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“That’s for touching Poppy. If you threaten her, call her juvenile names, if you so much as look at her again, I will break every bone in your body, Bryant. Do you understand me?
Bryant wiped the smear of blood off his lip. “You could have been so much more, Ronan. So much more than this.”
“I’ll take what I have,” I said. A good woman. Fine friends. A chance at happiness.
And I left Bryant Morelli, like every other person in my life who would use me as a weapon, behind.
I made a quick stop at Poppy’s old house to pick up the box that was still on the bed and remembered that Bryant had said he had a box of my mother’s. It would have been nice to have those things. Maybe someday I’d break back into his house and get Gwen’s things, but that day was not today.
At home I found Poppy on the couch, eating something I didn’t make her, which I didn’t like.
“Hi,” she said, licking the tines of her fork. “What have you been doing?”
“I went to Bryant, told him we were none of his concern.”
She put the bowl down and got up on her knees on the couch, happiness dawning on her face. “I also told him if he looked at you funny I’d break every bone in his body.” I handed her the box and she clutched it to her chest.
“Thank you,” she breathed like I’d handed her the keys to a castle.
“Thank you,” I said and pulled her up off the couch into my arms. She’d handed me a future I’d never been able to dream of. A life out of a fairy tale.
“We’re free,” she whispered.
I’d never been free before. Out of the life. I’d never lived a day that I wasn’t in service to violence and violent people. A strange sound erupted out of my throat.
Poppy leaned back, looking at me strangely. “Are you…”
“Laughing, lass. I’m laughing.”
She stroked my face. “What do we do now?” she whispered.
“I want to get you pregnant,” I told her, walking her backwards to the bedroom.
“Okay, but we need to think outside the bedroom.”
“I want a boat.”
“For birds and shit?”
“What’s wrong with that? I’m a simple man, Poppy. I want to get you pregnant and I want a boat.” She blinked at me startled and then her face fell open with a radiant smile. And I swear to God I saw her soul beaming up at me.
“All right, Ronan. Let’s get you a boat.”
“What do you want?” I asked her and I imagined some answer about taking our money and starting her own foundation to help families. Or maybe going back to school to be a teacher. Or rescuing cats. Some big-hearted soft thing. And I would support her in any of it. All of it. I would take my blood-soaked hands and build gardens all across Northern Ireland if that was what she wanted.
“I just want you,” she said and kissed me. I walked her out of that room into the bedroom, where I got on my knees and worshiped her, our future and that little pink bow.
* * *
Ronan
I left her sleeping, sated and twitching in her dreams, holding my heart in her cupped palm. How was this going to work, I wondered. Her with all her hope and her feelings. Me with my fallow garden of a soul.
It had to, I thought. Whatever I needed to do to keep her, I would.
She was mine and I was hers. We were married. With my body I thee worship.
The words had been said, the promises made. There was no going back. Beneath us, in the rest of the brownstone, I had the sense of my men. Of Niamh. I felt protected, which meant Poppy was protected, and if I woke up every day for the rest of my life and only felt this—it would be enough. But that girl, she would not be content if I wasn’t feeling everything. It wouldn’t be easy, but I would try. For her.
I made coffee and walked into the living room.
The jewels had been picked up and put back in the plastic bag. I wondered if Poppy wanted those kinds of things.
Diamonds and the like.
I remembered her, in her life before. There’d been the gala after the senator died and she wore those black pearls like a collar around her neck. I remembered thinking how delicate they made her throat look.
How lovely.
The first thing I was going to do was get rid of that Morelli ring on her finger. It was big and she kept hitting me with it as she slept. It packed a fucking punch.
There was a quiet knock on the door and I went to open it. Raj stood there with a big cardboard box in his hands.
