard a grumble low in his chest as he looked at Aoibheann with complete and utter derision. “Worthless women.”
Aoibheann had been barren and given him no children. No more Green heirs to secure our family’s place of power.
“As I understood, my mother was barely able to have me. Would you say she was worthless?” Why, oh why, was I sticking up for the witch? I didn’t like her. Had my resentment of my father brought me to this?
I felt the glass hit my face before I saw it. Before it even registered that something had happened.
A glass bottle came at my head, and my father’s large fist followed after. I crashed to the ground, the broken glass splintering around me as the Redbreast Whiskey splashed along the wooden floor.
“You worthless little welp!” My father beat me, blow by blow along my temple, my head crashing on the floor.
“Alastair!” Aoibheann came, trying to fling her waifish form against his fist, but he shrugged her off. She went hurtling against the table. She would have been better off staying seated.
He grabbed me by the collar, straddling me to the ground.
“Don't you ever compare Isla to the useless Durante and Vasilievs.” Punch. Punch. “Don't compare her to this witch! Never!”
My father’s madness and temper always teetered on the edge of anger, waiting for any reason to snap. I had just given him the perfect excuse.
I threw an elbow against the side of his head kicking him off. He fell backwards, crashing into his chair as I staggered to my feet, wiping the back of my hand against my lips. My hand and sleeve came away, covered in my blood.
“It would have been better had I not been, right? That’s what you mean, old man, isn’t it?”
We had been a loving family once. My mother had filled this house with other family, children to give me and Dairo a sense of normalcy and community. She had kept the cobwebs and darkness at bay with her light.
He blamed me. I knew it. We all knew it.
Isla Green was dead because of me.
“Your cousin was already born, we didn’t need you!” My father came to his feet, blood on his knuckles as he clenched a fist and waved it at me. “Dairo would be a better head of Green Fields than a soft little fucking artist like you. At least he knows how to fight a war.”
If Dairo had joined the Peace Corps, he still would have been considered better than me. There was no winning with my deranged progenitor.
“Too bad, old man,” I said, my body shaking with the need to murder the man who gave me life. “You’re stuck with me now.”
I spat blood onto the wooden floor. I picked up my white linen napkin and wiped my bleeding mouth, as my father scrambled back into his seat at the head of the table, his eyes never leaving me as I washed down the cuts in my mouth with the whiskey.
I turned away, pushing through the dining room’s double doors, opening them with such force that they crashed against the adjoining wall.
I hated this house. I hated the memories. I hated the fact that my father was a madman, who took his own misfortunes out on anyone, and anything he could.
“We have the blood oath tonight!” My father called after me. “You’re expected to be there.”
I didn’t answer. I stormed back to my room where I lived like an exile. The space that was mine, and mine alone. It was the only place that was safe in this haunted house.
The only place where the good memories could live, safely, outside of my father’s poison.