41. Husband
Chapter forty-one
Husband
Kira
“ E oghan,” Aoibheann said, coming over, and taking my hand in hers. “It’s time that we women went off to do our part.”
She looked at me with great meaning, before giving Eoghan a small, polite smile.
“Thank you, Aoibheann,” Eoghan said. I wasn’t sure what he was thanking her for, but whatever it was, it was profound. “Just give me one moment.”
His eyes bored into me, searching my face for something. I wasn’t sure what. I kept my face neutral, as if we hadn’t fought. As if he hadn’t revealed himself to be the devil I was trying to stop.
He grabbed my hand- the one with the ring - and had my palm up. He took the blade from his belt, and placed it in my hand.
“Keep this with you, always,” he said, his voice heavy with implication. “If anyone doubts our union for any reason, you show them this. They’ll know who it’s from. Do you understand?”
“No,” I shook my head, my knees feeling weak. “I don’t understand.”
He frowned, his brows knotting together.
“Love, please trust me. This blade will be your protection. Proof that you are mine and that I will burn the world for you. If anyone of this life, Italian, Russian, or fucking Martian doubts my dedication to you, then show them this. Do you understand?”
I nodded, though I still didn’t understand. He unhooked the scabbard from his belt, undoing the button with a quiet snap, before he sheathed the blade, and pushed it into my hand.
Aoibheann had told me to keep my wits about me. I had to act normal. I had to…
I held the blade to my belly. I knew that it wasn’t real, but I swear, I felt the heartbeat within. His heart fluttered inside me, as if he wanted to reach out for the knife that he had bestowed.
Maybe, if I had been given more time, I would have done what Blink had wanted. I would have reported on Eoghan, and tried to bring the entire organization down from the inside. I would have influenced him, and managed him, and become the deep cover agent that I was never meant to be.
But that was until the lines showed up on the test.
Eoghan brought me into his arms, wrapping them around my shoulders. I stiffened, already feeling a heartbeat in my belly that didn’t belong to me.
I knew it wasn't possible. I knew I was delusional. But there was life inside me. I knew it. The test confirmed it. The test that we couldn’t risk throwing away into a waste basket, just in case they found it. A test we had to dispose of, buried in Aoibeann’s herb garden until she could get it out of the house by some other means.
He placed a hand on my cheek, forcing me to look into those deep black eyes that felt like they were trying to break through my walls, and into my mind. His touch was electric, sending goosebumps down my skin. My entire body, including the one I was creating, reacted to him, as if every cell wanted to reach out and reciprocate his touch.
My body was a fool.
“Do you remember your safe word, love?” he asked, quietly. So quietly that I almost couldn’t hear.
Why the hell was he bringing this up now?
I shuddered at the memory of what he could do to my body.
“It’s not just for that, my love,” he whispered, placing his lips tenderly on my forehead. “If I do something… if this life is too much… say the word, and I will stop it. I’ll pause, and fix it. You know that, right?”
I thought that two days ago. But not anymore.
I nodded my head, giving him a smile. “Of course.”
“I love you,” he said, placing a kiss on the tip of my nose. The words enveloped me in a warmth that I resented. How dare he make me feel good when I hated him so much? As if to make his point he said it again, but made it even more painful. “I love you, Wife.”
I smiled through the sting of hot tears.
He looked at me expectantly, and I knew I’d have to give him a response. I knew I'd have to say it back, but the words caught in my throat, unwilling to admit out loud what I knew I felt. I just couldn’t give it to him, because if I said it, then I would feel it… and it would make this whole thing so much harder.
Why did this have to hurt so much?
“I love you too, Eoghan,” I said, foregoing his title of husband because I knew that if I said it, I would break. I would give in and stay and try to figure something out.
Because no matter what I did, I loved him. His genius, his unwavering devotion, and his constant attention.
He looked at me with those beautiful, black eyes that saw the same beauty in me.
I yearned for that. I yearned to be loved, and treated with the dedicated affection that he constantly had, even when he was in a rage.
I turned away from him, glancing at Aoibheann. She looked at me with pained eyes. She knew. She understood me too.
I took tentative steps away from Eoghan, practically falling, because my knees felt so weak. I loved him so much that my heart ached with what I had to do.
“I’m sorry, child,” Aoibheann whispered to me. “I know you care for him. He’s a good boy, but…”
Then her eyes darted to her own husband. The son was a copy of his father, and her meaning was clear. Given enough time, he would become Alastair Green. He was created in his image, and there would be no cure.
As if to punctuate her point, she said, “I hear that my own husband was a good man too, once…”
She reached out a hand to me, and I took it. She didn’t need to remind me.
I had made my choice.
The only choice I could make, given the circumstances. Now that there was more than just me to consider.
“Wife!” Eoghan called out, and I turned around to look at him, that smile again on my lips. “Don’t be gone too long, now. Or I’ll have to come find you.”
My smile faltered. His words were meant in love, but I heard the threat. I felt it right down to my core.
I was afraid of my own husband.
“Of course, love,” I said, giving him the slightest of curtsies.
I don’t know why I curtsied. I don’t know what the fuck I was thinking. I just felt the grip of panic snaking around my throat and I couldn’t breathe. I couldn’t breathe, but I had to. I needed to get air. I needed to…
“Come, child,” Aoibheann said, leading me through the maze of common rooms where people loitered with tiny plates, talking about the dearly departed, and her unfortunate daughters.
She led me down a winding hallway, past other rooms where people sat and talked, drinks in hand. I could use a drink right now, but I knew I couldn’t.
We made the rounds, giving condolences, and offering shoulders to cry on. We listened to people in their grief for what felt like hours.
“This is my daughter-in-law,” Aoibheann kept saying. “We’re here to represent the women of the family…”
I kept following her lead, just like she told me to. I must have shaken a hundred hands, and given dozens of hugs. And each one of them looked at my ring in shock. I guess Isla Green’s ring had been a bit of a legend, and they were surprised that it was ever passed down.
Dazed, I followed Aoibheann wherever she wanted me to go.
We turned this way and that, the passing crowd disappearing, into a mudroom towards the back, saddled among lines of coats and shoes.
A woman waited there, her short blonde hair tucked behind her ear.
“What the fuck is this?” She hissed out like a snake when she saw me. “Who the fuck… Eoghan’s wife? Aoibhean!”
She was livid, her fists clenched.
I recognized her. Sinead Flanagan. The woman who my husband lamented as a lost sister. The woman he didn’t expect here.
When I saw her, my heart clenched with jealousy at Eoghan’s attention. Was there more to it than just a childhood together? Were they close? Did she know things about him that I didn’t?
Of course she does! She knew him before all of this… She knew what he was before this life carved itself into his psyche.
“You must take her,” Aoibheann said, her fingers clenched around mine. “She cannot stay here.”
“Have you seen my car? I barely have room to sneak out one person, and you expect me to get two out? I drive a fucking coupe!” Her whisper-shout coiled itself around me as I started putting the pieces together. Aoibheann had found her way out. She was going away… but now…
“You will just take her,” Aoibheann said, pulling me forward, and wrapping an arm around my waist. She put her free hand on my belly, and looked meaningfully down, communicating without words what my predicament was.
Sinead’s eyes went down, then up. She looked at Aoibheann, then me. Her eyes softened with pity.
“Fuck,” she said under her breath. “Do you have a plan? Do you have people you can run to?”
She looked around, coming close until the three of us were practically forehead-to-forehead, co-conspirators, quietly colluding in darkened halls.
It struck me that Aoibheann and this girl knew more about espionage than I did - the trained secret agent. They weren’t forged with six months of training in a government facility outside of Arlington, Virginia. No, they were sharpened by a lifetime in a world where secrets kept them alive.
“Do you have money that Eoghan can’t track?” She looked over my shoulder, as if to check that the man she mentioned didn’t materialize out of thin air. “Do you have a place to stay? I mean… Aoibheann, we had a plan for you… but…”
She looked at me with a sense of helplessness that I felt. I hated to be the person pitied.
“I have money he can’t track.” All agents did. The cool million he had given me before our marriage was hiding and untraceable.
My heart squeezed, remembering his generosity before marriage. This gift, given free and clear, was now going to be used to betray him.
It took everything in me to remember what I had heard - how he tortured Giovanni Morelli without remorse. How I had seen Aoibheann’s scars, and…
“Oh my God, you were going to escape,” I gasped out. I was slow to understand things, and I wanted to blame it on the pregnancy and stress, but maybe I was just selfish. “That’s why you had this plan. You needed to get away from Alastair. I… I can’t take your spot…”
“You can and you will.” Aoibheann’s whisper-soft voice was suddenly full of authority. She placed a maternal hand on my cheek, forcing my eyes to meet hers. “You will go because the child in your belly does not deserve to grow up in this cursed place.”
The tears I had been holding back fell under her concern.
“Don’t worry about me,” she smiled. “I’ll find another way. But you? You must go now , before they harm you.”
I hadn’t known my mother well. What I did know, I didn’t love. So looking into the eyes of a mothering woman now broke the dam. I think I would have liked her, under different circumstances. Aoibheann would have been the best kind of mother-in-law.
“Aoibheann…” I whispered her name the way a Christian might say the name of the Madonna.
“Go. Go now,” she said, pushing me towards Sinead.
“Come on.” The brash woman said, grabbing me by the wrist. “We have to go before they notice…”
“I’ll go back and cover for you,” Aoibheann said, pecking me on the cheek. “What will you name the child?”
The question halted me in my steps. I hadn’t thought about it.
“I… I…” But I already knew. “Cillian, if it’s a boy. I don’t know for a girl.”
Aoibheann smiled, whispered a “thank you” before she disappeared. Her black skirts rustled in her wake as she went back to the gathering.
Sinead shook her head. “Hope you’re not claustrophobic.”