22. Too Keen
Chapter twenty-two
Too Keen
Eoghan
T here were so many things I wanted to do now. I wanted to make love to my wife. I wanted to kiss my boy and get to know him. I wanted to show him the nursery and his new room. I wanted to show her the master suite, and tell her a thousand things.
I wanted to spill my guts and tell her why the house had changed. But I couldn’t.
Not yet.
I didn’t want to come off too keen.
Though, it was probably a little too late.
I should have gotten rid of the fucking painting though. The damn thing had served its purpose. It struck fear in my enemy, and the dregs that fled Durante’s ranks numbered in the hundreds. Deserters, all of them. And even more became informants, pleading for leniency whenever his inevitable demise came at my hands.
My father was insane, but he had been right. Vlad Tepes had a fucking point.
When the scurrying maids came out, they took one look at me in my “Aaron Jackson” clothes and went pale with shock.
I’m sure they wondered if it was really me. They’d never seen me in anything so… rural before.
I couldn’t wait to get back into my suits.
I never understood why people thought that jeans were so comfortable, when in reality they were just stiff and untailored. They might be sturdy, but to say they were more comfortable than slacks or trousers was completely wrong.
Malinda, as the new head of the household, came out first. She’d taken over for her aging mother, who now needed care for her progressing dementia. As the sole caregiver for the housekeeper who had faithfully served my family, Malinda could never be fired. She knew it. So did I. I did not believe in nepotism, but there was something to be said about rewarding families for their loyalties, and she had begged, with tears in her eyes, to stay employed for her own sake so she could “earn her keep”.
I’d have given anything for her to just shut up.
The look on Kira’s face - the malice in her eyes - only confirmed what I should have already known. I should have just paid for Malinda’s mother out of pocket and sent her packing.
Then again, I didn’t hate the jealousy that passed through my darling Muse’s face.
I just didn’t like her discomfort.
“Malinda, go and make sure my son’s room is ready,” I said, in a voice that was far harsher than she’d ever heard. But I wanted to make my lines clear. I was Kira’s husband. She was now lady of the house. “Ginny,” I called to the girl beside her, a new addition to the household in the recent shuffling of staff, that involved executing most of my father’s old guards. “Please attend to Mrs. Green and my son, Cillian.”
To my wife, I softened my tone considerably, not just because she was a flight risk, but because I felt a satisfaction in seeing her here. Seeing her son in my home. In our home.
The discontent that roiled inside my guts had been wiped away with her simple presence, and I wouldn’t fuck it up again.
“Sweet Muse,” I called gently to her. “Everyone is at your disposal. I’ll come back in a few minutes after I change. Everything you need is in our suite if you also wish to change.”
She looked at me, confused, probably unable to make a choice. I would not dictate to her what she should do.
“He needs to nap,” she finally said.
I looked and our son had gone limp in her arms, his long thigh dangling at her side, as she held him, awkwardly trying to balance the boy in her arms.
His eyes were open, but blinking slowly, heavy in his exhaustion. Poor thing was tired after such an eventful morning.
You and me both, son.
“The nursery,” I said, pointing the way to the old room she and I had once shared. “It’s been… converted.”
She shook her head. “Please, I’ve never…”
She looked around nervously at Malinda and Ginny, before she walked up the stairs, the boy in her arms making her footsteps heavy.
When she was right in front of me, I resisted the urge to take her burden. I resisted pulling the boy into my arms so that I could lighten her load because I wasn’t sure she’d want me to do that.
“Please, Eoghan, I've never spent the night away from him in his whole life. Please… don’t…” She let out a long sigh, her shoulders slumping. “I should sleep in the nursery with him.”
My teeth clenched.
“No wife of mine is going to sleep on a fucking toddler mattress,” I said, glowering at her, before I schooled my features. She did not need my stares and brooding. I would not scare her off again. “I’ll have his bed brought into our room.”
“He can only sleep with me,” she said, in a whisper. “He can’t sleep on his own. He’s… he’s just a baby.”
“Darling, he’s two years old, he’s going to need to sleep in his own bed.”
“Please, Eoghan, you… you haven’t been there. You don’t know him. He’s…” She quieted, turning away as though I had struck her, blush coloring those beautiful cheeks. She must have seen the anger in my features again.
An anger and bitterness I would resolve soon. But not yet. One thing at a bloody time.
“He’s never slept well without me,” she finally said.
I did the only thing I could. I kissed her forehead and gave in.
“We’ll work on it together, sweet Muse,” I said against her skin. “Place him in our bed for now.”
I led her up the way, and though she had initially turned away, to head to the room that used to be ours, I led her by the waist to the grand suite at the end of the hall. The room that had once belonged to my parents was now ours. We were the heads of the household, after all.
Though, in my penance I had often chosen to sleep in the office downstairs, now that she was home everything would change. This haunted house would have new life. My wife, my son, would fill our home with the laughter that had been absent from it for far too long.
When I led her into the suite, she gasped at the opulence inside.
I had seldom seen the room. All I ever saw was the empty bed and the fact that she was not in it. But it was quite grand. A small chandelier hung near the foot of the hand-engraved, four poster bed. Antique Persian rugs kept the cold of the northern winters from the occupants, and the hand-engraved night stands, and a small reading nook made the room look like it belonged in a castle. Heavy brocade curtains, hand-sewn with ivy and leaf patterns blocked out the outside world, and black bookshelves matched the board and batten walls.
On every empty surface was another ornate pot, with a pretty little stem of snow white blossoms. More orchids for my darling.
“What happened to the green walls?” she asked, her voice a little hoarse, as she quickly glanced around. I wondered if all the change was too much for her. Or did she like it?
I couldn’t tell her why I had changed the colors that surrounded me. It would make me look insane. Now that she was home, I’d never felt saner in my life.
“Do you not like it?” I asked, in lieu of an answer.
“No, it’s fine.”
So she didn’t know the significance, or she hadn’t put two and two together yet. That was probably for the best, lest I terrify her again.
She put our son into the bed, tucking him under the heavy duvet. She gently ran her fingers over the boy’s hair, and I watched the two of them as I discarded the clothes of my disguise, and quietly put on the trousers and button-down shirt that was more in line with my station.
For the first time, I realized that our son… snored.
Loudly. Like he was a grown man, with a thirty year smoking habit. Jesus! It gave a strange meaning to the words “sleeping like a baby”. Every time I had used that particular idiom, a snoring little human that sounded like he had a deviated septum was hardly what I imagined.
I wanted a cigarette. I really did.
I wanted to watch them with a drink in hand, and a cigarette in my fingers. I wanted to observe them like I would a painting. Madonna and child.
I had never been a fan of Mary Cassatt and her studies of mothers with their children. But I wondered if I had erred in some way. There was something holy about the way a mother could comfort a child. The way my mother used to comfort me, when she was alive. It was timeless but new. Common and holy.
My fingers itched to sketch them both. Above those shelves were stacks of sketch pads, paper and charcoal, the smell of graphite perfuming the air. I should have hidden them. But I wanted her to understand the depths of my obsession. How I had drawn her, the same way she had sketched me from what I had seen at the coffee shop.
My phone chimed, and I brought it to my ear. I quickly saw Shiny’s name, before I answered, “What?”
Unperturbed by my lack of greeting, Shiny got right down to business. “Jericho Vasiliev and Aoibheann called, and said they would visit soon. They’re leaving their place now.”
“Did you tell them we were here?”
I thought I had forgiven her. I really did. I knew that Shiny and Aoibheann had a particular bond in their hatred for my father. Maybe they also bonded in their hatred for me. I wasn’t sure.
“No, I didn’t Eoghan,” Shiny said, carefully, in that particular tone she used, when she wanted me to know that she meant what she was saying.
I wasn’t sure if I could believe her.
Fuck.
I hung up without a word. If they were leaving their Mourningkill home, then it would be an hour and a half before they got here. I did not want fucking guests right now.
“What’s going on?” Kira asked, her eyes watching me like a hawk.
I relished her attention. I adored her presence. I shut my eyes, feeling the relief of it all. The relief and comfort that I had not had time to feel the last time.
There were so many challenges ahead, so many things I had to make right. The journey forward would be heavy, but I was better today than I was yesterday. I was better today than I had been a week ago. I was more alive right now than I had been in the last three fucking years.
“Aoibheann is coming to visit you.” I omitted Jericho, her husband, because he was irrelevant. I knew that it was my former stepmother who would be leading the charge here.
“Is she alright?” She sat up, tucking her legs in beside her. She was wearing the same pajamas I had dressed her in last night, and even then, she was the image of elegance and grace.
Even with the badly dyed purple hair.
“Come love,” I said, extending my hand to her. “It’s time to become yourself again. You are the lady of the manor. You are Mrs. Green.”
She looked down at our comfortably slumbering boy before she glanced back up at me.
She quietly tucked him in, putting a kiss on his temple, as he kept on snoring blissfully in dreamland. Then she came to me.
I did not know where this obedience came from. I could not fathom what could be going through her mind. But I was determined to enjoy every second of her compliance. Every moment we acted like man and wife I would savor, like the sweetest absinthe.
I led her into our shared walk-in closet and standing still, she let me pull off her shirt then the pajama bottoms. Standing naked before me, I got the first decent look of my wife that I’d had since she disappeared.
“Eoghan?” she said on a whisper, my name a question.
“Yes, sweet Muse?” I whispered, as I touched the strands of her hair, feeling the crooked ends of her badly cut bob.
“None of these clothes will fit me anymore.” She brought her hands up, crossing them in front of her abdomen, as though she wanted to hide herself from me.
That simply would not do. I traced my fingers over her skin, and she sweetly shivered under my touch.
"Tell me why you left," I said, as I drank her in, looking at her naked form from behind.
Her rounded hips, her larger breasts. The ways she had changed over the years. She’d had the audacity to grow lovelier, and it was an insult to the time that had been stolen from me.
“I…” she said, turning her head so that I could see the roundness of her cheek and the profile of her glorious features. She bit on her lower lip for just a moment before she opened them again, and I knew she was getting ready to tell me another lie.
"I will remind you that I will take your lies as a personal insult."
I had said that to her many, many times, and yet she still lied. She was lying now. By omission, certainly. But that was still a lie, wasn't it?
"I heard you torturing Morelli."
"And that frightened you?" That couldn't have been it. There was more to it than that. I could feel it.
"You weren't the man I thought you were," she said carefully, and I knew the game. Her game.
She was giving me the truth but concealing plenty of it still.
"You mean to say you didn't know I was in the Irish Mob?" I lifted a brow, and she recoiled.
So, she did know.
I circled her, coming to stand before my naked wife. I fought the urge to come to my knees and place my face against her, like I was a damn supplicant.
She looked at me, her eyes filled with fear, but again, I gave her no comfort. I needed her obedience. I craved it. I needed to know that she was mine, and that would only happen if she surrendered to me.
I let my gaze roam down her body. She wasn’t that different. Not really.
“These dresses won’t fit me,” she said again, looking away from me, her arms trying to conceal herself, though it was futile.
I stepped forward, looking at her face, because even now, even when I wanted to drink her in, I wanted her comfort too. I wanted to protect her from whatever was blasting through her mind.
“I think you’re being hard on yourself,” I said, reaching out a hand, to touch the pretty breasts that I had missed.
She snorted, though she did not recoil from my touch.
She was right on a few things - she was thinner now. She had lost the glorious fullness in the cheeks, and the round hourglass shape that I had adored. I didn’t care. She was beautiful either way. Still, the signs of neglect were written all over her. In her sunken eyes, the deep bags beneath them, as well as the slimness in her arms and abdomen that came from too many skipped meals.
I made a mental note to be sure that she was fed, so that she would resume the Rubenesque figure I had so admired. The one that screamed of health and lusty fullness.
"Who did you think I was?" I asked, when she finally settled into a pose, one hip out, a knee bent to slim her waist and round her pretty hips. She let her arms fall to her sides, following the sweet curves of her body.
I wondered, briefly, if she'd chosen to stand like this to make me happy. Did she wish to look appealing to me? Did she want to seduce me?
That was ridiculous, of course. All she had to do was take in a breath, and I would be seduced. A simple blink of her eyes could bring me to my knees.
"I thought you were..." Her eyes shut and, for once, I wondered if she was trying to tell me the truth. "I thought you were an honest man who... who..."
She looked away, hiding her face, and I resisted the urge to grab her wrists and pin them to the bed, to lay her bare before me, her secrets in those gorgeous eyes.
"I thought you would bring peace. To you, to Cosima... I thought that's what you meant when you... when you spoke to her in front of me."
I bristled, remembering how I had exchanged words with Cosima Durante on her phone, after stealing our first kiss. How I had talked of ridding ourselves of the past and moving ahead to a better future. I had meant it back then. But things had changed when those bastards threatened my wife.
I’d still ally with Cosima, if for no other reason than to spare the consiglieri who lived in the cell below our feet.
"And now, what do you think?" I traced my hand over her bare chest, to her throat, to the beautiful pulse point there that told me she was alive.
As long as she lived, she would be beautiful. My sweet, eternal Muse.
"I think that you're a monster," she said, with an honesty that wounded and healed me all at once.
"I have never lied to you about that," I chuckled, as I leaned down to place my lips at her clavicle. “But I can be your monster, if you let me.”
She shook her head, turning away from me. She brought her hands up to cover her face, hiding herself from me. I looked down at myself, realizing that I was fully clothed while she remained exposed and maybe, just maybe, for once, I wanted us on equal footing.
I pried off my shirt, letting it fall to the ground in a quiet rustle of silk.
That made her turn her head towards me, her eyes wide, as she drank me in. Her nostrils flared, her lips parted, as she swiped her lower lip with her sweet, pink tongue.
"You have new scars," she whispered, quietly. "What happened?"
Sweet Muse, trying to change the subject. Trying to turn the conversation from herself - not realizing that there was no part of me that had not changed because of her. That my sun and moon rose and faded based on the state of our marriage.
"I got them looking for you," I said, clenching my fist. "You mean this one, aye?"
I pointed at my shoulder, at the knife wound I'd received.
"I got it on my way to see you. I found an Italian man who thought he'd find you in Brooklyn, at an art gallery. I killed him." She shuddered at my words, and I didn't know if that was because she was scared of someone finding her or of the thought of me killing someone. But for the sake of honesty, I gave her more details. "I confronted him, and he pulled a knife. So I pulled mine and slit his throat, as he stabbed my shoulder."
It was time she knew what a monster I truly was, and it would only happen if she knew the details.
"I was never in Brooklyn," she whispered.
"Doesn't matter. Anyone who tries to harm you will die."
"Why?" She shook her head. "Why do you care? We were together for two weeks, and you... why do you care?"
"Because you are my wife. What other explanation is there?"
She tried to look away, tried to turn her body from me, but I was through with giving her space. I was done with giving allowances when it was clear as day that we belonged as one. I grabbed her face with one hand and circled her waist with the other.
"You are my wife and the mother of my child," I growled, "and no one gets to touch either of you without my say-so."
I kissed her lips, taking her mouth, and she moaned into it, wanting it as much as me.
When I pried my lips away, I smirked. “I told you, I was not an inconsistent man. You are mine. You are my family. And now, it’s time we make it right between us.”