Chapter 19 · Dinner in Blood

"Put the knife down, Cillian." Kane's hand closed around his wrist before the blade reached the man's throat.

Cillian stopped with the edge a breath from Kane's skin. Across the table, three family members watched with the bored smiles of people who had paid for the show.

"He called me a butcher," Cillian said.

"You are a butcher." The old man at the head of the table dabbed his mouth with a linen napkin. "Just an educated one."

Kane's grip tightened. Heat pressed through Cillian's sleeve, sharp and steady. The blood pact answered at once. A pulse jumped beneath Cillian's palm, and the same pulse kicked inside his own chest.

"You invited him into my home," Kane said. "You don't get to insult him at my table."

The old man smiled. "Your table? Your father bought this house before you were born."

"Then buy your own dinner."

A fork clicked against porcelain.

Cillian kept the knife still. The blade was narrow, silver, and too clean for the kind of room it sat in.