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I can’t divorce her—and I don’t fuckingwantto. I like being married to her. But I also don’t want to force children on her.
We also don’t have time to draw this out. I’d lingered too long with her this morning, and now, if we don’t finish breakfast soon, I’ll be late.
“Let’s eat,” Marika says, as if she can hear the train of thought running through my head. “I know you have places to be.”
Breakfast is quieter than I’d hoped. Marika finishes off another mimosa and then switches to hot tea, sipping it as we eat the quiche, murmuring at how good it is. I’d hoped to impress her with my cooking skills again, but I don’t find the same pleasure in it that I did last night. Things don’t feel as good this morning, and I dislike that.
I wanted this trip to go perfectly, and instead, I’m starting to worry that perhaps I’m the one who has too high of expectations for this marriage.
The drive into the city is mostly silent. I’m focused on work, flipping through files I’d ignored largely until now, and Marika watches the scenery go by, her face pensive and lost in thought. When the driver pulls up to the curb, I glance over at her. “This is us,” I tell her, and she jumps a little, a smile that seems a little forced appearing on her face.
It’s not the kind of worry I wanted to have before going into this meeting.
I get out and open the door for her myself. “You have the credit card,” I remind her, forcing a teasing note into my voice, a hint of our conversation from last night. “Use it however you like. I’ll call you and give you a time and place to meet after I’m finished.”
Marika nods, and then, to my surprise, before I can lean down to give her a kiss, she goes up on her tiptoes instead, leaning in with one hand against my chest as she grazes her mouth over mine. “I’ll see you later,” she says softly, and then she’s gone.
I find myself wishing I could spend the day with her, instead of dealing with the Dublin Kings.
They’re largely older than me by two decades; only a few men around my age are around the table as I go into the meeting. Within moments, it’s clear that they arenotpleased about the marriage I arranged for myself, even less so than the Chicago Kings.
“Taking the Vasilev territory would be more profitable than marrying the girl.” Michael Hannigan, the leader here in Dublin, frowns at me. “Sounds like you let your cock get in the way of your thinkin’, lad.”
I frown at him in return, giving him the same steely glare. “And I think that’s no way to talk to your equal, Hannigan.”
“Hmph.” He shakes his head. “With three decades on you, lad, we’re not equals. Not until you’ve reached my age, and by then, I’ll be well in the ground. No matter that you hold that seat in the States.” He slaps his hand against the wood of the table. “It was a poor choice.”
“All the same, whether you think so or not, the marriage is done. And consummated,” I add.Many, many times over.“There’s no undoing it.”
“So take the territory anyway.” That comes from further down the table. “What would the lass do about it? Divorce you?”
There’s a laugh around the table that irks me almost to the point of anger.
“He’s right,” Hannigan says. “Fuck the Vasilevs. You have the girl; now take their territory and businesses. There’s no other organization in Chicago even close. Not even the mafia there holds that kind of power any longer. It’s you, and Nikolai Vasilev. So take what should be yours, and we’ll all profit from it.”
“By breaking my word, you mean.” I hold that glare on him. “Is that how you run things in Dublin? Because if so, I don’t think it’s Vasilev’s position I should be thinking about taking.”
It’s a clear threat, and I mean it to be. “My integrity matters,” I continue sharply. “I signed a contract in blood, and swore to it in front of a priest, in God’s own church. You think that’s something I should go back on? You think I should slaughter my wife’s family and take their legacy for my own, after saying in front of her and all surrounded at the altar that I would protect her and honor her?”
There’s silence around the table, and I nod. “I thought not.”
“You should have consulted us before you married her,” Hannigan says roughly. “Chicago still answers to Dublin—”
“I make my own choices. So did my father.”
“Your father lost his life at the wrong end of a gun.” It’s another clear threat, this time directed at me, and I can feel the tension rising in the room.
“Marika Vasilev was a good choice of wife,” I say firmly. “The alliance only strengthens us. A war would have cost lives and money, on both sides, with no clear promise of an outcome. We should all be too old and too wise, here, to spill blood when there’s another way of doing things. Nikolai Vasilev is now our ally in all things. And my wife is young and happy to give me the heir that I need. Peace is better.”
The heir that I need.My conversation with Marika this morning still echoes in my head, and it makes me feel taut and unsettled, thinking of it. There is no question that shehasto give me an heir, sooner rather than later, the pleasure of getting there aside. Here, more than ever, I can see the shaky ground that I’m on.
The Kings are no democracy, but they’re the only crime organization that I know of that has a table of men who sit in on decisions, not one leader making them with impunity. There are rules and laws, and it’s true that I skated the edge of them by not consulting Dublin with my choice of a wife. I know all too well the tale of what happened in Boston, with the McGregors. Liam McGregor’s fate is better than mine would be, if I can’t follow through on what my marriage is meant to promise.
“The Vasilevs are weak.” Gareth Collins speaks up from where he’s sitting, his mouth a deep frown in his thick beard. “They nearly lost their seat to a man from inside, someone who should never have been allowed so close. Better to root them out, than breed with them. That weakness—”
“Enough!” I shake my head, my voice raising in the small room. “The marriage is done. I will not sully my vows by destroying my wife’s family after swearing to do so otherwise, and I will not set her aside. This is how things will be.”
“Then I suggest you hurry with getting an heir on her,” Hannigan says, in a deceptively calm voice. “So we can all see that the girl is capable. After all, that’s why you married her.”
