The man’s mask falls off, hanging around his neck like an executioner’s noose, but he doesn’t bother fixing it. His beady black eyes are infuriated. With a savage growl, he lunges at Nolan. They fall to the floor, fists flying. Tully, Boner, and I watch, ready to defend Nolan if we need to, but we let him fight it out, our own bodyguards are about the place as well. No one comes to aid his opponent.
“You fucking asshole,” Nolan fumes, landing a solid punch to the guy’s nose. We’ve all been trained in martial arts, and will easily take this guy out. His aim is solid, his fist connecting. Blood spurts everywhere, and the guy covers his face with his hand. In a flash, he reaches to his foot, and the light catches a gleaming silver blade in the light.
“Fuck!” I growl, and in one reflexive motion, kick the blade from his hand. The knife clatters to the floor. Nolan decks him again. He’s on his knees, grabbing at his broken nose, when uniformed security guards grab both of them.
“He assaulted her,” Nolan says, pointing an irate finger at the guy, who still looks ready to kill. “She safeworded and he wouldn’t stop.”
“She fucking likes it,” he growls. He’s missing teeth, and his bloodied face is contorted in anger. His thick, heavy eyebrows draw together over black eyes that are too-small for his puffy face, like buttons sewn too tightly on a throw pillow.
“I know what she fucking likes,” Nolan fairly spits back.
“He pulled a goddamn blade,” I say to security, my voice thick with anger. For half a pound I’d slice the man’s throat with his own blade.
He growls and tries to lunge back at Nolan, but the guard holds him back. His shirt rips, revealing pasty white skin and ink I know on sight.
“Shite,” I mutter, when I recognize the mark of a Martin.
“Son of a bitch,” Boner groans beside me. “Mother of God. I know who he is.”
I turn to him. “You know him?”
He sighs. “Yeah, brother.” He shakes his head. “Meet your future brother-in-law.”Chapter 2AileenI wake in the middle of the night to the sound of my parents fighting. I do what I’ve been doing since I was a child, grab my pillow and pull it over my head. It isn’t the fighting I can’t stand but my utter helplessness.
I’ve intervened, all right, but learned quickly that was pointless. I even called the police once when I was a child. They didn’t come after I told them the address, and I spent the next fortnight regretting my call. My father has a cruel tongue and a heavy hand, and he wields both with chilling results.
I used to feel badly for my mother. Though she’s selfish and shallow, she’s still my mother. But over the years, she’s lost my sympathy as well.
I hate it here. God, I hate it here.
If I were anyone else, I could leave this place and never look back. Wouldn’t matter where I went, really, as long as I had a place of my own. But the rules of the Clan are iron-clad. Single women, the daughters of the soldiers, do not leave their parents unless they wed or die. In some cases, it’s nearly the same thing. My father’s a bit of a celebrity, having sired six daughters.
I start when I hear something crash to the floor in the other room. My heart slams in my chest when I hear my father’s angry, drunken growls. They’re closer to me than they normally are. In my sleepy haze, I wonder if I can find the ear plugs I bought at a concert I snuck into, before I realize they’re still at the bottom of my bag somewhere.
I sit up straight in bed, wide awake. Though I can’t hear every word, I catch phrases that make my thumping heart come to a stuttering stall.
“Only choice… wed to the McCarthys.”
My mother cries, her response barely intelligible. “…gave them all away.”
Did she… does she… actually have regrets about what they’ve done to her daughters?
I close my eyes and ball my hands into fists, pushing them into my eye sockets. I won’t cry. I won’t.
It doesn’t matter that my father gave four of my sisters away to one of the men he worked with. Five, technically. Only one escaped, if you can call it that. My sister Emilie. On her wedding night, she took her own life.
It was after Emilie’s death that my mother began to protest. Until then, I was convinced she was as complicit as he was. She spent his money with glee. Blood money, I called it, the money they earned from the marriages. I can’t imagine the sizable sum Mack Martin, my father’s chief, has paid for my sisters. Martin only had one daughter, who supposedly took her own life. Martin needed a ready supply of female virgins, like an ancient priest looking for children to sacrifice to the gods.