by Nora Ash
For fuck’s sakes! He was just a man in a suit. Okay, an incredibly handsome and sexy-as-hell man, but still. There was no excuse for my body to react this way at the mere sight of him.
“Thank you, Rob. I’ll take it from here. You go home to your family, I’ll drive her home later.”
It wasn’t until he spoke, his voice unusually gruff, that I realized his forehead was locked in a deep frown and his gray eyes seemed darker than normal. Clearly, he wasn’t happy about something.
“Sure thing, boss.” Rob nodded at us before retreating to the elevator. When the doors shut, Blaine turned to me.
“Are you ready?”
“Yeah,” I croaked, willing my body to calm the heck down.
He put his hand on my shoulder, which didn’t exactly help matters, and guided me through the door and into a lavishly decorated waiting area, complete with a busy-looking secretary in her mid-forties.
“I had no idea you moonlighted as a respectable business man,” I joked in an attempt to alleviate my own discomfort at his closeness. Even through my clothes, I felt his hand on me like an electric pulse that heated my skin and made my heart pound heavily behind my ribs.
Blaine didn’t answer, but stepped back and motioned for me to shrug out of my coat. I obeyed, and he helped me out of it and handed it to the secretary, who seemed to magically appear by his side the moment he held out his arm.
“I’ll have to warn you that this might not be a very pleasant experience for you,” he murmured once she’d disappeared through another door with my coat. “When my father set up this meeting, I didn’t realize who the contact would be.”
I looked up at him, suddenly feeling less eager about this whole arrangement. Who on earth would make Blaine Steel seem so on edge? Was there some rival mafia trying to encroach on their territory or what? “What do you mean?”
Again, he didn’t answer me, but once again he put his hand on my shoulder to lead me to to what I assumed was the door to the conference room. My suspicions were confirmed when we stepped through into a room dominated by a large, oval table. Four chairs were set out, two of them empty. In the two closest to the door and with their backs to us sat two male figures, waiting.
When the one furthest to the right turned around to look at us over his shoulder, my heart dropped.
No. No, no, no.
I fought back the bile that rose in my throat when I recognized him. As if on cue, the man at his side turned, and I had to bite my tongue to swallow a whimper.
The last time I’d seen my father and my eldest brother, Michael, they had threatened me with torture if I didn’t marry the mafia son they’d picked out for me.
The time before that…
It was only Blaine’s hand on my shoulder that allowed me to stumble to my chair and sit down as if someone had cut the strings that held me upright. And there they sat, two of the three men who haunted my nightmares even to this day. Right in front of me, with only the table between us for protection. I clutched at the chair’s armrests until my knuckles turned white and focused on breathing deeply and evenly.
They couldn’t hurt me. Blaine wouldn’t let them. They couldn’t hurt me, they couldn’t hurt me…
“I understand from the briefing my father gave that we are to hash out a deal involving the transportation of goods between Ireland and England, correct?” Blaine said from his seat by my side. He flipped open the folder in front of him, all business and in control. If I hadn’t been fighting tooth and nail to keep my looming panic attack at bay, I might have appreciated the change to his normal persona.
“Yeah, that’s correct, son.”
My father’s lilting drawl made a shudder run up the length of my spine. Just breathe. Just breathe.
“I was unaware that your connections in Dublin ran deep enough for such an arrangement? I see no problem with hashing out a deal for the Belfast port, but do you have the necessary hold further South?” Blaine said.
“With your help, we can secure Dublin no problem,” my father rumbled. “That’s part of what you got your wife for, isn’t it? In return for your family’s backing, you got my only daughter.”
I could sense Blaine looking at me, but I was too busy staring at the table to return his gaze.
He was silent for two long seconds, and then I felt a light tap on my left hand that was still clutching at the arm rest. “If you’ll excuse us for a moment.”
I found the strength to get up when he put his hand on my shoulder, as if he somehow transferred some of his strength into my muscles by the warmth of his touch. I didn’t see anything but the carpeted floor in front of me as he led me back out of the room, past the secretary and into the quiet hallway by the elevator.
Only when we stopped did he take his hand off my shoulder again.
“What did they do?”
“What do you mean?” I could only manage to raise my voice slightly above a whisper, as if my ingrained terror constricted my vocal cords. It didn’t matter, though; the hallway was so silent he heard me just fine.
“The second you saw who we were meeting, you started shaking like a leaf. And you look like you’re about to barf. Add a hideous, white dress and you look exactly like you did in the church. You’re obviously terrified. So I’m asking you, what did they do?” There was a low, threatening quality to Blaine’s voice and a tone of no-nonsense, but I shook my head. I couldn’t. No one could know.
“I can’t,” I finally managed to croak. I looked up from the floor to plead with him, to make him stop pushing, but the sight of anger in his eyes made the tears I’d managed to keep at bay until now finally spill over.
“You can’t? You’re a goddamn shrink. Talking about whatever makes you this scared should be the one thing you’re good at, woman. Fuck, you know about my shit. You know my demons are there because of my family. You think I’ve told anyone else anything about that? So tell me what had you clutching at that poor chair like it was a life rack just at the sight of you Dad and brother. You owe me that much.”
“I owe you?” Something about his mounting anger and the darkness in his gaze as he stared me down made the dam inside me break. And for the first time in my life, it all came spilling out. “I owe you to tell you what they did to me? You want to know, the guy who had to threaten me the second you’d let me see just a glimpse of the real you?”
“Yes. I want to know.” He kept his voice low, despite my shrieking, but the air of command was unmistakable, even through my current meltdown.
“Fine! I’ll tell you, and then you can get to roll your eyes and call me a weak little victim and go in there and make your deal with those monsters! It’s all about the business, I know how it goes.” I pulled up at my shirt with shaking hands, ripping frantically at the fabric until my scarred stomach was on display. “My brothers held me down while my loving father cut me. That’s what they did. Because I’d jeopardized the business. I was eighteen, and I tried to free a man they had tied up in the basement and beaten bloody. He owed them money, you see.
“They caught me doing it and made me watch while they shot out his kneecaps. And then they gave me these. I begged them to stop. Michael laughed at me and my father… my father said that’s what I got for being weak, and now everyone would see me for the stupid little victim I was. They didn’t stop until I passed out. Are we even now, Blaine? Does that make you feel better for having given me just a glimpse of what you fear?”
Blaine stood silently in front of me as I finished my tirade. His eyes were dark like thunderclouds and laser focused on my scars, but the rest of his face was impassive, as if carved from rock.
I let my shirt drop down, shielding the scars from his view, and wiped my eyes with my free hand. I was still shaking from the emotional outburst, but behind the shock of it all, there was an odd sense of relief of finally having shared it all with someone. Even if that someone was Blaine.
Then, to my utter surprise, Blaine cupped my cheek with his warm hand, his thumb wiping m
y tears away with a surprisingly gentle stroke. He still didn’t say anything, but in his darkened gaze I saw the last thing I’d expected from him: fury—on my behalf.
I closed my eyes and let the simple gesture calm me. Gradually, my heart rate slowed and my breathing evened out until I was once again in full control of myself.
“If there’s one thing you’re not, Mira, it’s weak.” Blaine’s voice was quiet and as dark as his gaze had been. Then he removed his hand from my cheek and I felt him take a step back, putting more space between us. “Come back in with me. Show them that they haven’t broken you.”
I gritted my teeth and nodded. As much as I wanted to curl up in a corner and cry until they’d left, I knew they would think me the weak victim they’d always thought me to be if I did. And I didn’t want that. I wanted to be strong, not for them, but for myself. If I could do this, then maybe I could finally start healing.
Blaine turned around and led the way back to the conference room. He waited for me to sit down, but instead of following suit, he leaned in over the table, resting on his knuckles.
I looked up at him in surprise, my eyes widening at the absolute, stone cold rage in his gaze as he leveled my father and brother with a murderous stare.
“Now you listen to me very, very carefully, Clery. There will be no more deals made between my family and yours. Not one. Any arrangements made in the past are null and void. You understand?”
My father gaped up at Blaine, his mouth working to form some form of protest no doubt, but the shock didn’t allow for any actual words to be produced. By his side, Michael had gone completely pale—Blaine’s anger was a near physical presence in the room, and terrifying beyond belief, even for me who wasn’t in its direct line of fire.
“You have twenty-four hours to get the fuck out of London and back to Belfast, or I swear I will gut every one of you like fish.”
“Now you listen, son!” my father protested, finally finding his voice as he got to his feet. “You have no authority to make such threats. We have an agreement with your father, and you can’t—”
“Did I not make myself clear?” Blaine hissed. “Get out of my city, now. I am a Steel, and trust me when I say that I have all the authority I need to slaughter every last member of your miserable little gang.”
“You’ve made a grave mistake today, boy,” my father growled. He grabbed Michael by the shoulder and my brother got up from his chair too, despite looking like he was about to wet himself. “And you.” He pointed his finger at me, and it took all I had not to shrink back from the absolute hatred in his eyes. “You’re gonna regret the day you betrayed your family, you little whore.”
Blaine slapped his palm into the table hard enough to make his abandoned folder jump an inch. “Don’t you fucking dare insult my wife!”
My father glared at me, the muscles in his neck working like they always had when he was about to lose his temper. But apparently, being confronted with Blaine’s palpable anger made him able to rein it in. Without another word he spun around and stormed out of the office, followed by Michael.
Once the door was closed behind them and we could no longer hear my father shouting profanities and threats as he stomped down the hall, I turned to the still-seething man by my side. My husband.
“You didn’t have to do that.”
Blaine shot me a dark look. “They harmed you. That’s exactly what I needed to do.”
* * * *
Chapter 19
Mira
Neither Blaine nor I spoke on the car ride home.
I was too wrapped up in the emotional turmoil of what had just happened, and I imagined he was still seething away with anger, at least if the dark look on his face was anything to go by.
When we got home, I went straight up the stairs and threw myself on my bed, burrowing into the duvet. As I lay there, clutching my blankets like a protective shield, my mind went over everything that had been said in that conference room. At first it took all I had not to start crying again, but the more times my thoughts looped, the more they focused on what Blaine had said rather than what my father had. What he’d done.
It was the first time in my entire life anyone had stood up for me. My mother never had the courage nor the strength to do so. She had chosen to accept the abuse instead. I remembered that once I had cried on her shoulder as a little girl over a particularly vicious beating, and she had told me I brought it on myself with my bad behavior.
But not Blaine. He hadn’t told me what was done to me was my own fault. And he hadn’t seen me as a victim, either.
Somehow, seeing his anger on my behalf and knowing he didn’t find me weak and pathetic for what I’d gone through finally gave me the strength to do the same. I had survived years of abuse and come out the other side of it. I was stronger than most people.
I was a survivor.
Tears pooled at the corners of my eyes again, but this time, they were from relief. It felt like a knot in my stomach that had been there so long I’d stopped noticing it finally came undone.
And in some weird, fucked up way, it came undone because of Blaine.
As if summoned by my thoughts, a low knocking on my door announced Blaine’s arrival. He walked in without waiting for my answer.
He’d changed out of the suit and back into his usual T-shirt-and-jeans attire, but his face was still set in the same grim lines as when we drove home.
“Hey,” I croaked.
“Hey,” he said. And then he crossed the room to my bed and climbed in behind me. His arm wrapped around my waist as his body curved around my back, shielding and supporting me.
I closed my eyes and leaned back into his embrace, too emotionally exhausted to protest the unexpected closeness. I didn’t care that I wasn’t supposed to let him touch me, that our relationship up until now certainly hadn’t paved the way for physical closeness like this. All I cared about was that being held by Blaine right now felt better than anything had before.
We lay in silence for a little while, but it was the comfortable kind. The kind that let me feel the press of his muscles against my back, hear his slow breaths in my ear, and smell the faint trace of his cologne without anything disturbing the tranquil enjoyment of the simple, sensory experience of being held this close.
“When I came to see you, I’d just found out my father got my brother locked up on purpose. As punishment. Isaac disobeyed him, refused to kill someone who had snitched on us.” Blaine spoke softly, but his mouth was pressed lightly against the side of my head just above my ear, so I heard the pain in his voice perfectly.
“He always taught us that you stick with family, no matter what. Always. Turns out, that doesn’t count if you disobey him in any way. He gave his own son over to the police, Mira. My brother. It’s… it’s the deepest betrayal. I was so angry. I waited outside my father’s house… at night. I had a gun. I…”
I put a hand on the forearm he had wrapped around my waist, offering him what comfort I could as he fought himself to finally share what had made him desperate enough to seek me out.
“I wanted to kill him,” he whispered. “I was going to kill him. I would have, if I hadn’t seen Louis and Liam through the window. They were visiting him—I didn’t know. I’ve killed before, but I’ve never wanted to as badly as I did that night. It scared me. It still scares me.”
“Do you still want to kill him?” I asked, giving his arm a gentle stroke to ease the roughness in his voice.
He paused for a moment, as if to mull over his answer. “I don’t know. I don’t think so. But I hate him, Mira. I hate him so much, and it’s not meant to be like that. He’s my father, and if I don’t love him, then I need to at least respect him. Trust his leadership. And I thought I did—until…”
“Until he showed you you can’t.”
Blaine inhaled deeply, his hot breath tickling my ear. “Yes.”
“There comes a time in all our lives when we have to take a step back and decide if the path we’re
on is one we have freely chosen, or if we are blindly following because it is what is expected of us,” I said, twining my fingers with his. His hand was so much bigger than mine, it practically spanned the whole side of my stomach.
Blaine gave my fingers a small squeeze but didn’t move his hand from my grasp. “Is that shrink-Mira speaking, then?”
I smiled at his slightly sardonic tone. “Yeah. It is. My point is, you are experiencing this anger because everything you have been taught was right turned out not to be the One Truth. It’s an understandable reaction. You have had your entire foundation pulled from under you. Of course you’re angry. And scared. But rather than turn that anger at your father, perhaps it’s time to choose your own Truth now. Find your own path.”
“I can’t do what you did. I can’t leave my family. I love my brothers, my crew…” The way he paused made it sound like he’d stopped before finishing the sentence, but he didn’t continue.
“You don’t have to. But you can choose not to let your father have the same power over you anymore.”
He snorted, and I gave his fingers a squeeze to let him know I wasn’t done.
“I know how it goes, he’s the Big Boss. His word is law. But he can’t control your emotions if you don’t let him. And—you now see him for what he really is. That gives you a lot of power in how you choose to act on his commands.”
He was quiet for a long time, and I thought he wasn’t going to say anything else. But just as my eyes started to drift shut, he spoke again.
“You’re a pretty smart bird, aren’t you?” he hummed against my ear. His lips brushed against my lobe, raising pleasant goosebumps down the back of my neck.
I chuckled. “Sure. As long as I just need to dispense advice, rather than follow it myself.”
“I’m not so sure… I don’t know anyone who would have the strength to do what you did, Mira.”
Something in his tone made my cheeks warm. It was… admiration, unsoiled by the sarcasm I could have expected from him. When he released my fingers to press his hand against my stomach on top of my scars, my breath turned shaky and my pulse sped up.