I passed the bathroom and marched directly into my bedroom, closing the door behind me as I quickly pulled on my sweatshirt and leggings, returning to a state in which I belonged. I was shocked that Julian hadn’t tried to enter my space. Maybe he learned I value privacy. Let’s get this over with. Shaking nerves from my hands, I opened the bedroom door. Julian was standing against the back of a sofa, legs crossed at his ankles while his hands rested along the couch on each side of him. Holy shit. The rousing seduction of his intimidating stature weakened my core, my breath heavy and heart betraying my mind. Julian was beautiful, dare I even consider glorious, and all he did was stand there with calm blue eyes burning their reckless fire into mine.
“Come here.” Do I have to?
“Who were you with earlier?” The thought expelled before my mind had the chance to prevent my lips from opening. Dammit, Aideen, what the hell is your problem? Julian’s arms crossed, defensively studying my brazen stance.
“Who was I with?”
“Yes,” I repeated. “Who were you with earlier? I told you I won’t pretend to be on the side. Pretending to be with you hurts me enough.” Julian’s ankles separated so he could step toward me. Function ceased as our chests touched, his cologne all but consuming me.
“Babby,” he cooed, lifting both palms to my neck, “I wasn’t with anyone. I haven’t been with anyone in a very long time.”
“Ouch.” I glared at him. “Sucks for your dick. But I heard you. You were screaming at Liam.”
Julian’s eyes closed as his hands fell from my throat. Had I found him out? Had this given me power over him? Catching the devil in a lie.
“What you heard was me interrupting my little brother in a moment of drunken passion with a woman I despise,” Julian growled, his tone laced with frustration. “What you heard was me catching Liam with Noelle. What you heard, Aideen, was me trying to correct my brother’s irresponsible, corrupt behavior.”
“He wouldn’t do that,” I scoffed in disbelief, as if I knew Liam. I don’t know any of these people. Julian’s hands fell into the pockets of his pants, his gaze almost hopeless.
“I would never do that to you. Liam isn’t always what he projects to you.” Julian’s voice was deep, almost pained. “He isn’t a good man, Aideen.”
“He’s good enough. He’s my friend. Right now, thanks to your family, he is the only friend I have.” Oh, brother. I’ve lost it. I felt the flames radiating from Julian’s eyes while they widened, darkening in my reflection.
“He’s not the one in here now, is he? He isn’t the one,” Julian’s fingers crawled along my sides, leaving the aching burn of their touch with each step closer to my chest, my collarbone, and my throat, “holding you right now…is he?”
“No.” I swallowed, feeling his hands move against my neck. Julian’s lips lifted to a smirk, a knowing grin of privilege and power. I hate him. Right? His hands climbed the sensitive skin of my throat, spreading around my jaw and the base of my head, possessing my skull. I went weak as he tilted my head to meet his gaze. Numb. Petrified.
“I would never hurt you like that. I wish you weren’t so afraid of me.” His words were muted, softened by the blinking eyes that slowly scanned my face. “If I had two wishes…”
“Wh-What would they be?” I don’t want to know this shit! I want to go home! His thumbs caressed the corners of my jaw, touching my earlobes with each stroke of my skin while his smirk melted into me.
“I’d wish you weren’t so afraid of me,” Julian whispered with glowering eyes that held me captive, “and that the legend wouldn’t be true.”
“What legend?” This man is infuriating.
“Your beautiful name. Aideen died of a broken heart.”
“It’s just a story, Mr. Molloy.”
“Julian.” I couldn’t reply. His nostrils flared, breathing quickened as he demanded I recite only his first name in my reply.
“Call me Julian, Aideen.”
“Julian.”
He smiled, his hands tickling away from my throat and resting against my clavicle while he continued to watch my eyes. “That’s better. Don’t you feel better now?”
“No.”
“Because…”
I blurted the truth, knowing I would die sooner or later. “You terrify me.”
His lips met in a pout, perhaps suggesting he was surprised or hurt, but the smirk returned, quickly illustrating the pride he held with my honesty.
“That’s probably for the best.” Julian’s face inched closer to mine, hovering above my forehead. “We can’t have you running from me, can we? You can quit the formalities. I want you to call me Julian.”
“I’m not allowed to call you by your first name.” I hid my eyes, hoping he would…I don’t know. Something! I wanted him to do something—to stay, to leave, to throw me onto the bed, to never look at me again. I couldn’t decide. I hated decisions.
“I never actually said that.” He grinned. “Technically, I never asked you to call me Molloy. You’re the one who refuses to call me Julian because you know that would make me real. It would make your compassion toward me real, and legitimizing me terrifies you. That’s what you’re afraid of, babby. It isn’t me. It’s reality.”
“Reality,” I scoffed, stepping away from Julian, his name now familiar against my tongue, present in my thoughts. “Why don’t you spare me the lecture on reality, Mr. Senator?”
“That’s a good point.” He nodded, biting his thumb while in thought. “Come sit with me. Please.” I’m too tired for this tonight. Can anyone ever say they’re too tired to a political powerhouse mob guy and live through it?
“I’m so tired,” I admitted, “I can’t sit with you. I can send you on your way, lock my door, and go to sleep.”
Julian ignored my quiet plea and carried himself to the sitting area of my suite. The coat of his tuxedo slid from his body, folding over the arm of the club chair now housing his painfully gorgeous body. My nostrils fluttered in my pathetic attempt to hold my breath while I watched Julian remove the loose fabric of his bowtie and wrap it around the knuckles of his left hand to fold it before placing it on the coffee table. Finally, my long-lost best friend, the silver chamber of death, was pulled from the back of his pants and set on his tie. That’s adorable. He made a bed for his gun. I wonder if he does that every night. Ugh! Once Julian settled, his body leaning forward as his forearms rested against spread knees, his eyes met mine. Dark, dangerous, full of longing. Desperate.
“Please,” he urged, the tone unfamiliar. I obliged, my heart questioning everything while his eyes widened with unease. I took a seat in the chair opposite him, pulling my heels up to the cushion and holding my body together. This is a beautiful staring contest.
“I should begin by explaining to you why I abandoned you at dinner,” Julian stated, mindlessly licking his lips before either of us continued.
A scoffing snort left my throat. “It wouldn’t have mattered if you were legitimately at my side or not. Your family despises me. I honestly don’t care. I just want to go home.”
“Where’s home, babby? Your apartment, where someone broke in and tried to take your delicate life? My apartment, where someone broke in and tried to take your delicate life? Look where we are. Look around you. There is no home anymore. This is it. My family is a group of horrendously arrogant and privileged idiots whose main goal in life is to somehow hurt anyone and everyone who isn’t a direct descendant to their empire. Home,” Julian’s head shook, his glance falling to his twisting fingers before his eyes lifted to meet mine, “it’s right here, with you and me.”
“How romantic.” I rolled my eyes, but my mind went frantic. “So why did you leave me then? Find humor in sending the naïve nobody to a pack of wolves?”
“While my brother tried to woo you the first time this evening, two of our security detail informed me there was another break-in at my apartment. I pay hundreds of thousands of dollars a year for security—there is absolutely no way anyone could enter my home. Yet somehow, it’s happened twice.”
“Did you leave to kill someone? You’re just so eager for another tattoo.”
Julian, despite his serious demeanor while discussing the matter at hand, chuckled. “That mouth,” he muttered. “I’m proud of your confidence, babby. It’s coming back.”
“It never left.” My brows met, eyeing him curiously. “Carry on. I have a bed calling my name.”
“I’m breaking all sorts of rules here,” he informed me, but his words lacked authority. “I trust you, Aideen. I know we could each destroy the world in front of the other and neither of us would tattle. It’s incredibly suspicious to me that there has been an attempt on your life two times while with me this week. I’m also livid and ready to kill the motherfucker who’s doing this.”
“You already did,” I reminded him. “You killed my best friend while I hid just feet away. You murdered him.”
“And I should apologize,” his voice raised, chilling my blood, “for protecting you? I should feel remorse for taking the life of a coked-out thief who wanted to destroy you for money? No. The only thing I’m sorry for is how hurt your heart is. That’s all I’m ever going to apologize for. You’re not listening to me, darling. Can you think of anything that’s changed since coming to my place this week?” He was sincerely curious, his eyes filled with agonized hope. Maybe that’s my hope reflected.
“Everything has changed, Julian. You need to give me a better prompt than that.” God, his name feels incredible on my lips. Julian. Julian. Julian.
“I bring you home and then what?”
“You and Liam went to probably plan how you were going to later blow up a building in Southie.” I shook my head at the memory, and Julian’s face stiffened. “And then your sister came over with clothes and that ring.”
“Precisely.” He nodded casually, as though this wasn’t news to him. So why is he asking me? I watched him, staring and hoping to win our silent contest, when he finally spoke.
“How many times have you worn your ring in public?”
“Once. Just to the theatre.” My heart. Thinking back to that date and how perfectly real it felt to be at Julian’s side, to pretend to be with him. It was so natural, like it had actually been real. Allowing my heart to take me back there was painful. Everything changed after that night.
“And where is it now?”
“Your house.”
Julian licked his lips, slowly pulling his top lip inward in thought, mesmerizing my trembling soul. “Do you ever have the sense you’re being followed?”
“Are you telling me I should be more paranoid?” I inquired, eyeing him with concern. Because he hadn’t made my world a jumbled mess already?
“It doesn’t hurt to be more aware in any situation,” he shrugged, his forearms still pressing into his thighs, “but it hit me tonight that there was more than a coincidence. I hadn’t told you, but the night Liam and I left and Maureen came over, it wasn’t to kill anyone as you believe, but it was to meet with our grandfather about business. Nobody threatened you that evening because it would have been too obvious. The next night, Ferrell stopped someone in the elevator from entering our floor. That happens on occasion because, generally, people don’t trust politicians, but it was too convenient. The following evening, we were separated by an exploding car. You know what happened next; I’m not going to say it.” Yes, we kissed, and it was the most exhilarating and emotionally liberating and confusing experience I have ever had. Then you killed Elliott.
“It seems too fitting, but I’ve been racking my brain to think of what changed this week to make you more accessible, to make your death even more desirable to someone. When there was a break-in, I put the pieces together.”
“That’s ludicrous. You keep so much from me, Julian, I can’t even think anymore. I don’t know what’s true, what’s just in my nightmares. This,” I gestured between us, my racked nerves filling with newfound confidence, “this is destroying me. It’s eating me alive from inside my own mind. It tears me apart through my subconscious. Do you have any idea how frightening that is?”
“No.”
“But you still won’t explain any of this.”
His head shook. “I’m trying to! Give me a minute here, Aideen. I’m trying. It is ludicrous, and I am falling apart at the mere thought of you crumbling from the inside. I’ve just…it wasn’t meant to be like this.”
“What the hell, Julian?” I stood, my body flying against gravity. “I want you to leave.”
“I’m not going anywhere.”
“Then I’ll leave.” Glaring at him, searing his perfectly chiseled face with my invisible death rays, I stormed away from him into the bedroom, slamming the door behind me. My heels ached from stomping across the marble floor, but the burn reminded me of one thing: I was alive. I dove under the covers, cocooning myself in the false security of down and cotton, holding my breath until I heard slow and heavy footsteps outside of my door.
“Go away,” I bellowed from beneath the covers. “Get that ring, take these fancy clothes, all of this, and leave!” He opened the door, ignoring my demand like the arrogant creep he was. Through the buzz of his presence, I heard his gun rest against the dresser. Can’t leave a room without that bad boy!
“I need to tell you something, babby.” His words broke the silence, crackling with an electric hum that radiated through the covers. With a huff, I sat up, pulling the covers to my chest while my eyes impatiently narrowed at him.
“Aideen,” Julian moaned, a heavy gust of strained air leaving his mouth in a hurry, “the reason we had the contract for you at my uncle’s brunch was because not everyone there knows who you really are.” Julian approached my side of the mattress, demonstrating his obnoxious gall by sitting next to my hip.
“Who I really am?”
He took my hands, a casual, simple gesture that seemed well-rehearsed, almost expected. “I know.”
“What are you talking about?” My heart pounded, and my nerves burned through my fingertips and toes. His expression was so sad, so lost, while he gazed into my eyes, questioning something from deep within me.
“What are you talking about?” I repeated my question, pulling my wrist from his fingers. Julian stood from the mattress, his toned frame slowly pacing between the bed and fireplace. He’s blocking my view. He was distracted, a symptom of someone else.
“You’re not yourself,” I mumbled, preparing to run if necessary. Julian pulled against his neck while his head hung back in suggested defeat. His movements stopped, allowing his silhouette to be overcome by the blaring blue flames.
“Why were you in the hospital last fall?” His head rolled to face me, eyes deep and narrowed.
“Mal-Malcolm.” I closed my eyes in regret. “I don’t want to go there. Please.” In long, quick strides, Julian was at my feet, sitting on the mattress and watching me. His hand reached out for my wrists again, securing around them to anchor me.
“I won’t make you go back. Ever. But Aideen,” he leaned forward, his thumbs still slowly stroking the skin of my wrists, “he hurt you. And that’s something you and I have had in common for quite some time now.”
“You’re not making any sense. Is this what you do? You send out bits and pieces of information to tantalize and torture people? That’s your game? I’m not playing.”
“I already told you I’m not playing games with you.” His voice boomed within the space. “I wouldn’t ever purposely hurt you, Aideen.”
“Take your gun off of the dresser,” I demanded, receiving his scathing stare at the suggestion I would have any opinion whatsoever. I can’t lie—it was hot as hell.
“Fine.” He surprised me with compliance and released my wrists before reluctantly leaving the mattress to retrieve the silver serpent. Julian waved it in the air to mock it being in his possession and returned to sitting with me.
“Give it to me,” I told him, testing my courage. Julian pulled his right leg onto the mattress, bent at the knee, and closed his eyes slowly. He was thinking, processing, holding tightly to the gun in his hand. Once the pools of blue returned to my weary stare, Julian lifted his right hand, pointing the gun at me.