by Nicole Fox
“Why?”
“Because he’s my brother, goddammit! My flesh and blood! And you’re just a power-hungry control freak who killed my father and stole me because you liked seeing me hurt.”
“Stole you?” he hisses.
I know I’m pushing the wrong button. But at this moment, I’m not interesting in de-escalation. I want a fight.
“Yes,” I say, refusing to back down. “You stole me. Just like you stole my childhood, my father, and any sense of security I might have ever had.”
He takes a step forward. “It was twenty fucking years ago,” he growls in my face. “And your father is the one who started a war he couldn’t win. I was defending my territory and my men. A don who can’t protect his people is no fucking don at all. You need to let this go. I’m not going to apologize for shit I can’t change. For shit I did before you.”
“I—”
“No,” he interrupts, “shut up and listen. You’re going to have to make a choice. You can forgive me for killing your parents. Or, if you can’t, then you’re free to go. You’re not my prisoner, remember? I showed you the door. You walked through it. These last few days, you’ve been here because you wanted to be.”
It feels like a slap in the face, but I keep my expression controlled. “I’ve been here for my brother.”
“Is that right?” he asks. “Were you thinking of your brother when you were fucking me?”
At that, I slap him.
I never actually make the decision to do it. It just happens on instinct, spurred by the anger coursing up my hand. And for a change, he doesn’t block it. Just a sharp, crisp SMACK as my palm connects with his bearded jaw.
Kian’s face barely moves under the blow. He just stares at me with his piercing blue eyes as if it never happened. As if his cheek isn’t reddening with every passing second.
“Truth hurts, doesn’t it, babe?” he asks without a shred of remorse. “But you can’t have it both ways. You can’t fuck me and hate me for depriving you of your parents at the same time.”
I frown, his words piercing through my current veil of anger. “Parents?” I echo. “What are you talking about…? My mother was never in the picture.”
He gives me an odd expression. I feel cold all of a sudden. “What aren’t you telling me?”
“I only just found out myself,” he says.
“Found out what?” I ask, taking a step back.
He allows me the distance. “The day of the attack, your father was getting married.”
“Yes…”
“Did you ever see his bride?” I ask. “Meet her?”
I frown, wondering what relevance this had to do with my mother. “I glimpsed her… I think,” I tell him. “Once. She came to the house to get dressed for the wedding. Papa’s orders. She stuck her head into my bedroom and said hello. But I don’t remember much else.”
Kian nods. “Her name was Isabella Mariani.”
“Mariani?” I repeat. “As in… the Marianis?”
“Yes.”
“Okay, well, that makes sense,” I shrug. “I still don’t—”
“She was your mother.”
I stop short. “I… Excuse me?”
Kian nods. “Isabella Mariani was your mother. She was the one marrying your father that day.”
“That can’t be right.”
“According to your brother, it is.”
“My brother?” I repeat. “He’s the one that told you this?”
“My men know the drill. They know how things work. They don’t kill women or children. Not that we expected to come across any that day. We thought the only people in the house was your father and his men. But there was an unforeseen casualty that day,” Kian continues. “Your mother bled out upstairs.”
I’m still trying to process this bombshell, but Kian never gives me the time.
“That’s why Rokiades approached Drago about a marriage alliance between the two of you. You’re not just a Lombardi, Renata. You’re a Mariani as well. You’re the heir to two families. Throw the Greek forces in, and you’re the key to uniting an alliance powerful enough to take over the whole city.”
I lift my eyes, but it feels like I’m looking right through him. I’m trying to see past him to that day. The day my mother died.
“It doesn’t make sense,” I say stubbornly.
“I don’t know the whole story, Renata,” Kian says, his tone softening slightly. “I know only what Drago told me. But it does make sense. That’s why Drago kept you with him all these years. He knew your bloodline makes you infinitely more valuable. You were the secret weapon all along. Not him. You.”
I just keep shaking my head, as though I can dislodge the revelation from my brain if I shake hard enough. “I never knew her,” I say softly.
“Like I said, I don’t know the politics behind the story,” Kian says. “I don’t know the circumstances that led to your birth… or to the marriage, five years later.”
I turn around and start walking towards the exit.
“Renata.”
I stop and turn slowly. But I don’t look at his face. I can’t.
“I’m leaving,” I tell him.
“You’re in shock,” he says carefully. “You need time to process, to accept. You’re also in danger. Rokiades wants you badly.”
“You won’t force me to stay with you by scaring me.”
“I’m not trying to—”
“If you try and stop me, then you’re as bad as Darragh Kinahan,” I snap, plunging the dagger into his chest from across the boat.
His jaw tightens. I can tell I’ve succeeded in insulting him. More importantly, I’ve hurt him.
Good.
Kian O’Sullivan killed my parents. Both of them, as it turns out. He deserves hurt. He deserves pain. He deserves to watch me walk away, knowing I’ll never forgive him for a single one of his sins.
38
Kian
“If you try and stop me, then you’re as bad as Darragh Kinahan.”
Her words are pointed, laced with pent-up anger and frustration. She’s trying to get a rise out of me, and at the same time she’s trying to force me to back off.
I might have done exactly that—if her fucking life wasn’t at risk.
She turns her back on me and starts walking away. The sight alone is fucking intolerable. Renata Lombardi is not walking away from me. Not now. Not ever again.
It takes me only three long strides to reach her. She notices me at the last moment and tries to squirm out of my reach. But I grab her and twist her around so she’s forced to face me.
“You son of a bitch!” she yelps. “You gave me my freedom—isn’t that what you just told me a few seconds ago?”
“You do realize the implications of what I just told you, don’t you?” I hiss. “Or do I need to spell it out for you?”
“That you didn’t just kill my father; you killed my mother too?” she fires back. “That you’ll kill my brother the moment it suits you? That you’ll probably kill me as well, once this is all over?”
“I know you’re angry,” I say, shaking her hard. “But I need you to put that anger aside for the moment and think straight.”
“Fuck you.”
“Rokiades is after you.”
“What else is new?”
“If he gets his hands on you—”
“Then I’m either his prisoner or yours,” she seethes. “And from where I’m standing, there’s no difference.”
I glare at her, but I refuse to release her. She’s just so goddamn frustrating that I don’t know whether to kiss her or to hurl her into the dark water below.
“Let me go.”
“I will—once Rokiades is taken care of.”
“No!” she protests. “No! Let me go now!”
I ignore her and scoop her over my shoulder. She screams again, her fists hammering my back hard as I get off the boat and head towards the house.
“You can’t do this!” she cries. “Not again,
Kian! You told me I wasn’t your prisoner anymore!”
I don’t want to lock her in the cell with Drago. I need to keep the two of them separated until I sort shit out in my head. With the cell out of play, I think about other options. The bedrooms are too comfortable and I’m not in a very gracious mood. None of the common areas in the mansion are suitable to keep Renata locked in.
Which is why I turn left and walk down the corridor towards the black door.
It’s the best place I can think of at the moment.
She notices the black door just as I turn the key in the lock. “What the hell are you doing?” she says. “I don’t want to go down there!”
Again, I ignore her and start down the circular stairway. I have to move carefully so that she doesn’t smack her head or legs on either side of the walls going down. When I get to the room, I prop her back on her feet and push her away from me before she can do it herself.
“You fucking asshole,” she hisses as she straightens herself out.
“Why don’t you cool down?” I tell her. “I have shit I need to see to.”
“You’re really going to leave me down here?”
“That’s the plan,” I say. “But you have the freedom to roam. I’m not going to tie you up.”
“What a gentleman,” she snaps sarcastically, surveying the room. “Give the guy a prize.”
“I’m trying to keep you from getting used, raped, and possibly even killed,” I tell her in exasperation. “Why can’t you fucking see that?”
“Excuse me for doubting your intentions. But you have killed half my family. So it’s a little hard to take your words at face value.”
I want to tell her that I kill only when I have to, to protect those I care about. And amazingly, incomprehensibly, she is now one of those people.
But I’ve never been one to share my feelings. And I’m not about to start now.
“I’ll be back to check on you—”
She flies at me before I can finish my sentence. I grab her easily and pull her to my body, pinning her arms at her sides. She responds by headbutting me in the chin as hard as she can, her dark eyes roaring with fire.
“I refuse to stay here.”
“Then you leave me no other choice,” I sigh, losing patience.
I ignore the feel of her breasts pushed up against my chest as I drag her over to a large bondage chair. Leather straps dangle from either side. I use them to tether her hands to the seat while she screams a litany of swear words in my face, switching impressively between Italian, English, and pure nonsense fury.
I don’t say a word the entire time. I don’t engage. Even when I walk back up the stairs, I act as though I can’t hear her.
It’s the best way to piss her off.
When I slip out the black door, I don’t bother locking it. I head straight for my office, in dire need of some advice. I dial Cillian’s number the moment I walk through the door. He answers as I sit down behind my desk. I kick my feet up and try not to stare at the patio where only yesterday Renata and I had fucked like horny teenagers.
“Hey, little bro,” Cillian greets. “To what do I owe the pleasure?”
“Does there have to be a reason?” I ask. “Maybe I just called to check in.”
Cillian sounds skeptical, but he accepts the explanation without question. “How’s the situation going?”
I fill Cillian in on the latest revelation: Renata’s birth mother and her reaction to the news.
“You fucking told her?” Cillian asks when I’m finished explaining, sounding shocked.
“She deserved to know,” I say stubbornly, despite the fact that I already know telling her had been a mistake.
“Well, yeah, maybe, but not now,” Cillian says. “Where is she?”
“Locked in a room in the house.”
“Wow, you sure know how to charm them, don’t you, brother?”
I smirk. “We can’t all have your boyish sense of humor and nauseating charm.”
“Jealousy is unbecoming, Kian.”
“Can we address the elephant in the room?” Saoirse’s voice cuts through both mine and Cillian’s.
“Saoirse!” Cillian bellows. “Private conversation here.”
“Please, like you don’t tell me about every conversation you have with your brothers,” she scoffs. “Sometimes word for word.”
“I knew it!”
“She’s lying,” Cillian lies.
Despite my foul mood, I laugh. “You’re lucky I trust your wife more than I trust you.”
I can practically see Cillian growling at the phone.
“I’m glad you trust me, Kian,” Saoirse says. “Which means you can also be honest with me about Renata. You have feelings for her, don’t you?”
I groan.
“Wait… do you?” Cillian asks. “I knew you were attracted to her. But… feelings?”
“I don’t have—”
“Oh, fuck,” Cillian interrupts. “Shit! How did I not see this?”
“Because you can be extremely obtuse sometimes,” Saoirse tells her husband. “You do, don’t you, Kian?”
“How I feel about her is… confusing,” I allow myself to say.
“Is that Kian-speak for yes?” Saoirse asks impatiently.
I have to smile at that one. She seems to understand. She always has. “If you do care for her, Kian, then locking her up is not the way to win her over,” Saoirse tells me.
“Who says I’m trying to win her over?”
“Cut the crap,” Saoirse says bluntly. “And just be straight with me.”
I sigh deeply. “Fine. Go on.”
“If you want her to trust you, then you need to trust her, too,” Saoirse says. “Especially given your… history.”
My jaw clenches. Everything Saoirse’s saying feels right, but it’s the execution I’m having trouble with. When I say I have experience with women, I’m talking about sexual experience. When it comes to the other shit—emotions, conversation, compromise, mutual trust and respect—that part is a black box.
“It’s good advice,” Cillian says, throwing out his two cents. “I’d take it.”
“And what if that fails, huh? What if that goes the same way things went with Annabelle?”
Neither of them have an answer to that.
After I hang up, I head back to the black door. When I get down to the room, my eyes go straight to the bondage chair…
Which is empty.
The leather straps hang uselessly on the floor. “Fuck,” I growl.
Leaving the door open looks like a glaringly stupid mistake now. She must have already slipped out of here.
I’ve got men at every entrance, though. And if she’d tried to breach one of the gates, they’d have notified me. So she’s still in the house.
I turn back towards the stairs. That’s when I notice a shadow in my peripheral vision.
Before I can even process what’s happening, something hard smashes into the back of my head. Pain erupts through my body like wildfire. I stumble forward and my vision blurs.
For a second, all I can see are stars.
Then even that disappears, and all that’s left is darkness.
39
Renata
The gap between Kian entering the room and me slamming the stool into his head feels like it lasts forever. I have long enough to see him freeze in place when he realizes the chair he bound me in is empty.
That the leather straps he used stretched when I tugged hard enough and let me slip my hands free.
And when he puts all the pieces together, that’s when I swing.
As the stool hurtles through the air on a collision course with Kian’s skull, I feel a pang of guilt. I bite it down, furious at myself for choking. He doesn’t deserve my hesitation. He doesn’t deserve my guilt. He killed both my parents.
And yet you fucked him.
I didn’t know that back then.
You knew he killed your father. You watched him do it. And you fu
cked him anyways. You came on him, with him, for him, and asked for more.
The thwack of the stool against his head is sickening. He stumbles back, his eyes rolling around in their sockets like billiard balls.
I don’t wait to see how much damage I’ve done. I just drop the stool and run.
I’m halfway up the staircase when I hear his thundering footsteps behind me.
Fuck. Fuck. Fuck. I thought I’d bought myself some time, but apparently, he’d recovered fast. Which means the only thing I’ve succeeded in doing is pissing him off.
I speed up, trying not to lose my balance in the climb. I reach the landing. The black door is right there. The last barrier between me and freedom. My breath is coming in hot gasps. I stretch for the handle—
And then Kian’s hand clamps down on my ankle and drags me back into the shadows of the stairwell.
“No!” I scream. But I know that no one can hear me. These walls are thickened stone that swallow up any sound.
I’m on my own.
I flail my arms and legs, hoping that he’ll loosen his grip, but his fingers are like iron vices. He twists me around, and I manage to get a slap in, but it barely seems to affect him.
When I twist around to face him, I expect fury in his eyes, but he looks relatively calm, especially considering that I’d almost knocked him out back there. In fact, he looks like he’s expected this.
“I have to say,” he tells me in the voice of a man who definitely does not seem like he just had a stool swung into his head, “I’m getting kind of tired of wrestling with you.”
“Stop kidnapping me,” I suggest. “Then you won’t have to.”
“Or you could stop being stubborn,” he growls, dragging me back towards the staircase.
“I’m not going back down there!”
“You prefer your old room?”
“I prefer my fucking freedom.”
“You’ll get your freedom,” he responds, “when you’re safe.”
“Like you care about my safety!”
“I wish I didn’t,” he snaps. “But I do, and that makes me the fool here. Now move—or I’ll make you.”