16. E.C.G.
Chapter sixteen
E.C.G.
Kira
M y name is Anna Jones. I am a single mother.
I am not a secret agent on the run from my husband, who gave me the most perfect son in the world.
I am Anna Jones. And I am a single mother. My son’s name is Cillian.
Cillian.
“Cillian!” I sat up, screaming his name.
I looked under the sheets, tossing them off, trying to find the weight of a toddler in its puffiness. He wasn’t there. Had he fallen off the bed and hurt himself?
I looked under the bed, then around it, between the bed and the wall, then in every drawer as if he was a set of lost keys.
Then I heard a low hum from the living room. A male voice. A low, sweet melody of a familiar Irish tune that made me shiver.
Then the nightmare of my son being missing, of being taken, wracked through my body. Was there an Irishman in my house? Was one of Eoghan’s men here to drag us back by the hair, kicking and screaming? Was it Eoghan himself?
In my panic, I went to my purse, grabbing the handleless blade I kept secreted in the inner pocket.
What would I do with it? What would I do if I found the man who took my boy? I don’t know. But I would fight, because that was what mothers did for their babies.
I ran out to find the half-lit open floor living space where a man sat on the couch, scrolling through his phone with my son sprawled on his lap.
That man… the one who had come by the kiosk. Come by the park.
What was he doing here?
Was he with one of them? The Mafia? The Irish?
I was torn between running for the gun taped under a drawer of the pantry, or running for my son.
“You’re awake!” He looked down at my son on his lap, his hand idly caressing his golden curls.
“Who are you?” I asked, quietly, still unsure how to play this. How was I going to get my kid back?
“I’m Aaron Jackson.” His smile was confused.
His eyes searched my face, observant and acute.
This space was even smaller than what I owned in New York City. I had to keep up appearances. I had to live in a house that was secure, but cheap enough to be afforded by some local artist that sold paintings under a covered bridge. Even a bridge that was a tourist attraction like that one.
As nice as that ancient wooden thing was, it didn’t attract the same type of clients as the Rialto Bridge.
“You’re scared I’m here to harm you,” he said, tilting his head and running a hand through his brown hair. “I guess you weren’t really conscious when Magda was here with me.”
He pointed to the little changing table at the corner of the room.
“She gave me instructions on how to take care of the little one until you were up. She says she’ll be here at the crack of dawn to make sure everything is fine. She threatened to cut my balls off if I harmed either of you.”
“What kind of man goes into a woman’s apartment just to…” I didn't know what to say. “To babysit?”
Saying it out loud made me wonder exactly how mad I was supposed to be.
“I didn’t know where to put the dirty diapers. I tried to find a trash can, but then there were no diapers in it, so I assumed you had something to put it in. So I just wrapped it in a plastic bag.”
I looked. And indeed there was a bundled thing in a plastic bag, twisted at the top and tied off. Squinting, I saw there were two of them climbing together.
Judging by the clock on the stove it was 2 AM, which meant that he would have been here for almost twelve hours.
“He fell asleep on you, but then he came out to see me, and he fell asleep here. I figured it was best to let you get some rest.” He smiled then, as if he was trying to comfort me. “You should get some more rest. You still look a little rough.”
“Can I have my son, please?” I said, stepping toward them.
He put his hands up in a salute, with a lopsided grin tilting his close-cropped beard up one side.
“You still don’t trust me.”
“I don't trust anyone with my son.”
“You trust Magda.”
“That’s not the same.” I took another step toward them.
“Magda trusted me.”
Another step. Then another.
“She trusts everyone.” That was probably Magda’s fatal flaw. Small town living had made her too good at trusting everyone. She had no instinct for danger, because none had ever been at her door.
But this man reeked of it. Of hidden violence under a sweet facade. And somewhere deep down, I liked it. It intrigued me. But not when it came to my son.
“That’s true,” he agreed, lifting his hands even higher. “You can come get him, if you want.”
I was standing right in front of him.
“Monster!” My son called out in his sleep, flipping over, until he turned on his other side, grabbing on to Aaron’s arm in his.
Aaron smiled, looking down at my son. I liked the look on his face. There was nothing cruel or strange… just tender. He liked having a child with him.
“He seems to think I’m a monster,” he chuckled quietly.
“He likes monsters.”
“He likes to be scared?”
“No,” I laughed, a little, as I took in the domestic scene before me.
I had never had help. Not really. And just the illusion of support made me feel… light.
What would it be like to give him a father? To have a man take on part of the burden of protecting this precious thing? To not feel the exhausting worry of keeping this perfection alive? Would it lessen the weight I always felt?
“He always thinks the monsters are the heroes,” I said with a shrug. “They’re the ones guarding the maidens in the castles, I guess. He thinks the prince is there to steal away the princess.”
Aaron snorted, his hand momentarily stopping his gentle caress on Cillian’s face.
“I like his interpretation,” he said, quietly.
I bent down in front of them, coming to my knees on the floor to push Cillian’s blond hair from his face. I kissed his cheek and my son moaned with contentment, smiling in his dreams.
“It’s an interesting interpretation,” Aaron said quietly. “Does he get that from you?”
Why did those words feel like lightning coursing through me?
“No,” I whispered. “He got that from his father.”
I looked up at this man… this Aaron Jackson.
“Got some ID?” I asked, suddenly suspicious again.
What if he was Irish? Or Italian? What if he was tied to the Greens or the Durantes? What about the Vasilievs?
There was a war happening in the city, and not all the players could ever be known.
He pulled out a bifold and handed it to me. I took it and opened it, looking at his driver’s license. The name was right, but nothing else. There were no credit cards in it, but there was cash. That made my hackles rise.
“I keep my credit cards in my car,” he said by way of explanation. “Always scared I’m going to lose it, so I just keep it in there until I need to use it.”
“It seems suspicious,” I admitted. “How do I know you’re not going to hurt us?”
The danger of having a man in my house was still immense. But then again, he didn’t know the danger he was in as well.
If my husband found out a man had been alone in my apartment, he would rip him to shreds. It was like that damn painting he’d loved so much. The Francesco Hayez. The Kiss . There was danger lurking all around, but he was unaware of it.
I stood up and went over to my laptop on the kitchen counter. I lifted the screen, and opened the anonymous browser, and with shaking fingers, typed in “Eoghan Green”, finding news articles and gossip sites. There was Eoghan, his arm around a slim woman with tan skin and fierce eyes.
I bristled.
She looked similar enough to me that… that I felt the first possibility that I had been replaced. That I was no longer a Muse. That maybe love had been one sided. That all the oaths of being his one and only, of him never having another…
Eoghan Green was, at this moment, at a gallery exhibition in New York City - at the same Gallery that had once been my home. He wasn’t here. Surely, if I had been found, if this man worked for him, then… he wouldn’t be at a gallery opening right now.
“It does beg the question,” Aaron said quietly, so as not to wake the baby, “what kind of security do you have in here?”
A gun, a blade and a fucking panic button.
The gun and blade were my primary emergencies. The panic button was great, but no one would get to me fast. It was just a beacon and last resort.
I pulled the blade from where I kept it in the kitchen junk drawer. The same place I had tucked a certain emerald ring away, lovingly folded into a silk handkerchief. I felt the weight of the iron blade in my hand, and shut my eyes. How had Eoghan used this? When the jagged edges of it were so harsh against my palm?
I ran my thumb along the initials - ECG. How similar this would be to what he would give my son, when he was old enough. Or would that tradition be long gone? I pressed down on it, as if the initials could leave an impression on my skin, and I could feel his skin once more. C was for Cillian. It was for the part of him that was my son.
“You do have a knife.” Aaron looked pleased, as he stared at me from the other side of the couch. “That’s good.”
“That’s an unusual knife,” he said, a single brown brow raising up, and my heart sank.
I kept it because my husband had told me to. He’d said, “Love, please trust me. This blade will be your protection.”
I believed it. That somehow, this would keep me safe.
“Anna?”
I missed him. I longed for him. I dreamt of him so often, and it only got worse over the years. Worse over the last few days, whenI could feel his presence all around.
“Anna!” The shout pulled me from my stupor, and I winced as the blade fell out of my hand, slicing my left palm as it fell to the ground with a clatter.
“Jesus!” Aaron lifted my son off his lap, gently laying him back down. “Are you okay?”
Ignoring the knife, he reached for my hand, opening it to him, and his eyes did something strange. Maybe it was the concern, or something else, but he stared at my bleeding hand with a reverence that unnerved me.
“Come on,” he said, with a swallow. “Let’s get this cleaned up.”