As soon as the meeting ended, I left for the guesthouse without giving anyone the chance to stop me. I didn’t want to stay for the show, as Mickey had called it. My throat tightened and stomach churned at his excitement over what was to come . . . at who it involved.
As soon as I was inside, I headed for the kitchen to make coffee, and the water had just started boiling when Conor began a perimeter check around the house.
No sign of Beck or Kieran.
Then again, I doubted I’d see them anytime soon. When I’d snuck out at the end, Kieran had still been leaning against the wall with a calm, lethal expression as Bailey gripped at the arms of his chair, too afraid to move.
As I waited for the coffee to finish brewing in the French press, I wondered how long Bailey would stay in that chair if Kieran never moved from his position, and how Kieran had happened to show up after Bailey’s comments when I couldn’t remember the last time he’d been on property during the day.
Before he’d been forced to take Aric’s place, Kieran had only worked when Mickey needed someone silenced. I’d spent all my days and nights with him and had hated the few hours when he was gone.
Now, everything had changed. Mickey had him working constantly. Two or three nights a week, I’d wake up to Kieran slipping into bed only for him to be gone when I woke.
Yet I’d never felt more suffocated or hurt by him.
And somehow, the only person who noticed was a breathtakingly captivating guy who had stolen my thoughts, one by one, and crept into my dreams, unbidden . . . until I’d found myself falling asleep, praying he’d meet me there. He had a relaxed smile and an easiness about him, while still managing to remain intimidating.
And he saw straight through me.
I’d been sitting on the bench at the kitchen table, mind on an intriguing stranger’s words, coffee long since cooled, forgotten, when I noticed it . . .
The change in the house.
The charge pressing against my ribs and stealing my breath, growing stronger by the second.
The only way I could ever have known Kieran was there, moving closer with each stuttered beat of my heart.
I hadn’t even heard the door open or shut.
Silent as the night.
His hand suddenly covered my own, pinning it to the table. My body stilled and I slowly turned my head to look at our overlapping hands until he removed them both from the wood.
There, below where my hand had rested, was a symbol smudged onto the surface of the table that chilled me to my core.
Lines and circles.
A symbol I’d been taught to fear growing up.
A symbol I drew without meaning to.
My subconscious conjured it up in ceilings and clouds and woodgrains. I saw it inked onto a forearm when I closed my eyes . . .
Even if I never knew why the men were in my room that night, the man who’d shot Aric and tried to take me with him had revealed enough secrets once he was dead.
By way of this symbol tattooed on his arm.
I’d always known what it meant—known who wore it with pride. But I’d never seen the symbol on a person before that night, and I hadn’t since.
That didn’t mean it had stopped haunting me.
Four horizontal lines, each shorter than the one above it, with one vertical line slashing through, longer than all the others. All centered in an outline of a circle.
The symbol that a mafia family had adopted long ago.
A family that the Holloway Gang had been at war with since long before my father was born—the Borellos.
But that war between our families had led to an immeasurable amount of death throughout the years and to my dad faking my own.
“Protect the princess at all costs,” he’d told every one of his men.
I still hadn’t been found. Then again, I was well guarded.
I needed to be kept hidden from the world. I knew that.
But Kieran wanted me hidden to keep me alive and with him.
Mickey wanted to keep me alive so O’Sullivan blood would stay in control of Holloway.
Neither realized this couldn’t last.
If Kieran became Boss and we had a child, it wouldn’t matter if the world still assumed I was dead or not. That child would be the Borello’s newest target, and I refused to put my child through the life I’d lived.
The moment I found out I was pregnant, I would be gone—whether Kieran came with me or not.
Kieran tightened his fingers against mine, bringing me back to the present as his mouth brushed along the back of my neck.
Just as he started to release my hand, I clasped our fingers tighter. “Bailey?”
I felt his anger slam into me, but he gave no hint otherwise. His voice was still the same dark warning it had been since we were kids. “He won’t say anything to you again.”
“What’d you do, Kieran?”
“Nothing.”
“Kieran . . .” I released his name with a sigh, and slowly untangled our fingers.
I would’ve loved to watch Kieran knock Bailey out for what he’d said, but hitting someone wasn’t Kieran’s way.
It wasn’t how he’d been raised. It wasn’t who he was paid to be.
The assassin wasn’t who he’d wanted to be.
I felt him move away from me, and knew he was going to shower and try to sleep before Mickey sent him away again.
Not taking my eyes from the smudged symbol on the table, I hurriedly whispered, “Take me away from here.”
I didn’t hear him stop walking but knew he had.
Glancing up at him, I watched him slowly turn, those pale eyes giving away his need to do anything for me.
“Take me away.”
“You know I can’t.”
“Yes, you can. We can. Don’t you remember everything we planned? Everything you promised?”
His head listed to the side as his brows dipped low, his eyes now cold. The beast inside him instinctively awakening and reacting to being challenged.
But I held his stare, knowing his reaction was as involuntary as breathing. Knowing he was fighting it and would never willingly hurt me.
He had the mind of a monster and the heart of a dreamer.
He’d never hidden either from me, and long ago I’d fallen in love with both.
“You think I’d ever forget, Lily?” A hint of the softness he only ever used with me laced through his words. “But I have a job to do.”
It’d been obvious what he’d chosen, but he’d never stated that he held the mob over me before. Hearing it now felt like a physical blow.
“A job you never wanted,” I reminded him, trying to hide the pain in my voice. “A job we never wanted. We were supposed to get away from this, I wasn’t supposed to lose you to the mob.”
Despite his guarded expression, I knew my last words had hurt him. Could see it in the way his hand twitched like he was about to reach for me or for one of his blades—anything that brought him comfort.
“Is that what you think’s happening?”
My shoulders sagged as I studied him . . . studied the distance between us. Before everything had happened, we couldn’t be in a room together without touching in some form—it didn’t matter that we’d already been together for years. Now, it was as if there was a force slowly pushing us farther apart, and neither of us would try to fight it.
Planting my elbow on the table, I dropped my head into my hand, staring down at the smudged symbol as I whispered, “It’s just what is, Kieran.”
“Because we never left. Because I took Aric’s place.” He didn’t word them as questions, so I didn’t respond.
Because you broke your promises. Because you’ve turned into someone else. Because you’re letting this life destroy what we could be.
I inhaled quickly when he suddenly appeared on the bench beside me, pulling my back flush against him. One arm wrapped around my waist, the other around my chest so he could press his hand firmly between my breasts.
Holding me the way he had all those years before.
Protective and gentle, powerful and loving.
Something deep inside me ached. Ached for what Kieran and I’d had.
“This,” he said in a gruff tone. “This is my job.”
Save Lily.
My chest rose and fell roughly as I waited for him to continue.
“All I want is for you to keep breathing. All I want is for you to let me keep you alive.”
Protect Lily.
“Leaving?” he asked as his lips brushed against my neck. “Christ, Lily, I would’ve taken you away years ago if I could’ve. But you’re the target they’ve been waiting for. If I go, they’ll know. They’ll follow. That’s why we’ve stayed.”
Hide Lily.
“I understand staying hidden, but you don’t know they’re waiting for me,” I argued gently. “You can’t know they would follow us.”
Kieran’s mouth paused just above my skin for a few moments before he said confidently, “They’re waiting. And I won’t hand you over to them.”
Cage Lily.
“You can’t kn—”
“They’re waiting, Lily. Trust me.” The hollow tone of his voice had a chill creeping into my bones, and for a few seconds, I forgot how to breathe as I wondered what information Beck or one of the other guys may have heard on the streets.
“What do you know?”
He hesitated before speaking. And when he did, the words were soft and tortured, and pulled a pained breath from me. “Things that don’t matter if I’m already losing you.”
“Kieran . . .” I glanced over my shoulder and was met with something I never thought I’d see from the man behind me.
My hardened, unemotional assassin. Green eyes full of defeat and fear. Every emotion lain bare.
“I love you, Lily. I would give my life for yours.” His eyes searched mine for an immeasurable amount of time before he said, “I’d give you the world if you asked for it, but not at the expense of your life. Don’t ask me to stop saving you, because I don’t know how.”
If only Kieran could understand I’d never asked him to.
If only he could see what I’d been begging him for all along.
If only he knew he’d pushed me so far away that my heart was sure we’d never find a way back to who we’d been. And in that, I felt more torn in this moment than I ever could’ve imagined.
Unbidden images of secret, written words and dark, mysterious eyes entered my mind. Guilt ripped through me as I desperately tried to focus on the hope I’d clung to for so long . . .
That one day the Kieran I’d fallen in love with would come back to me.
“Then give me the boy who fought my imaginary battles. Give me the man who crept into my room to plan out a future with me in the dark. Because one day something will happen that you won’t be able to save me from. And when that day comes, I want to cling to every moment with you. I want a reason to be selfish enough to ask time to stop so that my last breath, and my last moment with you, will never end.” I reached up to brush my fingers over his lips, and licked my own as an old, familiar warming entered my chest. “I won’t ask you to stop saving me, Kieran, if you’ll just save us.”
Less than a second passed from the time the words left my lips to when his mouth crashed onto mine.
Wrapping his arms around me, he pulled me off the bench and turned us toward our room. His mouth never once left mine as he effortlessly found his way in there and laid me on the bed, tearing at my clothes as he did.
A flutter of anticipation filled my stomach and heat coursed through my veins. Both as foreign as the feeling of his mouth on my own.
I pled with my lips alone for him to show me we could have a connection like we used to. That we could have the love I’d been longing for. That we could have the kind of intimacy I so desperately needed. Missed.
I nearly started begging right then for those things, but he straightened to strip out of his clothes, then roughly forced me onto my side.
I turned my head, my mouth searching for his again when he slid onto the bed behind me and pulled me close. A moan slipped from my mouth as his hardened length pressed against me.
“Kier—” His name cut off with a hiss when he suddenly gripped my hair and yanked back, forcing me to stare at the headboard instead of him.
The hand on my hip went to my thigh to spread my legs, and before I could beg him to slow down—beg him for any of the things I’d just been thinking of—he roughly pushed into me. Again and again, each roll of his hips more forceful than the last until he released my hip and gripped my shoulder to force me down onto him harder still.
I clung to my pillow, gritting my teeth against the pain in my shoulder and on my scalp, and tried to focus on the feel of him moving inside me.
Just once, I wanted him to crave my touch during this.
Just once, I wanted him to need to kiss me like a man dying as he moved inside me.
Just once, I wanted him to want to look at me as he fucked me.
Kieran growled in approval when my sharp cry broke free, and his fingers dug into my shoulder so deeply that tears pricked my eyes as his hips jerked powerfully once . . . twice . . . and then he finally came with a low roar.
He released me just as suddenly as his body left mine, but the lingering pain in my shoulder and my heart caused me to forget I’d been aching for more from him.
Gentleness. Tenderness.
I blinked quickly, forcing the wetness in my eyes away, and took slow, steadying breaths.
Breathe in.
God, Kieran, what have you done to us?
Breathe out.
I could feel the wall between us grow wider, could feel it start to solidify. And I didn’t know how to stop it.
His arm slipped over the dip in my waist, but before my mind could hope that his touch was meant to be comforting or loving, his hand hit the mattress in front of me and quickly snaked across it until he was hovering over me and reaching over the side of the bed.
Just as I opened my mouth to ask what he was doing, the muscles in his forearm tensed and twitched, and my heart rate slowed as I took in the rapidly changing tone in the room.
Dark.
Lethal.
So silent that the lack of sound felt heavy in my ears.
I knew what I would find when I glanced up, had seen the image so many times before, but the sight of his eyes somehow still shocked me.
He was staring off toward the edge of the bed, seeing nothing as he listened to something I couldn’t hear. His eyes lacked any of the warmth I’d seen before, and even with the distant look in them now, were filled with a hollowness that terrified me.
Nightshade.
Even though I was prepared for it, a scream tore from my chest when Kieran’s arm snapped back and he let the blade in his hand fly. The sound of one of his knives embedding into the wall was closely followed by a familiar voice.
“Jesus fuck! You almost got me, you asshole. Jesus.” Beck was bent at the waist as he dragged in ragged breaths, not even noticing Kieran had already gotten off the bed and had another knife ready to throw before he’d realized who was walking in.
I scrambled for the comforter to cover myself before Beck straightened, my eyes widening when I saw the handle of the knife less than an inch from his ear.
“You—” Beck paused when he took in Kieran’s naked body, his face pinched. “That’s not any way to greet someone, dude. You don’t need to brag.” His eyes darted to me, then back to Kieran, his eyebrows lifting when he finally understood what he’d walked in on. “That would explain the near-death experience.”
“You coming in unannounced would explain it,” Kieran growled. “Leave.”
Not seeming to care about the demand or that Kieran was still naked, Beck pointed to the opposite side of the guesthouse. “I live here, in case you forgot. Your orders, if I remember correctly.”
“You still announce yourself so you don’t die, Beck. Leave.”
Beck threw his arms out to his sides and then let them fall. “I didn’t know you were here. Conor said he hadn’t seen you since the meeting, and I didn’t think I needed to announce myself to Lily. Mickey’s looking for you.”
Kieran tensed, then slowly forced himself to relax by flipping the blade with a flick of his wrist over and over again. “What does he want?”
Beck shot out a hard laugh. “What . . . I could’ve asked him that?”
Glancing over his shoulder, Kieran’s hardened eyes took me in as he spoke to Beck. “Get out so Lily can get dressed. Don’t leave the house.”
The door had barely clicked shut before Kieran was stalking to the bathroom to clean up. He didn’t acknowledge me in any way when he came back in the room, grabbing his discarded clothes. He didn’t look at me at all until he was dressed and I was sitting on the edge of the bed.
Stepping up to my side, he gently grasped my chin in his fingers and lifted my head so I would look at him.
His eyes were now etched with worry, but I could see the warrior in him slowly taking over. I knew it wouldn’t be long until the moment where I’d thought I was breaking through to him would just be a memory.
His fingers slipped from my chin as he turned and left the room, ripping the knife out of the doorframe as he did.
No words.
No assurances.
No empty promises.
No murmurs of love.
Less than a minute later, I was stumbling from the bed to the bathroom when Beck walked back in with wide eyes and an apology already on his lips.
“I didn’t know what I was walking in on. I’m so—” His brow pinched when he saw the wetness gathering in my eyes. “Lil . . .?”
Unable to hold them back any longer, a sob tore from somewhere deep within me and the tears fell free.
“Lily, what happened?” Beck rushed toward me, his hands moving to my shoulders to keep me in place when I tried to wave him off. His eyes were wild and panicked as he took in my tear-streaked face. “Did—did he—fuck, did he hurt you?” he finally asked between gritted teeth.
I shook my head as another sob broke free, and pressed my hand to my chest in an attempt to ease the aching there.
“Jesus fuck, Lil. Give me something before I go get myself killed. Because I know I’ll at least get one good hit in before he comes after me with a—”
“No. Beck, no!” I choked out as I tried to force the tears back. “I’m fine, it’s just—it’s this day, you know? This stupid day.” My chin trembled, but I forced myself to continue on. “I’m emotional, and it’s all just getting to me. I need a shower, and I need to sleep, or something.” I forced out a strained laugh. “I’m being such a girl.”
Beck looked lost. He looked like he didn’t know if he should still risk his life by going up against Kieran or believe me.
After a few moments of staring at me with a dumbfounded expression, he hesitantly asked, “Is this one of those times when I need to send someone out for chocolate?”
A real laugh tumbled from my lips, soggy from my tears. And despite being so wrong, I nodded. “Yes, this is one of those times.”
“Okay. Okay, I’ll send Conor.” He released me and took a step back, but paused as he searched my face. He was trying to force himself to believe me, and I knew he was worried about getting this wrong. “Okay, yeah. Chocolate.”
“You’re the best.”
I waited until the door was shut behind him before heading into the bathroom and stripping out of the shirt I’d pulled back on. Once the shower water was on and steaming up the bathroom, I stepped in and let the hot water mix with the tears that were slowly falling again.
I rubbed at my chest as I felt the growing distance between Kieran and me become a living thing inside me, and grieved what had become of us.
Every one of our firsts had been together. And knowing him the way I did, they had gone as expected.
He was ruthless in everything, with moments of tenderness reserved for me. Making him lethal with his knives and on my heart.
The touches, the kisses . . . they all came from the same place. They all came from the dreamer who knew how to be soft and melt me with words. They’d come from Kieran.
Sex with him had always been rough and intense and full of power. It had been exhilarating, unrestrained passion. I’d craved it. Craved him. Every dark fantasy came to life, prompted by the monster inside. Pure Nightshade.
But there was never anything more. There were only those nights I could remember in flashes of slick skin, the sweetest kind of pain, and body-numbing tremors as he’d push me to the edge. There was never intimacy, there was never the tender love I knew he felt for me. And as the years went on, the more had been necessary. I’d wanted and needed Kieran in my bed too, not just Nightshade.
But that force between us that threatened to push until we couldn’t find our way back to each other? It had been born from broken promises, and fueled by every rough and disheartening sexual encounter over the last years.
Because when Aric died, I’d needed Kieran. Only Kieran. And each time I was met with Nightshade, it broke something inside me, hardening me to the man I loved.
Maybe it was my fault for believing he could be someone I knew he couldn’t. For believing one of those times, he would see what he was doing to me . . . how he was breaking me. Us.
Maybe it was my fault for forgetting the complexity of the man I loved. For forgetting why I’d fallen in love with him in the first place.
Maybe it was . . .
But those glimpses of his heart would always make me foolishly hope for things he couldn’t give me.
Would always make me foolishly hope he could save us. That he wanted to save us. But that hope was dwindling every day.