They’d come.
The Borellos had come, and they’d left Holloway untouched except for the guesthouse.
Not one person had a suspicion it might’ve been someone else. Not one person was under the delusion they’d come looking for anything or anyone but me. Not one person planned to retaliate, in fear it would provoke them to come again and again until they had what they wanted.
While the men continued to argue over what to do with me, I’d sat silently between them in the conference room, determined to force all memories of Dare from my mind.
Something I’d naively believed would’ve been easy.
Turns out determination is just a word if your heart isn’t in it . . . and my heart was back in an alleyway, being asked “truth or dare.”
My heart was in Brooks Street Café, begging a stranger to cross that invisible line.
“She can’t stay in the guesthouse,” Kieran said decisively, pulling my thoughts from demanding eyes and soul-freeing kisses.
“’Course not. Not anymore,” Beck added. “They went right to it.”
“How they knew . . .” Mickey began, then sighed. “I’m not putting her in Soldier’s Row. It’s empty too often when the guys are at work. She’s moving back in the house. All of you—”
“No,” I said suddenly, sounding too horrified to try to explain myself.
Every man in the room stopped talking to look at me, waiting for a reason for my outburst.
I started blankly ahead, trying to think of something to say, and finally stuttered out, “I’m not staying in this house again.”
“You don’t have much of a choice,” my dad reminded me, that razor-sharp bite present in his words.
“I can’t. Not after what happened with Aric.”
Not when I won’t be able to get away . . .
Although I couldn’t see him, I could feel the tension radiating off Kieran from where he stood behind me.
It’d been that way ever since he’d come screeching to a halt where I’d waited outside a coffee shop downtown. He hadn’t grabbed me and kissed me. He hadn’t thanked God I was alive. He’d thrown open the passenger door in a silent demand to get in and had sped off as soon as I’d shut it.
But as soon as we’d crossed onto Holloway lines, he’d skidded to a stop and thrown the car into park. I’d barely settled back into my seat before he was tearing off my seatbelt and pulling me onto his lap, his arms wrapping around me like steel bands.
Minutes passed with no words spoken. They would’ve felt wrong in that moment as my normally calm assassin held me in his arms, tremors rolling through his body so forcefully that they felt like my own.
“You’re dead, Lily,” Mickey’s advisor said with a frustrated laugh. “You don’t have many places you can go other than this house.”
“I have the guesthouse.”
“No,” he and Mickey said at the same time, but I noticed Conor, Beck, and Kieran were silent.
They knew how difficult it had been for me to go back into the house after Aric died—knew how rarely I’d set foot in here since—but they didn’t understand my need to be able to leave the property.
They didn’t know about Teagan and Brooks Street. They didn’t know what missing a week with her would mean to her or to me.
And I needed those few stolen moments with—well . . . I had needed them before this afternoon happened.
“If the Borellos came looking, then they already know I’m alive. If they know I’m alive, they’ll come back. It doesn’t matter where you put me on this property, they’ll find me.” I stood from the chair and turned to leave, catching Mickey’s glare as I did. “They won’t find me in this house.”
I’d only made it to the end of the table when Kieran spoke. His voice was low and even, but still rang with authority. “You’re staying here—in my old room. It’s the best way to protect you.”
I turned to look at him, that familiar resentment building slowly inside me as I did.
The first time he’d spoken directly to me since before our lives had been turned upside down—again—and it was to give me orders.
Save Lily. Protect Lily. Hide Lily. Cage Lily.
It hit me so suddenly it nearly knocked me back a step.
Last night. That first kiss. Feeling like Dare had freed me but not knowing what from . . .
It was this.
All of this. Holloway and Kieran and his constant need to protect me in a way that suffocated me.
I’d grown up on these grounds . . . I’d spent nearly every day of my life on them. Even throughout the years I’d wanted to escape the mob, there’d been no doubt I was protected within the confines of Holloway.
But this was no longer a fortress. It was no longer a safe place. It was a prison.
Mickey was my warden and Kieran was the man who had betrayed my heart and trust to keep me there.
They’d stolen the little freedom I had. And they’d left me with nothing more than a window and some guards.
“I know how to best protect me,” I said tightly, my voice wavering as everything from the last week began to overwhelm me. “That’s something you should’ve considered a long time ago.”
I left the conference room and house without looking back as I headed to the guesthouse—my refuge and cell the last four years—and came to an abrupt stop when I opened the front door.
Lamps were shattered. Chairs and couches were overturned. Curtains had been torn from the wall and were heaped on the floor. The cabinets were open in the kitchen.
And that was only what I could see of the front room.
I took a hesitant step inside, then another just as a heavy hand landed on my shoulder.
“You shouldn’t go in there, Lil.”
I looked back at Conor, and wished I could take away the agony that so openly played out on his face. As massive and terrifying as Beck and Conor were, they were polar opposites.
Beck had been born for this life. Conor should’ve never seen it. He was too sensitive to survive this cruel world, but they were all each other had. And once Mickey had gotten a look at the brothers, he’d wanted them in Holloway.
If it weren’t for Kieran taking Conor under his wing, I don’t think he would’ve made it, knowing and seeing the things he did on a daily basis.
“This is my house, Conor.”
“Kieran doesn’t want—”
“It isn’t his decision.” I twisted so I could squeeze his too-muscular forearm when I whispered, “It was his decision for you not to be here. Stop beating yourself up.”
Conor’s expression went blank as he studied me.
Kieran would’ve never told me he’d called Conor off, and Conor knew it. I could see him trying to figure out how I knew, but he was loyal to Kieran.
“How’d you get out, Lil?” he finally asked.
“I ran.”
“But how?”
I searched his eyes, but found no suspicion. Worry and guilt were slowly replacing the blank look he’d been holding on to, and I knew he wanted to know what had happened last night. Wanted to know how it had all gone so wrong when he wasn’t guarding the house.
But I didn’t know either.
All I could give him was the truth. “Out my bathroom window. I heard them breaking things, knew none of you would do that, and I ran.”
He nodded, the movement slow under his grief. “I’m so sorry, Lil.”
“It would’ve happened one day. This couldn’t last forever.”
Conor’s mouth twitched into a grimace, acknowledging my words. “But not last night.”
“Any night would’ve been the wrong night.” I sighed as I looked back at the destruction in the living room, then carefully stepped away from Conor. “Well, are you going to stand guard or help? Because this is my house, and this is where I’m sleeping tonight.”
His only response was the loud crunching beneath his heavy steps as he quickly passed through the house to the kitchen to find the broom and trash bags.
We’d barely made a dent in the living room and kitchen when a voice like steel called out, “Leave.”
I straightened from where I was picking up the shattered pieces of my French press, but didn’t turn to watch Conor leave the house.
“Shit, that was quite a show you put on back there,” he began, forced amusement dripping like acid from his tone. “I might’ve been impressed with the power and determination in your voice if you hadn’t stormed out like a damn toddler throwing a tantrum. You almost sounded like the queen you’re meant to be.”
Determination . . . there was that word again.
I finally turned to look at Mickey, not bothering to hide my hatred for him. Let him assess it how he would. “I was done with the conversation and done listening to the five of you decide what to do with me as though I wasn’t in the room. As though this isn’t my life.”
“It isn’t.”
His response was so immediate and brutal that it stunned me. My mouth opened but I was unable to speak.
“This is Holloway’s life, Lily. This is Holloway’s future. You are Holloway’s future, and we need to protect that future however we see fit.”
“Protect me?” I asked on a breath. “Is that how you see last night? I protected myself. If the Borellos weren’t so sure I wasn’t kept on this property as I have been my entire life, they wouldn’t come looking for me here. They wouldn’t know where to start looking. If I had a say in how to protect myself, last night wouldn’t have happened.”
“If you had a say, you would be buried next to your brothers, and Holloway would have no hope for a future.”
I scoffed, and couldn’t find it anywhere in me to regret the sound when Mickey’s eyes burned with the need to kill anything in his path. Me.
“There will always be a future for Holloway, Dad. If I end up in the ground next week, there will still be a future. It’s just not the one you want.”
I bent to return to cleaning, but froze when his next words sounded throughout the small space.
“There is no future if O’Sullivan blood isn’t at the head. You’d be smart to remember that. You’d be smart to start assuring that.”
I didn’t move and I didn’t look at him, I just stared, unseeing, at the shattered glass beneath me.
He sighed in defeat, the sound as foreign as it was fake, because Mickey would never accept defeat. “If the Borellos know you’re alive, there’s no reason to continue acting like you’re not. You’ve had a four-year vacation, and you’re welcome for it. It’s time you remembered your place here, Princess. So do what you always planned to. Marry Kieran and have kids. Ensure our bloodline. Try to make yourself believe you can do half as good a job as I’ve been doing the past twenty years, and maybe the rest of the guys will believe you can too. Maybe I’ll even believe you.”
He acted like he was giving me the greatest gift instead of sentencing me to a life in this prison.
For years this conversation was all I had wanted. From the day I’d turned eighteen until just before Aric had died, I’d begged Mickey to let me marry Kieran.
But it had never been the right time. Even though he knew one day it would happen, it had never benefited Mickey, so he’d brushed my pleas away. And now that the day had finally come, I wished it hadn’t.
Even if I’d never known what it was like to be kissed so passionately it made my soul cry, I’d still wish this conversation hadn’t happened. Wouldn’t ever happen.
Because the man who entered my bed at night, the man who kept me at arm’s length both physically and emotionally, was no longer the man I’d always sworn to love. He was no longer someone I even knew. The thought of marrying him had a panic rising deep in my gut. The need to be free of this place became more urgent.
“I’ll expect your engagement as your thanks,” Mickey said as he walked out of the house.
His dark warning hung in the air long after he was gone, and with it hopelessness and anger.
With one conversation, Mickey had reminded me how much control he had over my life . . . had reminded me how he could chain me to this place forever. I could feel the bars of this prison tightening like a noose around my neck, and I was helpless to stop them. Helpless to stop him.