How foolish he had been to believe that there was nothing there at all.
And even if there hadn’t been, she had managed to make a heart grow inside his rib cage—it had beat for her.
“What have you heard?” Uilleam asked, his voice sounding flat even to his own ears.
Because no matter if he would admit it out loud, he was still ... fragile. Always seconds from losing himself to the darkness clouding his insides. He wasn’t ready to give himself over to it just yet.
Kit knew what he was asking, though judging from the expression on the man’s face— a rare display of emotion that he wasn’t at all used to seeing—it wasn’t good.
He had no idea.
“There were whispers ... of an attack,” he hedged as if he were trying to gauge Uilleam’s reaction to what he was saying. “Others say she ran from you.”
Ah, if only that were true.
That much he could handle—he could fix. He could coax her fear away—remind her that of all the people in the world, she was the only one who had never need fear him. But it wasn’t fear that had taken her away from him.
But something far more sinister that made him feel like he was dying inside.
He needed a drink.
“Why did you come?” he asked, his voice sounding hollow as he struggled to his feet, not caring at all about the sight he made as he forewent a glass entirely and walked over to the bar to pick up a fresh bottle of liquor.
He tossed it aside, knowing he wouldn’t need it again before he tipped the bottle to his lips, perceiving the cool splash of liquid against his lips before he was swallowing the bitter alcohol that made his throat numb.
For a moment, Kit didn’t say anything at all, merely watched him. Silent in only that way he could manage, but he didn’t have to speak for Uilleam to know he was displeased.
He also didn’t care.
“This won’t help matters,” he said, sounding sympathetic.
And for some reason, that was worse.
Worse than the dry monotone he usually spoke in. Worse than the cutting words Kit spewed when he was furious with him for whatever slight Uilleam had caused him at the time.
No, Uilleam greatly hated the pity he heard in his brother’s voice because it was the biggest reminder that he’d lost everything as quickly as he’d possessed it.
There hadn’t been enough time for him to tell her how much he loved her—that he had been wrong to go even a day without making sure she’d known that. For allowing so much time to pass without seeing her face and kissing her mouth and feeling her skin against his own.
He’d been too late.
Too selfish.
The thought made him squeeze his eyes shut, but even when he did, he could still see her face staring back at him. He saw her smile first—the twinkle in her eye and the dimple in her cheek—and then he saw the hurt expression on her face when she had finally learned what he had done.
The even more broken one when she understood that he had only come back to use her body—to make himself feel better at the expense of her feelings.
No, this conversation was better left for another day.
And though he could hear Kit protesting, perceived the man standing and moving over to him, Uilleam drank as much of the whiskey as he possibly could before the bottle was taken from his hands.
In the end, it didn’t matter.
Soon, he wasn’t even going to remember his own name.
The world was quiet when he was lost in his own head.
Floating in blackness.
There was no pain or worry or fear.
The emptiness was his friend …
Uilleam came awake with a shout, freezing cold water dripping off him, his hair plastered to his face as he sat up in a rush, feeling as if his heart was about to beat right out of his chest. It took him a second to figure out where he was—the bathroom in his old bedroom, it seemed—and why he was soaking wet.
Skorpion stood over him, a disapproving frown on his face as he tossed aside the bucket he’d been holding. The thick plastic clattered against the floor, making him wince.
“At least you ain’t dead.”
No, he certainly wasn’t that because if he were, he wouldn’t still be in this wretched state.
None of it was working. No matter how he chased oblivion, for the life of him he just couldn’t quite reach it.
He sat back with a heavy exhale, scrubbing his hands down his face.
Uilleam was a master at what he did—he’d learned from the best—but for once, he didn’t have the answers. He didn’t know how to make this situation any better.
He couldn’t fix it.
In losing her, he’d lost himself, and no matter what he did, there was no changing the fact that she was gone.
“She called me,” he said, his voice sounding defeated even to his own ears.
Skorpion didn’t respond, but he did cross the room, and to Uilleam’s surprise, he moved to sit on the floor, his massive arms resting on upraised knees.
He’d thought after so long that nothing could hurt him—that he could never feel as low as he’d felt as a body being abused within the four walls of this estate—but he would rather suffer that a thousandfold for a lifetime than accept the fact that Karina was gone.
He would never have the opportunity to apologize.
To tell her how wrong he’d been.
How he should have chosen her over any bloody arrangement with Claire McDonell. The choice seemed so laughably easy now.
Skorpion sat there for a moment before he spoke. “Sometimes … there’s shit we just can’t fix.”
Consequences.
He had to live with the consequences of his actions.
And one day, he would. When the pain wasn’t so fresh that it felt as if he couldn’t breathe. Because as it stood, he wanted to destroy the world until nothing was left because it was much easier to inflict this pain on others than to acknowledge his part in it all.
“Kit said he’s got an errand to run.”
His brother.
The only man who worked as he did.
Perhaps now he’d be able to drink in peace.
“Good for him.”
“Something about L-C.”
Instinctively, Uilleam froze, his watery gaze swinging over in Skorpion’s direction. It was instinct to stiffen at the mention of that name, though from the way he said it, he didn’t realize what—or rather who—Kit had meant.
Not L-C.
Elsie.
Now, he certainly wanted that drink.
3
Darkest Day
Karina had gotten so used to her routine, she blanked when she heard the rumble of tires over the cobblestone driveway.
She set her gardening tools aside and turned back for the door, not thinking twice before she yanked the door open to find her sister exiting a sleek black Mercedes. Except this time she hadn’t come alone.
Instead, Zoran stepped out from behind the wheel, the gold of his necklace winking against the black shirt he wore. It still took a bit of getting used to, knowing her sister had her very own bodyguard, but his presence didn’t bother her.
“Has something happened?” she asked, wondering what could have prompted this visit.
And why did that make her immediately think of Uilleam and whether or not he was safe. Lost in her little world here, she hadn’t asked her sister to check on him or find out what he was doing because even just thinking his name was another sort of agony.
“Mother wants to see you,” Isla said, her voice sounding tight in the way that said she had more to say, though she kept it in.
“I can wait out here,” Zoran called.
Isla’s face twisted as if she’d been ready to tell him the offer was ridiculous, but when their eyes met, something passed between them. An unspoken acknowledgement that even Karina grasped.
“Of course not,” Karina said, waving him on. “I’m sure you’ve heard it all.”
&n
bsp; But she was thankful all the same that he cared about their privacy.
“What does she want?”
“Oh, just the usual,” Isla replied as she tossed her bag onto the kitchen island. “World domination, beautiful clothes, and her daughters to follow in her footsteps.”
Right.
The usual.
“What could she possibly want with me now?” she asked.
The first and only time she’d arranged a deal for a client, not only had he been killed, but she’d also lost … everything. She’d lost everything. She wasn’t in any mindset to be able to do what Mother wanted.
It wasn’t time yet.
“She thinks it’s time you move forward,” Isla continued quietly.
“Tragedy shouldn’t befall your station,” Karina said dryly, remembering something Katherine had once said. “Iz, I just don’t think I can handle that right now.”
She wasn’t living in isolation simply because of a broken heart—she’d lost a piece of herself. Her baby. Someone she would never get to hold in her arms and watch grow older.
She was missing out on her first smile and whether or not her laugh would be as cute as she was.
There would be no birthday parties and little costumes to buy.
No, that life had been ripped out from under her.
Not to mention, she still didn’t know who had even been behind the attack.
Had they been targeting Omerti … or had it been someone attacking her? It could have been someone trying to hurt Uilleam, or even someone wanting to make her mother answer for something she had done.
Either way, the idea of doing anything other than staying exactly where she was didn’t have any appeal.
Isla chewed on her lip, her gaze darting in Zoran’s direction before returning to her. “Maybe you’d feel better if you had someone who could protect you.”
“I had someone there, remember.”
Katherine’s security.
And there hadn’t been anything he could do once the bullets had started flying. She had made it out alive. He hadn’t.
“Someone better than local security,” Isla said with a wave of her hand as if the man’s life hadn’t meant anything at all.
In her mind, she didn’t care who all had been left on the ground that day so long as Karina hadn’t been one of them.
“I wouldn’t even know where to start,” Karina said with a shake of her head, wondering why she even bothered to consider the possibility.
But some part of her did think that she would be less afraid to leave—when the time came that she would—if she had someone with her. At least then she wouldn’t feel like an open target.
“I know a place,” Isla said quickly, her eyes bright. “It’s not the sort of place you would like, mind you, but it’ll serve our purposes.”
Karina considered it a moment. “What place?”
Isla only smiled.
*~*
At least she had bought herself a few days.
To think and consider.
But she also knew she could only avoid Katherine for so long because once the woman called, she expected an answer.
Staring out the window on the jet, she looked at the clouds beneath them, wondering what it would feel like to feel the vapors floating over her skin. Would it be as cold as she imagined?
Would her fingers freeze at this temperature?
“I used to wonder what it was like to fly in the clouds.” Isla’s voice drew Karina’s attention to her as she sat in the chair opposite her, drawing the blanket she held over her legs. “That was after I got used to it, considering I was deathly afraid of planes for years.”
Karina laughed, unable to help it. She remembered those days well. “How did Mother convince you to board that first time?” she asked, smiling at the memory. “There was that stuffed elephant you wanted, right?”
Isla’s laughter was just as fond. “Never underestimate what a person will do to get what they want.”
Yeah.
She knew the answer to that quite well.
Gradually, Isla lost her smile as her expression grew serious. “How are you feeling?”
She wished she had an answer to that question—or, rather, she could say that she was healing. That she was taking it one day at a time, and eventually, it wouldn’t feel as if she were walking alone in the world.
But, if nothing else, she could say, “I don’t feel like I’m dying.”
It still hurt to breathe—she still wondered why she had been ultimately chosen to continue when her daughter hadn’t even been able to draw a breath—but she did know that she would wake up in the morning.
“Whatever Mother asks of you,” she said, her voice softening as if Katherine was on the plane with them and would possibly overhear their conversation, “I’ll help in any way I can.”
She didn’t know what she had done to get lucky to have a sister like Isla, but she was grateful all the same. She didn’t know if she’d have been able to get where she was without her continued and unwavering support.
“It won’t be anything too difficult,” Karina said in return, almost sure of that fact.
After all, as much as Katherine was ready for her to join the family business, she wouldn’t jeopardize what she had already accomplished in the meantime. She wouldn’t risk Karina screwing up a job in case she panicked or someone said the wrong thing.
Katherine would be supportive for as long as it took, but only as long as it didn’t interfere with anything else.
If anything, she expected her mother to give her something very much like what she had given her when it came to the Omerti job. Though, this time, she suspected that it wouldn’t have any ties to Uilleam.
She knew better than to make that mistake again.
“She probably wants to introduce you to get new associate.”
That managed to get a snort out of Zoran who’d stretched out on the pair of seats across from them.
“Is she awful?” Karina asked, glancing over at him before turning her attention to Isla, almost smiling at the disgruntled look on her face.
It was clear these two were not a fan of whoever Katherine had brought in.
“He,” Isla corrected. “I find him insufferable.”
“He’s an ass,” Zoran cut in, flipping open the magazine resting on his lap.
“But he is good at what he does, as far as I’ve heard.”
“I’m surprised Mother would willingly allow a man to be involved in the business.”
She tended to distrust them—said they thought too much with their penises rather than their brains.
Isla shrugged. “She never makes it a point to share why she does the things she does. We just have to go along with it.”
Didn’t she know it.
*~*
Unlike the last time she had rode toward the front doors of Ashworth Hall, she wasn’t tucked back against the seat. Both eager and anxious about being back for the first time.
There was no fear … just … nothing.
She still felt nothing.
And for once, the thought of seeing Katherine didn’t send her into a panic to make sure her hair was perfectly placed and her attire was up to standard. If she wanted to see her, she would have to take her as she was.
This time, they weren’t alone at Ashworth Hall. A few of Katherine’s girls were currently milling about in the garden, talking amongst themselves, their attention now on the car they rode up in.
They were younger than the others, she thought, wondering what had become of the other girls who had been here before she’d left. Were they now somewhere fulfilling Katherine’s orders, or had they moved on from this place as she’d once tried to do …
As she climbed out of the car, they all took one look at her before turning away, but not before she saw the sympathy in their eyes. Every single one of them was a stranger to her, yet they knew about the darkest day in her life.
“Don’t mind them,” Isla said, not ev
en bothering to look in their direction.
Though she had never particularly minded the girls their mother brought here, Isla had seemed to detest the very idea, though she had never shared why.
Karina followed her inside and upstairs, Zoran taking a detour to the kitchen with a mumbled excuse Karina completely understood. She knew how difficult her mother could be on the best of days—she didn’t always make the best company— but she could only imagine the sort of mood she’d been in after what happened in New York.
To her surprise, Katherine wasn’t in her office but, rather, in the master suite, moving about the room in a silk black robe, her newly platinum blond hair gathered into a tight, elegant ponytail at the nape of her neck.
For once, she didn’t have on a stitch of makeup, but that only helped to soften her expression the barest amount. There had always been something rather intense about the way Katherine looked at people—it felt almost as if she was looking through you.
Katherine’s gaze settled on Isla a moment—appraising her appearance—before her gaze moved to Karina. She saw the flash of disappointment before her mother quickly masked the look with one closer to the sympathy she’d seen on the girls’ faces downstairs.
“Darling.”
She would have been able to keep going—to function—without dissolving into tears, but as often as she disagreed with Katherine, she was still her mother. She still had a way of making her break down into tears because they both knew why she was here.
But even as she wanted to let the tears that were always simmering behind the surface of her eyes loose, she held them back, forcing a watery smile.
Weakness wouldn’t help her now.
And Katherine was the last person she wanted to appear weak in front of.
“Hi, Mother.”
Katherine pulled her into a tight embrace, her palms pressing into her back before she pulled away, dark eyes darting over her face before she cupped her cheeks the way she had when Karina was a girl. “How are you feeling?”
Like she was floating on a current without a life vest and the only reason she remained above water was through sheer force of will. “Fine,” she said, her voice calm and even as if that lie were the truth. “I’m fine.”
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