31. Your Hand
Chapter thirty-one
Your Hand
Kira
I had to spend dinner with the madman.
This was why Blink didn’t believe I was cut out for deep cover. I wasn’t like him. He could be friendly with anyone, even if they were guilty of the vilest things. I’d think he was a psychopath, but in truth he was just very gifted in his line of work.
Despite what people believe, not every spy goes undercover like this. Most of us live ordinary lives, and passively gather intelligence through observation. Others, like me, had lives constructed to support those operations. I was never meant to sit across from a man I loathed.
Men like Alastair Green, and their loan sharks, were the reason my father died. The reason why I had suffered under their boot, paying interest rates up to fifty percent - though the interest was really just a suggestion. They could have charged one hundred percent, and I would have paid it because I was fighting for my father’s life.
When the money didn’t save my father, he gave up because of what paying those loans had done to me. I snapped. My life was in shatters and I was forever changed.
It’s painful what a human can do when they have been stripped of their pride.
Eoghan’s saving grace was that he had put a stop to most of those activities among the Irish. No loan sharks, no strip clubs. They appeared to be getting out of the drug trade and legitimately moving into construction and mercantilism. The art gallery did for the Greens what strip clubs did for the Durantes, but with far less human misery.
Eoghan hadn’t stopped the violence though. Protection money was still paid and owed, and the skirmishes between the Durantes, Vasilievs and Greens still made law enforcement shudder in their violence.
That must be why two burly men stood at the dining room door, their blazers obviously concealing pistols on their torso. Their hands were crossed in front of them, their eyes scanning up and down the room. In particular, one of them looked at Aoibheann, my mother-in-law, in a way that unsettled me.
I don’t know how to describe it, other than seeing that man’s face made me instinctively want to cover my wine glass.
The resentment I held for Eoghan’s father reached a new high, when I watched him chewing his food with disregard, as other people at the table waited to be served.
The maid, or housekeeper, or whoever she was - kept giving me the evil eye. Her red hair went to her shoulders. She was conventionally pretty, slim, and her short black dress advertised far more than her ability to clean house.
The way she leaned over Eoghan as she delivered his plate made me want to punch her in the throat. The only reason that I didn’t was because Eoghan didn’t notice her. As soon as he had pushed the seat in behind me, and then sat down, he’d pulled my chair towards him so that our thighs were pressed together. Then, he kept one hand firmly against my thigh, hiking up my skirt underneath the table until his fingers could trace my skin.
“And what is it that you do, Kira?” His father stared me down.
I bristled at the question because it wasn’t really a question. It was an accusation. No matter what I did, he’d be disappointed because I didn’t match the image he had in his head for who his son should be with.
“I’m an art curator,” I said, proudly. No one could hate an art curator, certainly? It was a job that was acceptable in every rung of society!
“Art? Art!”
Except to Mr. Alastair Green, apparently. He made the word sound filthy, as if I had admitted to being a sex worker.
“You married a bitch from our gallery?” he hollered before he started laughing.
His laughter had such a cruel edge that it made me sit up straighter.
“If you wanted to bed the help, you should have stayed with Malinda.” With a mean flick of his thumb, he gestured to the maid, and my eyes widened just a fraction.
Of course, Eoghan had slept with her. It was written all over her body. But that didn’t matter. Not yet, at least. He should have told me though, and the fact he hadn’t nagged at something on the back of my neck.
The girl had the good sense to look embarrassed, even though her desire for my husband was evident in her longing gaze.
“I should have broken your hand as soon as you took up that godforsaken painting hobby!” His fist slammed on the table and all the plates jumped, hovering in the air for what seemed like an eternity before they fell back down with a loud clatter. “It’s made you fucking soft.”
There are certain rules that we must obey as spies.
It’s not like the movies. We don’t run around getting into fights with bad guys in suits. We don’t make spectacles of ourselves at craps tables in Monaco or jet set like the royal family. We made ourselves invisible by being ordinary.
The one rule we had was that we did not stick out. No extraordinary feats of strength or displays of our language skills. Nothing that ever showed that we were anything but plain, boring people.
But when the world slowed down to a crawl, and Alastair Green gripped his steak knife in his hands, my body did not follow my training.
Alastair raised the knife up, as he growled, “I’ll fix that mistake now!”
I knew what his target was. It was Eoghan’s palm, which rested casually on the linen tablecloth.
The knife arced over, as his father came to his full height, his hand up.
Aoibheann’s eyes widened, as she covered her mouth to contain a scream. My hand darted up, grabbing Eoghan’s wrist, before I pulled it off the table and onto his lap. The knife narrowly missed before it embedded through the linen.
Dairo came to his feet, pushing the old man away. The maid, whats-her-name, screamed in the corner, as Eoghan stared at where his hand had been, his palm grasping at mine like it was a lifeline.
“Are you bloody mad?” Dairo yelled at his uncle, as Aoibheann stood and rushed to my side.
She clasped my hand, concern etched in her green eyes as her wispy, soft voice asked, “Are you alright?”
She was acting like I was the one that had almost been stabbed.
All the while, Eoghan didn’t move. I was too stunned to speak.
I suspected that things were bad. But I never suspected they could be like this. His own father tried to maim him.
My regard for my husband was dented by the revelation that he had fucked the maid and allowed me to walk in front of her as his wife. He should have warned me. I should have known that information, and not been the only one in the room who wasn't in on that little bit of Eoghan’s love life.
But obviously there was more going on in this haunted home.
“Snap out of it!” Dairo said, shaking Eoghan roughly by the shoulder. “Get your wife out of here.”
Eoghan was reanimated by his cousin. He stood, scraping his chair along the ground.
Without a word, Eoghan pulled me from the seat and picked me up bridal style. Aoibheann reached out toward me, her slender arms like a ribbon flying in the hurricane as Eoghan marched us up the stairs, down the long, dark corridor, and back to his room.
He slammed the door closed, before depositing me gently on the bed.
He got up, and walked back to the door, making sure it was locked, before he planted his forehead against the wood, letting out a howl of anger as he slammed his fist on the door again and again. It was a wonder the door didn’t splinter under his attack.
I didn’t know what to say, so I stayed silent. The two of us stayed in the darkened room, breathing quietly as early evening turned into black night.
I didn’t understand what I had just witnessed. All I knew was that I didn’t like it at every possible level - as a wife, as a spy, and as a woman who wanted nothing more than to bring families like this down.