20. The Ring
Chapter twenty
The Ring
Eoghan
I waited for her call. For two days, my phone stayed silent as I endured one irritating meal after another with my father, his wife and hovering staff. All the while, ghosts lurked behind every corner.
Malinda entered, with trays in her hand. She placed one in front of my father, who started eating with no regard for anyone else. Bastard.
Then she put the other in front of me.
“Malinda.” My hand jutted out, grabbing her by the wrist before she could escape.
She looked at her wrist, where we connected, her mouth parted in surprise and delight. “Yes, Eoghan?”
Her breathy voice grated my last nerve. It wasn’t her fault. She didn’t have the assertive, confident voice of my paramour. I let her hand go as if it was infected, nodding to the plate in front of me.
“What did I say about serving Aoibheann first?” I finally said, tapping an agitated finger on the table.
“Oh,” she said, her shoulders slumped.
What did she expect? That I’d ask her back into my bed? It had been months, and I had treated her to a shoulder that was colder than an arctic winter. Still, she was infatuated. It made me a little sick if I was honest.
At least it did now that I had met Kira - the woman who would not bend for me.
It was important for me to wait for her call, no matter how much I wanted to grab my phone and pester her - what did she think of my offer? Was it enough? Would she rather take the lot?
“Take this plate, and give it to the lady of the house,” I commanded when Malinda still had not moved.
She straightened, looking around, and picked up the plate in front of me, and placed it in front of Aoibheann. My stepmother looked at me with grateful eyes, like I was her savior. It twisted my gut, as I pushed out any thoughts of her, and her place in this house. Why the fuck would this basic courtesy gain such a reaction from her?
I didn’t want to think about the reasons.
I didn’t care for the woman. Hell, I didn't care for either of the women in my presence. But I was a stickler for order and tradition.
“Do not make this mistake again, Malinda,” I warned as she turned to leave again. She didn’t turn around this time, but simply halted in her step. Without a word, she walked out.
“Is it just me, or has her skirt gotten scandalously short?” Dairo said with a light chuckle, as he took a sip of his martini.
Dairo elbowed me in the side, giving me a sly wink.
The bastard knew… of course, he’d figure it out.
“I hadn’t noticed.” I took a drink of the Redbreast 21. My father’s drink of choice.
If I drank anything else, he would have slammed a bottle against my skull and told me to man up. My beloved absinthe would have been a shame to his eyes. But Dairo? Well, he could drink a martini, and it would all be fine.
“Really, I could almost see all the way to her…” Dairo grunted, when I kicked him under the table.
He was right. I knew that he knew she was doing it for me. But the shorter the skirt, the shorter my patience. She wasn’t like Kira, with her long, elegant skirts that reached below her knees, emphasizing the rounded curves of her hips. The way her body cinched and tapered at her waist and knees, her narrow shoulders giving her the world’s most perfect form.
Ruben couldn’t have imagined a more beautiful body than hers. I was sure of it.
“The next time I return,” I said, into the awkwardly silent room as Malinda pushed back in through the butler door with the last two plates. “I’ll be bringing a woman.”
Malinda stumbled, and almost dropped the plates.
I resisted the urge to reach out and catch her. She’d just read into it too much.
My father ceased his masticating and glared at me with his dark eyes - black all the way through the Irish, like my own. I had the misfortune of being made in his exact image, and I hated it.
“What’s her name?” He leaned forward, his eyes looking at me for something. I wasn’t sure.
I was thirty seven, and I was overdue on the marriage front. He had bothered me about it for a near decade, before counting it amongst one of my many failures.
“Kira,” I said, hoping that he would confuse it for the Irish version of the name.
I didn’t want questions. Not right now. Not when she still hadn’t said yes.
If I was a patient man, I would have waited until I was sure of her answer. But I felt rushed. I needed her bound to me. I needed it more than my next breath.
My father hmmed ” in satisfaction, probably picturing some light-haired waif with blood as green as the islands we hailed from.
“It’s long overdue.” My father continued chewing. “You’re no spring chicken, and we need heirs.” My father’s eyes cut to Dairo and narrowed. “And spares.”
I bristled, knowing that if he had his way I would have been the spare, and Dairo the man built in his own image. Then again, Dairo wanted nothing from this life. At least not yet.
Dairo would come back. He’d stand by my side for the great war. The war that ended the mafia clashes and allowed us to reign supreme. But he wouldn’t stand by my father.
“Mum’s ring?” I said, by way of a question.
My eyes lifted to Aoibheann.
“The emerald?” she finally asked, her eyes turning to me.
I was immediately struck with how green her eyes were. How it contrasted strongly with her red hair. In another life, she would have been pretty. But not in this one - the one where she was a pale comparison to the woman who came before her.
“She should have it.” Her hands came together in front of her, as though she was saying a prayer. “It will bring you both good fortune.”
As the words passed her lips, the windows rattled as the wind howled through the trees. My breath caught in my throat, as Aoibheann lifted her face to the heavens, her eyes closed, as if the air was speaking to her, placing voices in her head.
Aoibheann was a strange, frightening woman.
My father grumbled “ Witch .”
I would echo the sentiment if it wasn’t insane.
She ignored my father, much in the same way he largely ignored her. The way the rest of us ignored the strange specter of a woman who walked around this house.
“I’ll bring it to you.” Her voice was breathy and melodic.
She was as Irish as me and my father, from a small fishing town called Port Stewart.
The sister of the head of the Boston Irish, she usurped my mother’s throne with the grace of a peasant girl trying to fill the shoes of Catherine de Medici.
My mum was barely even cold in her grave before she was flung into our house.
“Thank you,'' I gritted out.
This woman made my guts roil in disgust and irritation.
She had never done anything to me. She had never been cruel or mean. It was just that her existence was everything I deplored. She was a useless, whisper-soft person that could be blown away in a light breeze. Weak. I hated seeing it.
“Will you have a wedding soon?” By Christ, Aoibheann was speaking more now than she had in the decades I had known her. I preferred her when she was silent.
Dairo raised a brow at me. He knew as well as I did that I was playing with fire, introducing a woman to the conversation that they did not know.
Kira didn’t have an Irish bone in her body as far as I knew. They’d expect me to bring her home and beg for permission to propose to her with the ring. Or to propose to her, and then seek approval before marriage.
I intended for my mother’s ring to be on her finger long before she ever stepped foot on this property.
“What about you, Dairo?” my father said, staring at his namesake.
“No woman for me,” Dairo said, with a small chuckle.
“Peculiar… a young, good-looking man like you. You should have at least one, if not many, women, by now,” my father said in that heavy speech.
Dairo pulled at his tie and cleared his throat. “I’m no priest, but I haven’t found the woman to hold my attention.”
“Hmm,” my father grumbled. “Just make sure that they can give you children. A life without children is…”
He didn’t say anything past that. He just let it linger in the air and fade away, in front of the son he preferred not to have, the nephew who wanted nothing that he could offer.
A peculiar look passed in front of Aoibheann’s expression - as if her barrenness gave her joy.
My witchy stepmother has a secret…
“Morelli has been asking questions about our enterprise,” my father said, his fork scraping over his porcelain plate. It sounded like nails on a chalkboard. “When you and Dairo return to the city, I want him handled.”
“He’s the consigliere to Eugenio Durante,” I said, dropping my fork onto my plate and staring at my father in disbelief. “That would be a declaration of war.”
“When have we not been at war with Eugenio Durante?” His nostrils flared, and I could see the white hairs moving with his exasperated breath. “Are you going soft, boyo?”
I clenched my teeth. I knew those words. “Are you going soft?” was code for “Do I need to toughen you up?” On its own, those words meant nothing. But in the mind of my father, who was insane, it was a threat.
My father’s wrinkled, thin lips snarled.
“What type of questions has he been asking?” I said, after taking a breath.
“He’s asking about the legality of your Gallery with the District Attorney,” my father said, chewing through his food. We had a spy in the DA, so his source came as no surprise. “It seems he has designs on stopping our source of funding.”
Rage simmered in my body.
“How dare they.” My fists clenched. “They know that if they come after the gallery, I will come after their clubs.”
They were not-so-subtly participating in human trafficking and prostitution. It was far more criminal than anything that could be found at Gallery Four.
Suspicion leaked into my veins - was Cosima Durante trying to keep my Muse away from me?
The thought twisted in my stomach, as a new hatred for the woman formed where I had nursed nothing but the coolest indifference.
“Well, boy- ” My father’s voice snapped me out of mentally carving out Cosima Durante’s tombstone, as he looked at me from behind his whisky glass. “It seems that they’re coming after us now. We must preempt them.”
Despite the threat of the Italians attacking a money source, going after Giovani Morelli was still an act of pure madness. A few skirmishes did not make a war, but this act would be a declaration of one.
Who knew how Eugenio Durante would react - he might bring our conflicts to the light. Or worse… to the courthouse.
“You will help him,” my father growled, his graying eyes turning towards Dairo.
I turned my head, staring at my cousin as he gave a somber nod. His blue eyes turned to me fast, with hesitance and fear, communicating without words that he understood everything that went through my mind in that moment.
I scoffed, as a poisonous thought entered my mind. A poisonous, treasonous thought that I wanted to banish as quickly as it appeared in my mind.
It would be the greatest favor my father could do me, and the rest of Green Fields Enterprises.