LIAM
“So we’re back to making an alliance with the Russians again? Are ye fecking kidding me? After ye’re father nearly got us all slaughtered by the Italians and Russians both, for double-dealing?”
Colin O’Flaherty is leaning across the table, green eyes flashing at me as he brings his fist down on the heavy oak table that serves as the meeting place for the Irish Kings, our symbol carved into the center of it. A hum of agreement follows his outraged words. Though, there’s one voice notably absent, the man who should be at the opposite end of the table from me, denoting his position as the second-highest ranking family in the hierarchy of the Kings.
Graham O’Sullivan.
His absence is a statement in and of itself and one that I know I’ll have to deal with quickly. Graham himself isn’t the problem—I like Graham O’Sullivan well enough, even if he can be a stubborn and hardheaded old man at times. But they all are, to an extent, anyone over the age of fifty, and that’s most of the men around this table. Most of them are at least thirty years my senior, which makes leading them difficult.
Hard to give men orders when they see me as still wet behind the ears. Hard to have them respect me when I wasn’t even the one they expected to take the seat at the head of the table after my father’s death.
Hell, I didn’t fuckingwantit.
It was supposed to go to my brother, Connor McGregor. But he’s off god knows where, dead or gallivanting around the homeland, and fuck if I care which it is anymore. Or at least that’s what I tell myself because the only other two options are anger or grief—anger that he left me with this mess after the shite that our father pulled, or grief that my brother is certainly all but lost to our family forever.
Anger is a distraction I can’t afford, and grief weakens a man.
Weakness is another thing I can’t afford, not when the other Kings are waiting for an opportunity to prove that I’m not fit to lead us, so that they can insert one of themselves or their sons into my place.
Which brings me back to Graham O’Sullivan and the reason why his absence is both problematic and the last fucking thing on this earth I want to deal with.
I’m meant to marry his daughter, Saoirse O’Sullivan. I know well enough that not a man at this table understands why I haven’t signed the betrothal contract in my own damn blood, if that’s what it would take to marry her. Saoirse is a rare beauty, raised to be the wife of a high-ranking member of our families, a perfect match for me in every way.Toogood for me, if you ask her father, but he’s offered me her hand anyway because it benefits us both.
Marriage to Saoirse would solidify my place at the head of the Kings, ensure an alliance with the only other family that no one here would dare to defy, and give the O’Sullivan family a permanent connection to the throne, as it were. My heir will bear my name, but he’ll have O’Sullivan blood in his veins, and that matters.
If I marry Saoirse, that is.
Graham’s absence means that arrangement is in danger. And I know I should be more worried about it than I am.
I certainly shouldn’t be thinking about a girl half a world away, a girl who I should never have had more than a passing interest in to begin with—a girl whose whereabouts I don’t even know now.
Anastasia Ivanova.
“I went to Russia to see what could be done to mend things with Viktor Andreyev,” I say firmly, placing my hands on the table and looking around the gathered men, my gaze landing finally on Colin O’Flaherty. “He made an alliance with the Italians. He and Luca Romano broke bread and agreed on a truce, the lynchpin of which was Viktor Andreyev’s marriage to the Bianchi widow, Caterina Rossi-Bianchi. Now Caterina Andreyva.” I narrow my eyes. “Would you have the Kings barred from a table where the Italians and the Russians feast?”
O’Flaherty looks flustered. “Of course not. But for the Bratvapakhanto agree to such a thing, after your father—”
“I’m well aware of what my father did and his foolishness,” I say icily. “There’s no need to remind me of it every time we sit down at this table. He thought he could take it all for himself and rule all of the Northeast territories with my half-brother and me at his side.”
Well, I suppose I can guess where Alexei got the idea.My father and Franco’s treachery has had longer-reaching consequences than even he could likely have imagined. He certainly would never have guessed that one of Viktor’s brigadiers would take up the idea and try to claim it for himself.
A fresh wave of bitterness washes over me. It’s a stretch to blame my father’s betrayal for the fact that Ana is the property of some French billionaire. Possibly lost beyond my reach, but it’s not hard for me to make that leap, given my anger.
There’s a great deal of it pent up in me these days, more than ever before. My father’s plot, the discovery that a man I’d met a handful of times was, in fact, my half-brother, a man who turned out to be a monster. My father’s rightful execution at the hands of Viktor Andreyev, my ascension to a place that I’d never planned on being. The unjust loss of a girl I’d only just been getting to know, a girl that I shouldn’t care so much about.
The idea of anyone being sold, handed over to another person to be treated like a possession, is enough to make me blisteringly angry. But the fact that it’sAna, who has already been through so much, more than even I know—it makes my blood boil. And I don’t know where to start to make it right, or even if I should, which makes me feel that much worse.
“Viktor Andreyev is a forgiving man when it is justified,” I say firmly. “He knows that the sins of the father are not those of the son, nor are the sins of one brother a reflection on the other. He sees this mutual friendship as a way forward for our families, a way for us all to prosper.”
“Prospering on the backs of women sold to lie on them, ye mean.” Finn O’Leary speaks up then, his iron-grey brows drawing together. “We all know what Viktor Andreyev traffics in, or ratherwho. And I’m not here to be a part of it.”
“That’s the second part of what I’m bringing to you.” I look around the table, taking a breath. “Viktor Andreyev has removed himself from the business of human trafficking. I have it on good authority that no more women will pass through his hands for sale.”
O’Leary snorts. “And we’re meant to believe this? It’s a lucrative business, aye, if one that makes my very skin crawl. What will the great and mightypakhando for his riches now?”
“That’s yet to be entirely determined,” I tell him calmly. “There are other ways to make money involving sex that are consensual. And there’s some talk of him partnering with a syndicate in Russia that trains spies and assassins for various—jobs. But I believe—”
“Youbelieve.” Finn O’Leary shakes his head in disgust, and I can see O’Flaherty nodding along. “Why should we agree with what you believe, boy—”