Total pages in book: 95
Estimated words: 92376 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 462(@200wpm)___ 370(@250wpm)___ 308(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 92376 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 462(@200wpm)___ 370(@250wpm)___ 308(@300wpm)
I think about the time I spent cleaning myself out earlier. Guess that was all for nothing. I can’t help but chuckle.
“What’s that about?” he asks.
“Oh, nothing,” I say, since he sure as hell doesn’t need to know about that.
As I turn to him, his gaze locks on mine for the first time since I came over.
“It’s not nothing,” he insists, his voice full of suspicion, as if some psychic impulse in him picked up on the truth. But no, that’s impossible.
“It’s just not the way I thought tonight would play out.”
He studies my face, and now I’m the one trying to avoid eye contact.
“Anyway, I guess I should go now.”
“No,” he says. “Clearly, there’s a target on our backs, and that means there’s one on the Wildes too. You’re staying here tonight. I won’t take no for an answer.”
“I’ve already learned that.” And I would object, but he has a point, and I don’t have a death wish.
His phone buzzes on the bathroom vanity, shaking him from his state, and he answers, “Yes? Keep the guys at Hayward through tonight, and get security on Rory and Malaki. I’ll follow up tomorrow morning about what we’ll do after.”
“Yes, sir,” I hear one of his guys reply.
His concern for my family warms my heart, reminds me that despite the tension between us, he is a man I can trust to do right by me and my brothers.
“Good. Thank you,” he says. “Oh, and, Martyr, any word on who’s responsible?”
“Not yet.”
“I want to know who’s behind this, and I want them in one piece. They’re mine.”
This man is as capable of brutal cruelty as I am, something that should elicit fear or at least repulsion, but instead, I find myself excited.
He hangs up before taking a breath, leaning back on the toilet seat. “I’m gonna tear their fucking throats out with my bare hands.”
I don’t doubt he means that literally.
“If Old Terror were here, he’d beat my ass for this slipup, especially when I should have known better.”
I know the story. You can’t be in Fury’s underworld without having heard how his allies betrayed and ambushed him. It’s not surprising that the attack today would remind Killian of that.
“When I heard the gunshots, it took me back to that night, when the Folcrums sieged that warehouse. Bullets flying everywhere. Blood-soaked bodies and concrete.”
Flashes come back to me of the bloody bodies at Hayward. The blood…so much fucking blood.
“I was twenty,” Killian goes on, “my brothers and sister still in their teens, and we had to arm up and protect ourselves, losing three of our brothers, my sister and mother, and, of course, Old Terror. It was like Rage and I were trying to survive Armageddon, watching as we lost the ones we loved.”
The Killian I’ve always known never showed this softer side. In fact, if you asked most of the guys in the underworld if he even cared that his family died, they wouldn’t believe someone as sadistic as him could have a heart, yet that reputation is the very thing that’s made him appear fearless, made his enemies too fearful to attack.
Until today.
“It sounds horrifying,” I say.
“Not that you don’t have your own horrors,” he adds, and I know he’s referring to both my parents, but mostly Mom.
My mind tries to force me back to that day, seeing streaks of red on the walls and the floor…
I shake my head. No. I won’t go there. I refuse to go back to the day we lost her.
And I have to be here for Killian. I move closer, resting my hand on his shoulder, noticing I’m not treating him like the god he’s known as, but a man who’s hurting. “You couldn’t have been ready for this, and I know for a fact that Old Terror got into plenty of scuffles too.”
“Maybe you’re right, but I don’t think he would’ve seen it that way. He was…very hard on me. Even if I made a human error, it was unacceptable. He said he needed to be hard because it would make me better, and he wasn’t wrong.”
His words resonate. “I’m starting to understand why our dads got along so well.”
He grins. “I’m sorry again for how tonight played out. I had…other plans for you.” His gaze meets mine, and I find myself licking my lips.
“What sort of other plans?”
He angles his head, his brows shifting in a way that tells me what I already know.
“Yeah, it’s too bad,” I say, “because I cleaned out earlier.”
“You what?” His expression transforms from pained to intrigued in an instant.
In a sick way, I revel in the fact that I have power right now, that he’s the vulnerable one. I’d blame him for conjuring the sick thought, but I’d be lying about this evil thing in me.
“Were you planning on messing around again?” he asks, like that’s somehow confusing.