A dangerous one.
I stood here, covered to the max—and by contrast with what I’d just seen, the max was the truth—but somehow more exposed than his mistress had been.
I wasn’t surprised when he slipped into the room and into the doorway without me noticing. He had the tread of a panther—perfect for his work, I supposed. He stood there, looking pissed off and agitated, then our eyes connected in the mirror, and shock hit him first, then more rage as he broke the connection and swept his gaze over me.
Father and Svetlana had done a number on me, that was for fucking sure. I looked like I’d been tied to a garbage truck and dragged over Brighton Beach for hours on end.
When Eoghan’s usually impassive features began to scrunch up, I looked away, dipped my chin, and began to clear up the cotton pads I’d used to clear off the makeup.
A part of me hadn’t been sure if he was actually having sex with the woman we’d come across in his living room, and though I hadn’t heard anything, I was oddly relieved to notice that he was as neatly dressed as he’d been when I’d left him behind.
I had no rights to him.
Not really.
He had all the rights in this relationship.
He could fuck whoever he wanted, could even impregnate them, and I didn’t have a say in the matter.
Me?
If I so much as looked at another man, that man might end up dead for daring to ‘eye fuck’ a Five Points’ man’s bride, and me? Only Christ himself knew what punishment I’d get for my sins…perceived or otherwise.
If Eoghan was anything like my father, he punished sins that hadn’t even happened.Just in case.
It was easier to maintain a hold on things if everyone was terrified of you, and that was how Father ran his family and his business.
I mean, I wasn’t going to make a saint out of Aidan O’Donnelly Sr. I pretty much knew that was how he ran his empire too—Eoghan’s beating told me that—but there was a family at the heart of everything.
I’d seen it today.
Had seen Eoghan’s face when he danced with his mom, and how all his brothers had gone out of their way, when the dancing had started, to try to make me smile.
Aidan Sr. hadn’t felt me up like I’d seen Father do to the new bride of Antoni, my cousin and Father’s namesake, and I’d been treated with a level of cautious respect—like I was a bitch, of the canine variety, that they weren’t sure would bite them or not.
Beyond that, I’d seen the brothers joking, slapping each other on the back, laughing and grinning at random stuff like people who loved each other did.
At least, that was how it worked in the movies.
And thus far, that was pretty much the only kind of functioning family I’d seen—in film.
And while we were both rooted in the upper ranks of criminal empires, which were an entirely different breed of kin, where blood and bone were sacrificed on the regular in the family’s name, I could see the difference.
There was love there.
Love in the O’Donnelly’s hearth.
I bit my lip, then winced when it pulled on the paper stitch I’d uncovered beneath ten tons of lipstick. There was another, more ragged one, on the bridge of my nose, and I had various little pieces of miracle ‘paper’ that had been used to hide a multitude of sins.
Not my own, of course.
My father’s, although the split lip was a parting gift from Svetlana.
“I should have sliced his throat.”
Eoghan’s rasp sent shudders down my spine.
Not in a bad way, but a good one.