by Emma Slate
“I—who was he?” I asked, turning around to face him.
“Someone sent to kill me.”
His casually spoken words made my blood turn to ice in my veins. “Why?”
“Because I have a lot of enemies, Sterling.”
“But we’re on a private island,” I stated.
“No place is impenetrable,” he replied with a negligent shrug. He stood up, looming tall and fierce.
“Let me see it,” I demanded, shooting toward him, making sure I maneuvered around the puddles of water.
He slowly removed the corner of the sheet from his wound, and I saw a slice on the opposite side of his other scar.
“It’s just a graze.”
“Just a graze,” I repeated, feeling tears threatening to spill from my eyes. Someone had hurt him, and I wasn’t prepared for the anguish it caused me.
He pressed the sheet back to his wound. With a shaking hand, I grasped his elbow and urged him toward the bathroom.
“Are you going to play doctor? Patch me up?” he asked with a gruesome smile.
I didn’t reply as I flipped on the light of the master bathroom. I waved him to sit down and he perched on the closed toilet seat, the sheet littering the floor as he continued to hold it to his side.
“Look in the medicine cabinet behind the mirror,” he said. “There should be antiseptic and skin glue.”
“He cut you. Why did he have a knife?” I asked, finding the supplies I needed. “I mean, why didn’t he use a gun or something?”
“I didn’t have time to stop and have a blether with him,” he said darkly. “Can we hurry this along. I’ve got a mess to clean up.”
“And I’ve got you to clean up,” I snapped. “So you can just sit there and be pampered for like, five fucking minutes.”
He suddenly smiled.
“What?” I asked warily. “What’s that grin for?”
“You’re worried about me.”
“Uh, yeah.” I hastily pulled back my hair into a lopsided messy top bun and then washed my hands. “I couldn’t see anything that was happening. But the sounds…my imagination was in overdrive.”
I brought my supplies to the end of the counter and then squatted down in front of Hadrian. I removed the sheet so I could get another look at the wound. It was no longer seeping and most of the blood had started to clot. It was clearly superficial, but I was still going to treat it like it was a life or death situation.
If it had been anyone else, they’d be dead. But Hadrian had enough skill to fight off someone he had referred to as a professional.
“Did you lie to me this afternoon?” I asked.
I tried to be gentle, and as I cleaned his wound he didn’t wince or react.
“Lie about what?”
I blew on his injury, wanting the skin to dry before I glued it together. “You called me by my real name,” I reminded him. “Ramsey told you, didn’t he?”
“No. Ramsey didn’t tell me.”
When he refused to go on, I looked up at him.
“You’re not going to like the answer,” he said.
“Probably not,” I said lightly.
“Your cell phone.”
My eyes widened. “Oh my God. You’ve been monitoring my calls.”
Tiffany had called me by my real name.
“You bastard!” I yelled, standing up and throwing the soiled wash rag into the sink. “All this time, you’ve been calling me Eden. You’ve been having a good fucking laugh at my expense, haven’t you?”
“A laugh?” His face clouded with anger. “Every time I take you to my bed and I come inside you, I have to stop myself from crying out your name. Your real name.” He stood up with the intention of crowding my space as was his natural inclination.
“Sit down!” I yelled. “And let me finish taking care of you!”
We glared at each other, breathing heavily. Another fight was brewing in the air, but there was something else, too.
Blood lust.
Someone had just tried to kill Hadrian, and he’d protected me. He’d acted like a warrior defending his queen.
“Who are you, Hadrian?” I whispered. “I have the right to know.”
“You have the right to know?” he repeated. “How the hell do you figure that?”
“Someone came to your island to try and kill you. I happen to be staying with you. Don’t you think I deserve a few answers?”
He fell silent, and I took the time to close his wound and bandage him up. He held his body taut, like at any moment he’d reach out and grab me. I could tell he was only a few moments away from losing his shit entirely.
“I met Ramsey Buchanan when I was sixteen,” he said, shattering the silence. “I’d run away from Lerwick—the orphanage—more times than I could count. Eventually, they stopped coming after me.
“I lived in Edinburgh, on the streets. I was big for my age, even then. Anyone who tried to fuck with me learned quickly that I had a lot of rage, and no one to take it out on. I never started shite…but I ended it. A lot.”
When he looked at me, it was like he was waiting for confirmation that I was listening. I nodded quickly.
He inhaled and went on, “One night, four lads a few years older than me thought they could take me on. Ramsey helped even the score.” He smiled at the memory. “Here was this eejit with designer clothes and an expensive haircut with just as much rage as me. He had my back and never asked for anything. He just started hanging out with me. He’d disappear for a time and eventually come back. I found out he was doing the same thing—running away from home, looking for trouble for a few days. But he didn’t know true struggle like I did. He wasn’t built for living on the streets.”
He shrugged. “Anyway, he came back one day and told me he met a couple of guys who ran an underground bare-knuckle boxing ring. He thought I could make a lot of money beating the shite out of rough men. And he was right.” His smile at the memory dimmed.
“There was a girl,” he said, his voice so low I had to lean forward to hear him. “An orphan girl two years younger than me named Finola. She’s the one who introduced me to The Last Unicorn and King Haggard. We’d sit up in the belfry, hiding from the world, reading stories to each other to pass the time and escape the…”
He looked over my shoulder, going to a place I couldn’t follow. “She’d get the dreamiest look on her face and tell me about all the places she’d go if she could, all the foods she’d eat if she had a million pounds. What life would be like if she were normal and not just a poor orphan.” Hadrian came back to the present and glanced at me. “When she got placed with a family, I ran away to Edinburgh for good. There was no reason to stay there anymore. Finola was gone.”
He scrubbed a hand through his strawberry blond hair. “I didn’t expect her to find me a few months later on the streets. She told me her foster father made her uncomfortable. Staring at her. Touching her shoulder a little longer than was normal. Things she couldn’t put into words, but she knew something was wrong. But she loved being in a home with a family so she didn’t say anything. She didn’t want to go back to the orphanage.”
A sick feeling took up residence in my stomach, but I bit my tongue and let him continue.
“He snuck into her room one night.” His expression went cold. “She sliced the bastard across his face with the knife I gave her as protection—just in case. They sent her back to the orphanage, of course, claimed she’d made up the entire story, but the father mysteriously didn’t want to press any charges. He said she was crazy, and that was the end of it. No one looked into it further.”
“What did Mother Superior say?” I asked, my heart breaking for a young girl I’d never met.
“I think she believed Finola, but what could she do?” He shook his head. “When Finola ran away, I think it was a bit of relief for all parties involved. Nothing would come it of it after that, no matter who said anything about it. The orphanage didn’t look very hard for her. She was just gone.”
“We slept on the same dirty mattress in the warehouse I’d made my home. I introduced her to Ramsey. Finola was never,” he thought for a moment, “bitter. Never jaded. Never broken. She still had hope. Hope that life would eventually be kind to her, and that there was goodness in the world.”
Emotion tugged at the back of my eyelids because I knew—I knew—the next part of Hadrian’s story would gut me.
“She wanted to see me fight one night, and I let her. We took her down to one of the matches and of course I won—and while Ramsey was collecting our winnings, the lads who bet on their friend and lost, cornered Finola.”
He boldly met my gaze, and the anguish I saw in his eyes was nearly my undoing. But if he could tell it, then I would be strong enough to hear it.
Hadrian took a deep, shuddering breath. “They cornered her and dragged her outside and raped her in the alley behind the ring—and then they slit her throat. Ramsey and I found her, eyes open, glazed over in shock.”
He paused for a long while and then took a deep breath and went on, “She used to carry around an old copy of The Last Unicorn. The book was lying on the ground in the alley, the spine split, and the pages torn out. She had silvery blonde hair. Almost white. Did I tell you that?”
I shook my head, stifling a sob that threatened to spill from me.
“Her hair was stained red from her own blood. The cream-colored pages of her book were splattered with mud and looked yellow in the dim streetlight.”
He bowed his head and stared at his knees. “It’s been twenty years, and I can still see her frozen in that moment. So clear. It never fades, Sterling. It just lives—” He pressed a fist to his heart. “I loved her. Her loss was…”
I had no words to offer him. No comfort to give. I could not ease the pain of his memory, of his first love’s tragic death.
What would’ve happened if Finola had lived? Would she be here with him now? Would they have a family? Would they have made something beautiful together after coming from such brutal pasts?
Would Hadrian be the man he is now if he hadn’t gone through such trauma?
“We found towels from the fight room to wrap Finola in and got her back to the warehouse without being seen. Even though we’d spent some time together, I didn’t know who Ramsey truly was—the power of his last name. He made a call and a few hours later, we were in a car headed to Dornoch. We laid Finola to rest in his family’s cemetery, and Ramsey introduced me to his father. He told us to go do what needed doing, and then Ramsey and I returned to Edinburgh and hunted every one of those fuckers down like rabid dogs,” he said, his voice threaded with steel. “We spent four days finding them, and by the fourth night we had slit all their throats like they had done to Finola and left each of them on the doorsteps of their homes for their families to find. We pinned notes to their chests that said ‘Rapist’, so there would be no question about why they’d been killed. At first, the police thought a serial killer was on the loose, but everyone knew who those boys really were at heart, and the community quietly let the murders go unpunished. The police made it look like they were trying hard to find us and gave great quotes to the papers, but everyone knew it was all for show.”
He clenched his hands a few times. “When we were done, Ramsey asked me to come back to Dornoch with him. He told me his father wanted to speak to me and—”
With a shuddering breath he said, “And my life was never the same again.”
Chapter Twenty-Four
He finally got up and I instinctively backed away, but his attention wasn’t on me. He all but fled to the bedroom, and I followed at a more sedate pace.
I sat down on the edge of the bed. I was exhausted from the events of the late night already, but it didn’t feel like we were done. Not by a long shot.
Hadrian stood, clad in nothing but a pair of navy-blue boxer briefs. I wanted to hug him to me, but I wasn’t sure he’d allow the comfort.
He went to the liquor cart and poured two drinks. Hadrian came toward me, holding out a glass. When I reached for it, my hand shook.
I grasped it but didn’t drink. Instead, I stared into it like it was a crystal ball.
“You’re afraid of me now,” he said finally.
My head shot up. “What? No.”
“You haven’t said anything.”
“You told me a lot,” I reminded him. “I’m…thinking.” I took a sip of my drink, wincing at the strong flavor of brandy.
Finola’s death was tragic. I was glad Hadrian had delivered his own brand of vigilante justice with Ramsey. The world didn’t need people who hurt the innocent.
“You have to tell me what’s going on in your head, Sterling.”
I arched a brow. “You seem very fond of using my real name.”
He stared at me. “Of course I am. It’s who you really are.”
“You invaded my privacy,” I lashed out.
“I’m a reclusive billionaire who has never brought a woman to his island, and there’s a reason for that. I don’t trust anybody.”
Well, we have that in common, I guess. What else does he know about me?
What would he do if he found out the truth? Was I doing right by following the path my mother had instructed all along? Hide, get a new identity, forget my past and never tell anyone?
Be safe, be smart, and above all, survive.
“Sterling?”
“I understand why you monitored my calls,” I said as Hadrian pulled me from my thoughts. “I’m sorry…about Finola.”
Saying her name made it feel like her ghost was between us, that she was the true reason Hadrian was so closed off from the world.
He nodded once, his expression going blank.
“Why did you tell me about her, about how you—and the boys… You didn’t have to.”
He paused and took a sip of his drink. To stall for even more time, he flipped on the gas fireplace. “I wanted to. I wanted you to know what made me the man I am now.”
“You’ve always been a protector, haven’t you? Even when you were a kid.”
“I didn’t protect Finola—and I have to live with that every day for the rest of my life. She died because of me. She died because she knew me. If I’d sent her back to Lerwick where she was safe…”
“You were in love,” I said quietly. “And she came to you because she would’ve rather taken her chances living as a runaway with you on the streets than being placed in another foster home where she wasn’t safe.”
He didn’t seem to hear me or register what I’d said.
“I killed four lads.”
“No. You killed four rapists. You did the world a favor.”
“I slit their throats, Sterling. It was gruesome and brutal.”
“You avenged her.”
“I enjoyed killing them.”
“Did you? Or did you enjoy punishing them for taking the woman you loved? Those aren’t the same thing.”
“I took pleasure in their pain. The fear in their eyes as they pissed themselves…the look on their faces as our blades met their throats. Aye.” His gaze glittered. “I enjoyed it, because they deserved it.”
I fell silent, turning over his words, examining them. I wasn’t at all horrified by his confession, even though I should’ve been.
“You’re leaving,” he said suddenly.
“What?” I asked, shooting up from my spot on the bed.
He nodded. “As soon as the storm clears, you’re getting on a helicopter to the mainland and then my plane will fly you back to Dallas.”
“You can’t—what?”
“I’ll pay you the money from the contract. All of it.” He clenched his jaw.
“Hadrian, stop,” I whispered. “Why are you pushing me away?”
He glared. “I’m not pushing you away. I’m protecting you. Don’t you understand? An assassin broke into my home—on my private island in the middle of nowhere—and he escaped. Which means he’s still out there. He could come back to finish the job. Actually, I expect him to come back. You need to leave. You need to get as far away from me as possible.”
Leave Hadrian?
Wasn’t that the smart thing to do? But how could I do it?
The thought of leaving him was a punch to the chest and left me short of breath.
“You’re not safe with me, Sterling. And I will not jeopardize your life. I’ve already lost one woman because I—you have to get as far away from me as possible.”
For the first time since I’d met Hadrian, he looked unsure.
“Hadrian?” I peered into his eyes. “Do you like being with me?”
“That has nothing to do with it. I can’t guarantee your safety here.”
“Could you guarantee it when you offered me the contract?”
He clenched his jaw and then said, “You weren’t in danger then. You are now.”
He cared.
Hadrian Rhys cared about me.
Somewhere along the way, in our short time together, I’d managed to sneak past the fortifications guarding his heart.
Hadrian could protect me. He had protected me. He’d shoved me under the bed and then fought off an assailant in the night.
“I can’t imagine the pain you’ve gone through. Losing Finola the way you did…but I’m not her. Let me stay. Let me be here with you.”
“Why would you knowingly put yourself in danger?” he demanded. “Do you have a death wish? Don’t you understand? I’m cursed.”
“You’re not cursed, Hadrian,” I said, my heart fracturing for the man standing in front of me, fracturing for the hurt he’d borne through the years.
“Aye, I am,” he said, his tone emphatic.
“You live on an island, away from civilization. Why? To keep others out? Or to keep them safe from you?”
His expression cracked, finally showing the bleak pain shackled to his soul.