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Emma Swan knows her son.
Who he is.What he is.She knows the Gold family business is a front, a facade, for other, unsavoury things. She knows about the guns, about the drugs, about the underage girls (after all she was one of them herself, once upon a time) she knows about the stacks of cash hidden in the walls and where the bodies are buried.She knows.She pretends she doesn’t.Henry pretends that he believes her.
It’s not a bad life, being the mother of Boston’s young and powerful mafia crown prince. It beats foster care or living on the streets or jail, that’s for damn sure. She’s got a nice house and a driver and a generous allowance, Henry is always home for dinner every Sunday night like clockwork (she pretends she doesn’t see the flecks of blood under his nails when she passes him the salt) and she still turns plenty of heads when she goes shopping or out for a drink at upscale bars in trendy neighbourhoods, frequented by stockbrokers and the CEOs of tech start-ups, handsome, arrogant men with gym-hardened abs and soft, clean hands. Sometimes she goes home with one of them at the end of the night, drunkenly fumbling in the back of an Uber and then falling into bed, wondering in the back of her mind while they fuck her into the mattress with their breath hot on her neck and those clean hands roaming her curves what they’d think if they knew the truth about the hot blonde named Emma in the tight yet tasteful dress and Louboutin heels that they’d carelessly taken for a PR rep or a well-to-do divorcée. How she’d caught crime boss Robert Gold’s then twenty-six year-old son Neal’s eye as a fourteen-year-old runaway and been pregnant by him at fifteen, caught by the police in the shitty motel where he’d been keeping her as his girlfriend and filling her head with dreams that would never come true. How his father had gotten him out of the statutory rape charge like he’d probably done a dozen times before, with the judge assigned to the case firmly in his pocket and all the paperwork mysteriously “disappearing” before it could be filed in court. How Neal had been gunned down by enforcers for the rival Mills family and his death had ignited an all out war between the two factions that had only ended when matriarch Cora Mills’s body had been discovered by her daughter Regina, seated upright at the dining room table of their elegant Beacon Hill manse without a hair out of place and a gaping hole in her chest, her heart neatly laid out on a silver platter set in front of her. Emma runs into Regina from time to time around town, they do run in the same circles, after all, they’re cooly polite to each other publicly but she knows the other woman still blames the Gold family for her mother’s death, and Emma is the mother of Gold’s sole heir, his only grandson, Henry. He’d magnanimously took them both in after Neal died, proclaiming her to be his beloved, bereaved daughter-in-law (even though she and Neal were never actually married, she knows now she was just a fling on the side and he was really engaged to a woman named Tamara the whole time) and Emma was too young then, too broke and too broken to resist the most powerful man in the Boston underworld and the deal he offered with a crocodile’s dangerous grin.Her silence for her son’s future.She keeps quiet for Henry, for her only family, pretends that Neal was a hero and never says a word about the things he told her, about the true nature of his father’s business, secrets let slip in the dead of night. She knows Gold’s dirty, knows his son was too, knows things that could get her and her young son both killed. She knows, and Gold knows she knows, and she knows if she stays that Henry will inevitably turn into one of them too, like his father, like his grandfather, and she knows even before she accepts Gold’s deal that it’s already too late.“Welcome the the family, dearie,” Gold says, with that smile that sends a chill right down Emma’s spine as she holds her son in her arms and watches his dark, cold eyes dart to Henry’s small face, so like Neal’s.Too much like Neal’s.He just shows up late one night, talking quietly to her son in the front hall and Emma watches unseen from the landing above, hidden in the shadows. Dark hair and dark leather jacket, just another nameless, faceless associate standing with his back to her and she’s about to go back to her bedroom and pretend she didn’t see anything, didn’t hear anything, when Henry suddenly disappears down the stairs into the basement and the man turns, standing with a hand in his pocket and the other resting on his thigh. Only it’s not a hand, it’s a hook, metal gleaming darkly and a curving into a point that looks wicked sharp. But the hardware aside, he’s not a hatchet-faced goon like some of the other men who pay Henry clandestine late-night visits, he’s a handsome bastard who wouldn’t be out of place in any of the wine bars or cute bistros that Emma frequents where no one knows her family and she feels a flutter deep in her stomach and her pulse between her legs. As if he senses her presence he glances up, eyes narrowing in her direction and she freezes. His hand drifts around his waist to where he’s probably got a gun stashed in the back of his pants and he takes a step forward, but then Henry is back with a duffel bag slung over his shoulder and they leave together a few moments later. Emma notices the black gloves on her son’s hands and the bulge in the back of the stranger’s jacket (she was right, he’s packing heat) and he glances back before he follows Henry out the door, searching the hall and then looking up again. This time she doesn’t hide, moving into the light and taking hold of the oak railing as his gaze met hers. Surprise flashes on his face and she raises a brow, staring down at him while he stares up at her.He doesn’t say a word, hand on the doorknob. Only it’s not the hand, it’s the hook. He sees her looking at it, and of all things, he winks.Killian Jones. Irish, not Boston Irish, but born and raised on the Emerald Isle itself. He introduces himself to Emma properly the following Sunday, showing up for dinner with Henry and Henry’s girlfriend Jacinda. The hook is gone, replaced by a prosthetic hand that makes him look much more respectable. Only he’s anything but respectable, Emma knows, just as she knows that Regina Mills in trying to encroach on Gold’s territory down at the docks again and that Henry tossed a pair of blood-soaked gloves into the fireplace in the family room and burned them the morning after his middle of the night jaunt with his new business partner, as he calls him. Killian’s dressed all in black again and he brought red roses for Henry’s mother, a gift more suited for a lover than a hostess. Emma’s wearing a pink belted dress that Jacinda compliments, it’s soft and sweet (Emma was both those things once, she’s not anymore) her hair up in a high ponytail that leaves her neck bare and exposed. Her son’s hands are spotlessly clean, not a fleck of blood under his nails, but then again Jacinda is here and she’s not family, not yet.When she takes plates into the kitchen after dinner Killian helps, bringing the empty platter and the carving knife. Henry and Jacinda laugh from the other room and Emma smiles, happy that her son is happy, that his hands are clean tonight and she hasn’t caught a glimpse of Neal in his eyes all evening.Her smile drops when she goes back with dessert and Henry is staring down at his phone with a frown on his lips. Jacinda sits quietly with her hands folded in her lap and downcast eyes, like Emma used to do with Neal. She’s not family, not yet, but she knows.“Sorry Mom,” Henry offers when he looks up again. “Business.”He kisses her cheek and walks Jacinda to the door, knowing that Emma won’t, can’t protest what he’s said. He’s her son, but he’s Neal’s and Gold’s, and this is the deal she made all those years ago to keep her family.She feels Killian’s presence behind her, close enough that his breath touches her neck. He was perfectly polite all through dinner, not like Peter, or Felix, two of her son’s other associates who had the table manners of feral children. But polite is not the same thing as nice, Regina Mills is polite to Emma whenever they run into each other but she’s never nice, and she has the sense that underneath Killian Jones’s handsome face and smooth, accented voice he is far from nice.Good.“You’ll watch his back?”He inhales sharply at the question, even closer now, she can picture his nostrils flaring and the firm set of his stubbled jaw. Family is everything, and Henry is her only family, not Gold (never Gold) and she needs to know that no matter what he does when he goes out on business, he’ll come home safe.There’s the faintest touch of a fingertip to her neck that makes her shiver, and the stiff, reassuring press of his prosthetic to her hip while his breath is warm in her ear.“Aye. No harm will come to him, I promise.”Strangely enough it helps her sleep that night, though she usually doesn’t sleep much whenever Henry isn’t home, and at one point Emma thinks she hears footsteps in the hall, turning over in her king-sized bed to blink at the open door and the figure silhouetted there against the light. It’s not Henry, and the hook is back, she came just make out the curve of it before Killian reaches out and closes the door, face shadowed and unreadable. There’s the murmur of voices a moment later, and she closes her eyes again and knows he brought her son home.The morning news reports a late-night robbery down at the docks, one dead, no suspects. The unfortunate deceased is Walsh Oz, who imported furniture from Asia and had reported ties to Zelena Mills, Cora Mills’s other daughter who controls the west end. Emma switches the TV to another channel and pours more coffee for Henry and Killian, sitting side by side at the breakfast bar with an open box of donuts they brought back. Officially the Mills and Gold families have a truce right now, but unofficially....Well.Emma skips the trendy gastropubs and fusion restaurants for a dive bar down by the docks, where heads turn as she enters and immediately turn away. Everyone here knows who she is, but she’s not Emma Swan, she’s Henry’s mother, Gold’s daughter-in-law, and no one messes with the Gold family down by the docks so a table is cleared and a beer is brought within seconds.“Hello, love.”Killian Jones stands with his thumb in his belt and his hook resting on his leg, a lazy smirk on his handsome face that Emma wants to wipe away between her thighs. She knows he has connections at the docks, knows Walsh Oz did too and it wasn’t just furniture he was importing for Zelena Mills. But she didn’t come to dig deeper, Henry is out on a date with Jacinda, he’ll spend the night over at her place while Felix keeps watch from the car and the nice, empty house that Gold bought for her is not where Emma wants to be right now.He tastes of rum, spicy and dark on her tongue when she thrusts it into his mouth and bites hard on his lip, making it redden as the blood rises to the surface. His hand is not soft like the men she usually picks up for a one night stand, it’s callused and wonderfully rough against her skin when he practically throws her onto his bed and presses her thighs open. He trails a single fingertip through her slick cleft and makes her shiver, the metal of his hook cold on her bare hip. When he sits back to throw off his shirt Emma sees that his abs are hard as any gym rat’s but unlike them his skin is dusted with scars that she recognizes from a lifetime of being a bystander to the Gold family business. There’s the pale, healed wounds from a knife on his ribs and a jagged line on his shoulder, where a bullet probably dug a furrow as it grazed past, not to mention whatever happened to his hand. She doesn’t ask, but their eyes meet and she knows it’s not a birth defect or the result of an accident.He knows that she knows.He’s not nice, but he’s fucking good, hard and demanding when he pushes inside and sets a furious pace that’s exactly what she wants, back arching to meet his thrusts and tilting her hips to welcome him even deeper while he fucks her into the mattress, bed squeaking and their fingers laced together over her head. She buries her face in his neck and sinks her teeth into his shoulder, right along the groove of his bullet wound. He growls dangerously at that and it makes her even wetter, slicker, his voice whispering deliciously filthy things in her ear while she writhes underneath him. This time there’s blood under her nails, drawn from raking them down his back cause she’s not nice either, she’s the girl who stole money to run away from foster care and survived on the streets, had her only son at fifteen and made a deal with Robert Gold to protect his birthright, no matter the cost. Her own hands are far from clean.She never stays the night with her nameless hookups, but she knew his name before she stepped into the bar, his name and his street moniker, Captain Hook, just as he knew exactly who she is, not just Emma Swan, but Henry’s mother, Gold’s daughter-in-law and what being with her really means.Henry doesn’t object to his new stepfather, both giving her away and serving as the best man at the small wedding held at Saint Cecilia’s. Gold does object, his cold eyes showing his displeasure when Emma visits him at his large mansion just outside the city to tell him the news. But she’s not a teenager anymore (although she strongly suspects his newest mistress Belle still is, he’s just like his son, the prick) and she informs him tartly that she’s only come as a courtesy to her son’s grandfather, not to ask permission.“I do not want that man to join this family.”“Well, you’re too late for that. Henry brought him in, he’s part of my family now.”Gold and Belle don’t attend but they do send a gift, and surprisingly so does Regina Mills, a silver platter that makes Emma go pale when she unwraps it. Killian takes one look and then he sweeps it away, going into the other room with Henry and talking to her son in low, urgent tones while Emma feels something cold and dark wrap around her heart.When he slips into bed with her after coming back from doing God knows what the chill has spread even as his warm body envelops her from behind. Regina’s “gift” was a clear threat to her family, a family that now includes Killian Jones.“You’ll watch your back?”His thumb traces warm circles on her bare hip. “Aye love. You don’t have to worry about me, I’m a survivor.”They fuck with her on top, hands spread flat on his chest to feel the race of his heart, leaping against her palm while his cock pulses and jerks inside of her as his climax hits and she knows that she’s still young enough to have another child, one Gold can’t take from her. But not yet, not until Killian and Henry take care of more unpleasant business first.Emma lies awake in the dark long after Killian falls asleep.The wedding gift is the opening shot the breaks the uneasy truce in the decades-long war between the Mills and Gold families. Regina and Zelena move to take over the docks and Killian blocks them both, one of Gold’s bodyguards, Little John, turns out to be a Mills spy and his mutilated body is wrapped in heavy chains and thrown into the harbour to dispose of it, while the info he revealed under torture is used to finally break the Sherwood gang, one of Regina’s top earners on the South Side and a longstanding thorn in Gold’s side. She gets her revenge though, in the form of poison that takes Gold out for good and puts Henry in a coma.Killian is the one who breaks the news to Emma.Killian is the one who holds her when she cries.Killian is the one who finds the safe house where Regina is hiding out, in a little storybook town up in Maine.Killian is not the one who pulls the trigger.
“I always knew there was a little gangster in you, Swan.”
They bury the body in the woods, ditch the stolen Beetle and go back to Boston, where Jacinda devotedly sits by Henry’s bedside in the hospital and tearfully confesses to Emma that she’s pregnant with his child. She smiles at her future daughter-in-law.“Welcome to the family.”Gold is gone, but she knows her son will recover to take over his business, take his birthright and become the new head of Boston’s underworld, the head of the Swan family.And Emma Swan-Jones knows she’ll do anything to protect her family.