They caught me watching her from the car the other night. It took them only seconds to know who she was. That was when they said it.Dad will kill you.They’re right, he will the moment he knows an Irish girl has my attention.
“You’ve got that twitch in your jaw,” Milo says. “Same one you get when you’re lying to yourself and rage is building inside you.”
I glare at both of them.
“I pulled her off the cliff. I didn’t fuck her.” I close my eyes, knowing God is looking down at me in anger for swearing in his house.
“Yet,” they say in unison.
I elbow them both before they can finish what they were going to say. The question is whether my brothers will stand with me—or throw me to the men who’ll skin me alive if I touch her.
The music shifts, and the congregation rises. Our granddad starts another reading and smiles down to the three of us. We know he hates our life in the violent world, but he also knows who his niece married.
My grandfather’s eyes flick back to us from the front pew.
A look that meansbehave.A look that meansremember who you are.
After the final hymn, after the fake communion and empty prayers, we step outside into the chilled morning. The air in Blackstone Hollow always smells like firewood and money.
We gather near the marble steps, where Grandfather waits, surrounded by bodyguards and family.
“Boys.” He nods for us to approach. “Blackstone Academy,” he says, resting both hands on the silver wolf head of his cane. “You’re walking into a world which already belongs to you, but power means nothing if you don’t show people how to fear it.”
Marco shifts beside me, Milo crosses his arms. I stare straight ahead, thinking of Aoife’s eyes. Fuck, one small interaction between us, one which was less than five minutes, and I already remember her fucking eyes, sky blue eyes.
“The Irish and Russians will always want what we built,” Grandfather continues. “The academy doesn’t belong to them. It never will.”
“What about alliances?” Marco asks. “Deals?”
“Deals are meant to be broken,” he says. “Power isn’t. You don’t marry into power. You take it and if someone tries to give it to you, you ask yourself what they want in return.”
The words settle like concrete in my ribs, because getting mixed with Aoife O’Brien will be dangerous not just for me, butfor her too. The last thing her Uncle wants is for her to be mixed with a Messina boy.
The ring on her finger says she belongs to someone else. She stands on the edge of a cliff, and if this is a game, I’m already too close to the drop.
“You go to school, show them you rule and no one else. You have fun with the girls, because I know you will, and don’t tell your mother I said that either.”
The three of us start laughing, mom would hate him for saying it.
Footsteps crunch behind us on the church gravel. “Don’t you three look handsome, like always.” I don’t need to turn to know who it is. Rosa.
She walks up beside us like she’s always belonged there, because she has. Her red curls pulled back tight, gold earrings, leather jacket over her sundress like she might kill a guy and then ask to borrow your lighter. Rosa De Luca—Sebastian’s daughter, our father’s right hand, our shadow since we could walk.
Marco grins, throws an arm around her shoulders. He won’t admit it, but he wants her, not sure why he won’t make a move. “You stalking us again?” he asks.
“Please,” she says, rolling her eyes. “I was here before you even finished buttoning your shirt this morning.” She slaps his chest, and I start laughing.
“You wish you could button my shirt,” he shoots back.
She elbows him, hard enough to make him wince.
I watch them for a moment, Rosa and my brothers, the ease of it, the years between us stitched into every insult and smirk. She knows all our secrets. She’s seen us bleed, fight, lose, and get back up, and instead of running, she learned how to walk with a blade hidden in her boot.
She turns to me, finally. “You good?”
I nod and say, “You look tired.” We know she doesn't sleep much; the past keeps her awake.
“I look dangerous,” she corrects, grinning. “There’s a difference.” She’s not wrong. Uncle Sebastian made sure after what happened that no one would dare come near her.
