Chapter 18
Mira
The violent urge to puke out my guts ripped me from my sleep, as it had for the past many days now. I rolled out of bed and ran for the bathroom, making it to the toilet just in time.
It took me more than twenty minutes before my stomach finally settled down enough that I realized I was wearing the same clothes as I’d been in the night before, rather than my sleep attire.
I frowned at the toilet seat as I rested my forehead against it. Come to think of it, I had no recollection of going to bed last night. The last thing I remembered was the boring alien movie Blaine forced me to watch. I must have fallen asleep on the couch. Which begged the question—how had I made it from the sofa to my bed?
The only logical explanation made me pull my head back up with surprise. Blaine must have carried me. Huh.
A dry heave made my contemplations come to a halt as I crouched over the toilet again, but nothing came up this time. Probably because my stomach was completely empty.
Maybe I should bite the bullet and go see a doctor. If it was a stomach bug, it was really persistent. And perhaps I should also stop having wine with dinner—it probably wasn’t helping things.
When my stomach finally settled down again, I cleaned my teeth and changed into fresh clothes before I went downstairs to forage for my usual breakfast—crackers and ginger ale. To my surprise, Blaine was in the kitchen when I came down, sitting by the counter on one of the bar stools and eating a bowl of cereal. If I hadn’t felt so queasy, I might have appreciated the way his chiseled chest strained against his T-shirt or his triceps flexed when he lifted the spoon.
“Morning,” I grumbled as I shuffled to the cabinet that held my stash of crackers.
“You look like shit,” he said. Just what every girl wants to hear first thing. “Are you sick again?”
“Still.”
His dark brows pulled into a frown. “I’ll get Rob to make you an appointment with our doctor. Are you too ill to work today? I just got a call about a meeting this afternoon.”
Despite how poorly I felt, I perked up at that. I missed using my brain, and there was only so much sudoku a girl could play before going bonkers. Sitting in on business meetings might not be as stimulating as seeing patients, but it beat hanging around the house all day.
“Yeah, I should be fine in a couple of hours. Can we go look at some shops after? There’s this artisan confectionery shop I’ve been dying to go to.”
A hint of a genuine smile played over Blaine’s sensual lips. “Perhaps. We’ll see if you’re feeling well enough.”
I made a grimace at him as I sat down with my box of crackers. “Yes, Dad. And I’ll also clean my teeth and look before I cross the road.”
Blaine laughed and patted me on the shoulder before he got up to put his bowl in the dishwasher. “Be ready at three—I’m getting Rob to drop you off.”
I stared into my box of crackers in silence for a while after I’d heard the front door close behind him. After he gave me Walter, my wonderful Lipizzan gelding, I knew things had changed between us. Nothing was said, but it felt different. Calmer. Like we had a mutual respect and understanding.
It was what I’d wanted, of course—to gain his respect and with it, his trust. But I hadn’t expected it to feel like this. Like everything just fit into place, somehow.
Perhaps it was my frustrating, physical attraction to him that made it seem like something deeper, just because we got along now. Yeah, that was probably it—my mutinous ovaries trying to make it out like there was more going on between us so they could get a chance at throwing themselves at him again at the earliest convenience.
Traitorous little bastards.
I grabbed a cracker and stuffed it in my mouth, savoring its bland saltiness and the immediate, calming effect it had on my nausea.
Getting along with Blaine was a vital next step in my plan. I had to keep my goal in mind, or I would never be free again.
But why did my heart suddenly cringe at the thought of betraying him like that?
* * *
“So Blaine says you’re sick. You look okay though—what’s up?”
I glanced at Rob out of the corner of my eye as he navigated the big Range Rover through the city streets. There was something oddly endearing about having the burly bodyguard seemingly concerned about my health, even if it was a somewhat surreal experience.
“Just a lot of nausea and throwing up. It comes in waves—right now, I’m fine and dandy.”
“Mmmhm,” he hummed. “Does it come at any specific times?”
“Usually the mornings. Why, do you need to know to book my appointment with the doctor?”
“Yeah,” he said, not taking his eyes off the road. “It’ll help. Okay, love, looks like we’ve landed.”
I ducked my neck to look out the front window just as we drove underneath a big professional-looking building and into its parking basement.
“Blaine’s got an actual office?” I asked, somewhat surprised by the grandness of the location. Somehow, I’d expected us to drive up to a seedy motel room with stains on the carpets and the blinds pulled.
Rob chuckled. “Yeah, the Steels like to keep up appearances for the law and such. We do most business meetings here. At least, the pleasant ones.”
I shuddered at the implication that the “less pleasant” business meetings needed to be somewhere else—somewhere the law wouldn’t know about.
Rob parked up and waited for me to fumble the seatbelt off so he could escort me to the elevator. He pushed the button for the fifth floor and, when the doors opened a few moments later, stepped out as if to check the floor was clear of threats. Then he nodded to me and waved a few fingers at me, motioning for me to join him.
I smiled broadly at him. “You’re taking your bodyguard duties very seriously, huh?”
He snorted. “Love, if something happens to you under my watch, I’m dead. Can’t leave the missus as a widow with two wee ones, now can I?”
“I’m sure Blaine likes you a whole lot more than me,” I said, patting his arm reassuringly. “You’ll be fine, even if some rival family suddenly decided to burst through the Steel’s office building and kidnap me for no apparent reason.”
Rob gave me a long glance. “Yeah. Sure. I guess you don’t know what happened to the two men who were on guard duty the night you decided to slip out?”
My heart gave an uncomfortable lurch. I hadn’t even thought about it. “W-what do you mean? What happened to them?”
“Nothing they won’t recover from,” he said, giving me a small shrug. “But then, they didn’t let someone snatch you—you went off by your own choice. Don’t underestimate him, love. He’s fiercely protective of you, and has a bit of a nasty temper.”
I opened my mouth to ask him what the heck he meant by that, but just then Blaine walked through the door leading into the hallway and I lost my train of thought. He’d changed into a black, tailored suit that fit him like a glove and a blue striped tie, and I was completely taken aback by my own body’s reaction to the sight.
My heart sped up, making my pulse hammer in my throat, and my traitorous ovaries seemed to melt in my abdomen, making my nether region clench with sudden and intense desire. To my excruciating embarrassment, I felt my panties start to dampen.
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 my 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.”
* * * *