Irish Vow

My world is spinning around me. I feel dizzy, like I could faint. Dimly, I realize I’m grabbing onto the countertop for support, staring into the blazing green eyes of the gorgeous woman standing in front of me with her arms crossed over her chest, glaring at me as if I’m her worst enemy.

Which, I suppose if what she’s said is true, I am.

“I’m Saoirse O’Sullivan. I’m Liam’s fiancée. And just who the fuck are you?”

“What do you mean, you’re his fiancée?” I manage, focusing on the first part in an effort to avoid answering the second. “I—he hadn’t mentioned—”

“Well, he wouldn’t, now would he, if he were keeping another girl in his house?” Saoirse looks disgusted, shaking her head. “I want to say I don’t believe this, but in some ways, it makes some things make better sense—”

“No.” I shake my head firmly, because even if she’s quickly coming around, I refuse to believe it. “He doesn’t have a fiancée. He would have told me, he wouldn’t—”

“Wouldn’t what?” Saoirse looks at me keenly, and I catch a glimpse of something sparkling on her finger in the light of the apartment, something that I don’t want to look at too closely, so that I don’t have to admit what it is.

But Saoirse clearly isn’t going to give me that luxury. She raises her left hand squarely in front of my face, her own creased with anger, her lips thin and set.

“Aye,” she snaps, that slight hint of a Gaelic accent slipping through again. I love hearing Liam’s. It makes his voice sound smooth as cream mixed with whiskey, like an Irish coffee, and just as full of heat when it slips into his voice because he’s aroused. I hate hearing it on this woman’s voice, sharp and cutting, slicing into me and making me think of Liam right now, at this moment, like that—when there’s a very real chance that he’s lied to me. Or, if not actively lied, lied by omission.

How could he not tell me if he had a fiancée?

I’d been with Alexandre, I’ve fully admitted that, along with my feelings for him. But I hadn’t been engaged to him. I hadn’t—

I’d promised to stay with him, true. I’d said I loved him. Despite the fact that my bond to him had been one of someone who was owned, I’d meant those words when I’d said them. Deep down, I can’t argue that Liam having been engaged prior to us is so different, but still—

How could he not have told me?

Saoirse waves her hand in front of my eyes, as if trying to pull me back to the present. “Take a good look at it,” she snaps. “My grandmother’s ring, put on my finger by Liam McGregor, in front of my father and uncle and Father Donahue, promises made by us both in front of all three of them and God. So whoever you are, I’d thank you to tell me what you’re doing in my fiancé’s apartment.” 

I open my mouth and close it again, stunned by the sight of the ring on her finger, the oval diamond glittering in the sun, flanked by emeralds the same bright green as her eyes. Natural emeralds, not the overly dark green that lab-created ones take on. They’re set in yellow gold, the band filigreed on the sides. It looks like an heirloom piece, an antique.

I feel sick, thinking of Liam sliding it onto her finger with a promise. Her grandmother’s ring. In front of a priest.

Those things hold weight. Not just to him and Saoirse and me, but also her family. And, in a more far-reaching sense, I suspect to the organization he runs, too. I don’t know the ins and outs of Irish crime. I barely know the Bratva, and my father was involved in that. 

The last time I got mixed up in the dealings of a crime organization, I was tortured nearly to death. Since then, I’ve tried to avoid it—clearly with limited success. First Alexei, and now falling for Liam, who is probably playing a dangerous game if this woman is to be believed.

But I can barely think about that. All I can think about is that he’s promised to marry someone else. He’s been in my bed, inside me, pleasuring me and calling out my name as I repeatedly did the same for him. He’s sworn to me he loves me, held back his kisses and his desire waiting on me to feel the same, forcing us to wait to sleep together again until I’d forgotten Alexandre. And all the while, he’s been doing that—while engaged to someone else?

I can’t believe it. I won’t.

Saoirse drops her hand, looking at me with frustration written across every one of her pretty features. “Are you an idiot?” she asks, narrowing her eyes. “I’ve asked you twice now—”

My thoughts circle back to something she’d said before. A name. “Father Donahue,” I blurt out, and Saoirse narrows her eyes.

“What about him?” 

“You said he performed your—your engagement? What do you mean?” The idea of that seems strange to me. I’ve never pictured getting engaged other than having the man ask me in some romantic setting. Sofia didn’t so much get engaged as getting muscled to the cathedral between Luca and Don Rossi, and Caterina’s engagement was decided without her present, and her wedding was equally rushed. 

Saoirse sighs. “It’s a tradition of the Kings, when their highest-ranking is engaged to be married. He signs a document with a priest, the bride-to-be, and two of her male family members present.” She shrugs. “It’s all very archaic, as many of their traditions are, but not without its charms. And,” she adds, her eyes narrowing. “Liam performed that ceremony with me. So that brings me back to the question—”

“Father Donahue,” I blurt out again, and Saoirse rolls her eyes, but I don’t stop to let her talk. “He’s in Manhattan. Is that where you live?”

“No.” Saoirse looks at me as if I’m a bit slow. “I live here in Boston. With my father—”

“So how could he have performed your…your engagement?”

Saoirse lets out a long, slow breath through her pursed lips as if it’s taking every bit of patience she has to keep talking to me. “We were in Manhattan when it was performed,” she says, speaking slowly as if to an idiot or a child. “At Viktor Andreyev and Caterina’s second wedding. My father wanted it confirmed before Liam left on some business trip—” Her eyes narrow again, and I see her putting the pieces together.

“I’ll ask you again,” she says finally. “What the fuck are you doing in my fiancé’s apartment? And who are you to him?”

Much to Saoirse’s plain disgust—and mine with myself, if I’m being honest—I burst into tears. Because I can’t deny it any longer.

If she were lying, she wouldn’t know Father Donahue. She definitely wouldn’t have been to Viktor and Caterina’s wedding—which she probably attended with Liam. The thought of them at a wedding together, holding hands, dancing, laughing, makes me feel sick. 

I look at the ring on her finger, and I know she’s telling the truth. It’s in her bearing, how confidently she speaks, how all the pieces fit together. He’s kept this secret from me, and this is how I’m finding out.

My knees feel weak. Tears are streaming down my face as I clap my other hand over my mouth, stifling the deep, shuddering sobs that are threatening to break loose. Saoirse shakes her head in frustrated disgust, turning away from me. 

It takes me a second to realize where she’s going—towards Liam’s bedroom.

I follow her long enough for her to stalk inside, looking around as if she’s searching for something specific. The bed is made up, and she turns away from it to yank open dresser drawers, his closet, stalking into the attached bathroom and then back out again.

“There’s nothing of yours in here.” Saoirse glares at me as if it’s somehow my fault that she hasn’t found the evidence she was looking for. 

“I—I don’t sleep in here,” I manage through my tears, my throat choked. “I—”

“You don’t sleep with him?”

I shake my head, and that much, at least, is true.  She narrows her eyes as if sizing me up, and then pushes past me to stride through the living room again, towards the opposite side of the house.

Towards my room.

I try to catch up with her, but the guest room I occupy is the first one she enters. She looks around, standing in the middle of the room as she takes in the pink and white color scheme, the unmade bed, and the bathroom door open to show where some of my things are strewn across the counter. 

“So this is where you sleep.” Saoirse presses her lips together. “Did he have this room made up especially for you? I can’t imagine him telling a designer to do—this—for any other reason.” She waves her hand around at the admittedly overly-feminine décor, and I feel the air go out of me as she turns back to me.

“Yes,” I admit quietly. “He had the room redecorated so I’d be more—comfortable.”

Saoirse raises an eyebrow. “This is your idea of a well-decorated room?”

“Well—no, not exactly.” I bite my lower lip. The conversation is ridiculous, but the longer we can keep from getting around to what Liam and I are to each other, the better. I’m still not sure how much of it I want to admit to her, how much I should say—not even for Liam’s protection, but for my own. 

“I used to be a ballerina,” I finish lamely. “He just told the decorator that, and she—well, he said she kind of went off on her own, and this was the result. I was just happy to have somewhere to sleep.”

Even I'd admit the last comes out a bit melodramatic, but it stops Saoirse in her tracks. She pauses, considering me again for a moment.

“What do you mean?” she asks finally. “That you were glad to have somewhere to sleep? What are you, some kind of charity case? A family member I don’t know about?”

It’s on the tip of my tongue to tell her that, yes, I’m some long-lost family member. But I’m not sure she’d believe it in the first place, and at any rate, it would come out eventually that I’d lied. I don’t necessarily want to tell her the whole truth if I can avoid it, but something tells me that the fewer lies I weave around Liam and me to this woman, the better.

“Liam rescued me,” I say truthfully, wrapping my arms around my waist.

“Rescued you?” Saoirse looks doubtful. “From what? Who?”

How the fuck do I condense this into a short enough story that she’ll listen to—and even believe—me?

“I got mixed up in some dealings with the Bratva in Manhattan a while back. Trying to help a friend,” I explain. “One of his brigadiers turned traitor. He kidnapped the Bratva leader’s wife—”

“Yes, Viktor and Caterina. I heard the whole story, or some of it, anyway, from Liam.” Saoirse purses her lips. “So you got caught up in that? That man that kidnapped Caterina and her friend and some other girl?”

Clearly, Liam left me out when telling Saoirse the story. I can understand it, I suppose—he probably wouldn’t have been able to get away to come and find me so easily if he’d said plainly he was going after a girl he’d left behind. But at the same time, it hurts to think that he didn’t tell her about me. I wonder what else he told her, if he told her that he’d participated in torturing Alexei to death, how clean she thinks the hands of the man that she’s meant to marry are. 

I wonder what she would think if she knew what kind of woman she is. A daughter of someone high up in the Kings, clearly. But is she like Sofia, who never wanted to know any of it until she was forced to, or more like Caterina, who was raised in that world and never flinched at the things that had to be done? 

I think, deep down, that the woman standing in front of me has a strong spine. She hasn’t cried or shouted, hasn’t flown into a rage. She’s angry, but she’s talking calmly to me, though I can hear the thread of fury through every single one of her words. She’s stayed composed, something that makes me think of Caterina, and it’s that, too, that makes me believe she’s telling the truth.

This is the sort of woman that Liam would marry, if he’d never grown to have feelings for me. 

The question is, does he want to?

I don’t think that’s a question she could properly answer. And I’m not sure if Liam will tell me the truth any longer.

The thought nearly sends me into a fresh round of tears, but Saoirse snaps her fingers, her frustration showing clearly again. “Explain,” she says curtly. “You were kidnapped?”

“Yes, I—I met Liam at the safe house in Russia, when he and Luca came there with Luca’s wife and some of the others that were in danger because of what Alexei was doing. Because I’d had dealings with the Bratva before—tried to get information from them—Viktor had decided I was in danger too, so he wanted me brought there. That’s when Liam and I met—”

“So you’ve said,” Saorise snaps. “So the two of you—what? Became friends? And he ‘rescued’ you because of that?”

“I—yes.” I lick my dry lips, feeling my heart racing in my chest. I have to tread carefully, now, if I don’t want Saoirse to know what Liam and I are to each other—if I want to keep that to myself, until I have answers from him. “Alexei came to the safe house—”

“Yes, I know. And you were with them? When he tried to sell the women at that party?”

How much does she really know? “Yes. And someone bought me before Viktor, Liam, and the others could get there. I wasn't there when they rescued Caterina and the other women and Viktor’s children. A Frenchman named—”

“And Liam went to rescue you from this—Frenchman?” Saoirse interrupts me, and I can see that her patience is getting thinner by the moment. “He what—rode in on a white horse, stole you, and brought you back here?”

“More or less,” I whisper. Her version, in fact, is a lot less, but I’m not inclined to tell her any more. I don’t want to share the mingled traumas and joys of my time with Alexandre or the inescapable pain of what he’d forced Liam to do. I don’t want to be the one to tell this woman, who is engaged to Liam, that he was held at gunpoint and forced to fuck me to climax in front of Alexandre and his friends. 

Liam should tell her that if she’s going to know. Just as he should have told me about Saoirse in the first place.

“And you’re telling me that you’re just a friend.” Saoirse looks at me carefully as if trying to surmise how trustworthy I am. “That Liam went all the way to bloody fucking France, burst in and took you away from this man who bought you—putting his own self and a great deal more in danger—and brought you here to his penthouse and a room he’d had specially decorated for you, and told me not a single bloody thing about this—because you’re his friend? A woman he’s known for—how long?”

“Not long,” I whisper. I can’t quantify it exactly. I couldn’t even tell her how long I was at Alexandre’s with absolute certainty. The days had tended to bleed into each other there, especially without a television or a phone or access to a computer. I’d been in a strange sort of bubble; it had almost felt as if time hadn’t started back up again until Liam had whisked me out and I’d woken up in that London hotel. 

Saoirse shakes her head, disgust starting to show on her features again, and she turns away from me towards the dresser. I don’t realize what she’s doing in time to stop her, and I’m not sure I could have even if I’d tried.

It only takes the first drawer for her to find something suspicious. She turns back towards me, the silk and lace teddy, the pretty sleepwear that Liam had bought me, and the pink and lace lingerie set clutched in her fists.

“What in the bloody hell is this?” She drops it in a pile on the floor, flinging it towards me. “He rescued you and brought you straight here, right? So he must have bought these things for you, right?” She dangles the pink and white collar from her finger, and I can feel my face flushing to the roots of my hair, just looking at it. Thinking about how many times I’ve imagined wearing it, and the rest of the lingerie set that came with it, for Liam. The way he’d bought it for me, even though I’d said I didn’t need it, as if I might have a reason to in the future.

The memory of that day makes all the hurt come rushing back, flooding me with a pain that I hadn’t thought he could make me feel. I remember the night he’d gone out, when he’d come home to me having a nightmare and what had come after, and I realize with a blinding certainty that he must have been with her. The way he’d been before he left, almost guilty, refusing to sit next to me on the couch or touch me—he’d been going to see his fiancée. At the same time, I waited for him to come back, unknowing. And that night—

I want to know if he’s slept with her, and don’t, all at once. It’ll be a question I’ll have to ask him if I can manage it. There’s no way to ask her without giving away that I, too, have slept with Liam, for different reasons, on different occasions.

Once because I was forced to. Once out of desire, and I’d managed to ruin that too when I’d screamed Alexandre’s name at the end. I still have nightmares sometimes about Liam scrambling away from me mid-orgasm, horror on his face, still hard, still twitching with the pleasure of his climax even as he’d looked at me with such pain that it had ripped me apart to see it, in the same way that I’d ripped him apart too, by doing it.

Now, we might never get a chance again after this.

“No,” I whisper, abandoning any ideas about not lying to her. I can’t face this woman and tell her flat out that Liam bought me any of these things or tell her about what we’ve done together. I just can’t, not until I know the truth from him, because some small part of me is still holding out hope that she’s lying.

Even though I know, deep down, that she’s not.

“You’re not fucking him?” Saoirse narrows her eyes, tossing the collar onto the floor to join the rest of the lingerie. “You’re telling me you just—have all of this? That the two of you are nothing but friends? You’re some charity case he took in and just—fucking forgot to tell me about?”

“Your engagement was arranged, right? Maybe you’re just not that close?” The words come out before I can stop myself, even I know they’re absolutely the wrong choice. I can see it even more clearly in the way Saoirse’s eyes go round, as if she can’t believe I’ve spoken to her that way.

“Tell. Me. You’re. Not. Fucking. Him.” Her words come out individually, enunciated, and I swallow hard before looking her in the eye.

“No,” I whisper. “We’re just friends.”

“You’re bloody fucking lying.” Saoirse shakes her head with disgust. “But I suppose there’s no point in trying to drag it out of you.” 

She pushes past me, back out towards the living room, and I follow her numbly at a distance, trying to hold back the tears. She gets as far as the front door before she turns sharply around, her eyes narrowed as she points one manicured fingernail at me. 

“This isn’t over,” she says flatly. It’s not a threat, not even said in that angry tone of voice. It’s a simple fact, spoken like a woman who has a right to the man who lives here. “I’ll deal with Liam when I get back. As for you—” she grits her teeth, and I can see her jaw working. “I’d be thinking of somewhere else to live if I were you. You won’t be here on Liam’s charity much longer.”

When the door slams behind her, it shakes the entire penthouse. My knees won’t hold me up any longer. I only just make it to the living room sofa before I collapse onto it, dissolving in tears.

How could he not have told me?