by Bethany-Kris
An extra set of keys for the brownstone were gone.
She’d left a coffee cup, stained with creamy rings, in the kitchen sink, along with the spoon she’d used to stir the drink. Her book, one she’d just started reading the morning before, was still sitting on the coffee table in the living room. Her drawing, the feather on the wall that she hadn’t finished entirely when he had gotten home the day before, was done, and so beautiful, her name scrawled at the bottom.
Like a goodbye.
Connor stared at the feather for a long while, longer than he probably should have, before he was even able to look away. To finish that piece, Evelyn must have gotten out of their bed and worked on it through the night before … leaving.
He walked past the kitchen table three times before he saw the note.
Please don’t be mad, Connor.
I left something behind, and I have to get it now. I made a promise, and so did they, so I’m going to follow it through now that I can. I’ll be back, when I can.
I’m sorry, and I love you.
—Evelyn Sasha
Connor wished, after reading the note, he could say that he felt better, or that he even understood why she had up and left, without so much as an explanation to him before she went away. And yet, he was left more confused than ever, more hurt than before, and so alone.
Shite.
He’d been alone his whole life anyway.
Always getting hurt.
Abused.
Neglected.
This shouldn’t have stung him as badly as it did—he shouldn’t have felt like his entire being were ripping apart at the seams the longer he stood there, reading the same words over and over, until they bled together into nothing but ink blots.
What was so important to her that she had to go after it?
Why did she have to do it alone?
More than anything, Connor was pissed off that Evelyn hadn’t given him the benefit to even tell him those things. And when that rage came … when his anger finally leaked through the shock enough for him to react, his chaos exploded around him. All the confusion and hurt and anger inside came spilling out, like a hurricane ripping from his mind, releasing hell and devastation on anything within reach.
He loved his brownstone.
Each item, every piece inside, was something he had carefully picked or made himself to decorate the rooms and the walls. It was his only safe haven, the one place where he could be just him, where he didn’t have to feel alone.
Yet, he did.
So, when all of the sudden, it felt like a prison to Connor, lashing out at his favorite, comforting things was the only thing that made sense. By the time he was done overturning furniture, ripping his canvases from the walls, and shattering his knickknacks on the floor, he was left standing in the middle of his own loneliness.
It was his chaos.
And he was still so alone.
• • •
Connor tried to chase Evelyn for the first two months after she had left. He’d even done so, to his own detriment, leaving his business uncared for, and his newly-overturned organization without any sort of stable head of the family to keep things under control.
He hadn’t known where to look for her at first, except for what she had said, and the things she had written in her note. He’d gone back to the Russians, because if she had left something behind, perhaps it was with them, even if that had been a risky move on his part to ask a distrustful, bitter Bratva for help.
He’d found none, either way.
Connor then moved onto tracing the steps Evelyn might have taken, ways she could move around with the cash she had taken from him, and walked into yet more dead-ends.
It was like she didn’t exist.
As though she hadn’t existed at all.
He might have found it funny, if it weren’t so feckin’ heartbreaking.
Her whole life had been shoved under a cloak of non-existence, a slave of men who had the money and means to buy her, and then shuffle her from owner to owner until she would finally make her way back to the one she actually belonged to. Her name had been changed, her history and heritage stripped from her person, and she’d become a hybrid of sorts.
A woman stuck between Evelyn, the girl, and Sasha, the slave.
She had never been meant to exist, anyway.
Not to the outside world.
Connor couldn’t even find it in himself to be surprised that at every turn, with every effort he made to find her, he came up with absolutely nothing. No amount of money he spent, no matter how many people he hired to look for her, nothing he did … none of it worked.
She was like a ghost. Something invisible, only known by those lucky enough to have actually met her.
Perhaps that was why, maybe that was the only reason, he kept looking, even when he knew nothing would work, and his efforts would all be in vain. His efforts slowed over time, because he was met with dead-end after dead-end, and he no longer knew where to travel or look for her. It was hard when he had no ID to go on, nothing to track, and no actual known person to go after for a proper answer.
He didn’t stop entirely.
He couldn’t.
I’ll be back …
Connor tried to remember those words when he found himself failing the most. He remembered those three words, even when he had absolutely no reason to.
• • •
“Connor!”
Irritated to have his meeting with one of his Lieutenants interrupted, Connor tried to school his features as Killian flew into the doorway, his features lit with excitement, and he straightened his jacket.
“Do you want to try that again?” Connor asked dryly.
Killian’s gaze slid over the two men sitting in the room, and his excitement disappeared. “Sorry. Uh, boss … I’ve got some news you might want to hear.”
Connor waved a hand dismissively. “When I’m done.”
“But—”
“Killian.” Connor’s gaze narrowed on his right-hand man, hoping it was enough to quell whatever nonsense had the guy acting foolish in front of other subordinates. Being a boss was hard enough at his age, but it was even harder when Connor had zero patience, and was prone to violent outbursts that sometimes hurt his case more than it helped. “Not right now.”
“Sure, but—”
“I’m going to hurt you,” Connor warned frankly.
“But it’s her, boss. Her.”
Every fiber of Connor’s body turned to ice on the spot, and he suddenly no longer cared about the Lieutenant and his idiot man that he’d been trying to work with on an issue. Instead, all he could hear was one word—her—and what it might mean.
“You’re sure?” Connor asked quietly.
Killian nodded. “Got a call from one of the lads that checks on the brownstone while you’re away, and he said a woman was there.”
Connor was up out of his chair, dismissing the two men, and heading out of the door, before Killian could get in another word. He didn’t need to hear more, he certainly didn’t need to question the validity of Killian’s statement, or what the lad had seen.
No other woman would be at his brownstone. Connor didn’t have time for other women, he only had time and the need for one that wasn’t there at all. He didn’t have family—no sisters, mother, or cousins that might show up.
No, only her.
Evelyn.
“Connor, there was something else,” Killian shouted at his back. “Someone else!”
Connor didn’t wait to hear what, or who, it was; he was already out the pub’s door, letting it slam shut with a loud bang as he headed up to the busy street.
An hour and a half away …
He’d make it in forty-five minutes, if he didn’t get pulled over.
• • •
Connor didn’t even bother to cut the engine of his truck as he pulled over in front of his brownstone. He was sure he’d broken at least a dozen or so traffic laws, but he couldn’t find it in him
self to care as he pushed out of the vehicle and headed for the front door.
He didn’t bother to pull out his own set of keys for the brownstone, knowing he likely wouldn’t need them. Evelyn had taken his spare set of keys, after all.
She had a way to get in.
When she came back.
When …
Connor threw open the front door with a hell of a lot more force than was necessary, but he couldn’t have stopped himself, even if he wanted to. There was far too much of him—a huge piece of him—that was gone, that had been missing, for the three long months that Evelyn had disappeared from his life.
He just wanted it back.
The moment his eyes adjusted between the bright sunlight outside, to the dim light of the brownstone’s front entrance, Connor froze again.
There she stood, different in several ways, but still the very same.
She wore a dress that swept the floor, an ombre-colored number with a slit all the way up the thigh, and his leather jacket over top. Gone was her long hair, instead sheared off just below her jaw, and a lot lighter in color, as though it had been bleached a bit in the sun. Bangles covered both her wrists, and she must have learned how to wield a stick of kohl and tube of lipstick while she was gone.
So different.
Entirely the same.
“Evelyn.”
She looked up from her fidgeting hands, meeting his gaze with a soft smile. “I did say I would come back, Connor.”
He thought he would be angry when he saw her again. That all his futile efforts to find her, all his pain and confusion from being left alone, would rush out the first chance he was able to speak.
None of that happened.
Connor only felt … calm.
All those pieces of himself that had been slowly stripped away and ripped from his soul were sewn back in damn near instantly, and all it took was a single smile from her.
“I’m sorry,” Evelyn said.
“For what?” Connor asked. “Because there’s a lot, love.”
“All of it.”
“Mommy!”
Connor had been slowly moving toward Evelyn as they spoke, but at the sound of a new, much younger and juvenile female voice, he jerked back a good foot, rooted to the ground again. His gaze found the person responsible for the shout, a wee thing, maybe three and a half feet tall, with strawberry-blonde curls and the greenest eyes he had ever seen next to the woman’s he loved. The wee lass came out of the kitchen with a banana in her hand, and came to a stop at Evelyn’s legs, holding the fruit up for her to take.
“Please?”
“Sure, Ciara,” Evelyn said, her smile returning.
She peeled the banana, handed it back to the child, and then the girl—a living, breathing copycat of a wee child he remembered from way back—skipped back into the kitchen, happy as could be.
Connor watched her go.
“My daughter,” Evelyn said softly. “Ciara. She had a different name given by someone else, but also the one I gave her, so.”
Connor glanced back at his lover. “You left something behind, you said.”
“She’s six.”
He knew how long she had been with the Russian, and was capable of figuring out a lot that she clearly wasn’t saying. That child was likely the Russian’s, and if Connor counted back the years—six—that was the time when Evelyn had once said she had been sterilized.
He also distinctly remembered being told, months and months ago, before he’d went in to kill the Russian, that the man had a wife and daughter, though they didn’t live with him.
“He sent her away?” Connor guessed.
Evelyn shook her head. “No, his wife took her. She stayed for two years after, but then she left. Told me she would be in the Sunshine State, at the busiest beach, if I ever got free. She knew he was terrible, but with me, he left her alone. He had no reason to make her stay while I was there, so maybe it was … a gift or something, to her. A way out, and then her gratitude at giving back what wasn’t hers to take.”
Connor didn’t know what to say.
Apparently, Evelyn didn’t need him to.
“She made me a promise,” Evelyn said, “and I made one back, to find her. I made it out there, kept going between places—beaches—hoping to sight her. It took a while, but I got lucky.”
“She just gave her back, when she’s raised her for all this time?”
Evelyn frowned. “Ciara isn’t hers, she’s mine. Do you understand?”
“I do.”
“But?”
“You could have told me,” Connor said. “It would have saved me a lot of … shite.”
Evelyn shrugged. “I didn’t go just for Ciara, Connor.”
“Then, why?”
“I needed to figure out who I was without … the rest. Things that happened, the way I lived, and even you. You were the one who said I needed to sort out who I wanted to be. You were right, Connor. I didn’t know who I was—Evelyn, or Sasha. I didn’t know who I wanted to be. I needed to figure that part of me out without you. I’m not sorry for needing freedom to learn, please don’t be mad for giving it to me.”
How could he be mad?
How could he begrudge her something she had never had?
How could he cage her because he was selfish?
“Evelyn,” Connor murmured.
“Yeah?”
“Did you figure it out—who you are, and who you want to be?”
“I’m here, aren’t I?”
That was all that mattered.
The rest could wait.
• • •
Sunday mornings were made for laziness and good food. He had nowhere to be, nowhere he wanted to be, and no one to tell him where to go because he was the one who decided things. Connor was convinced of those facts, and no one was going to change his mind.
That was until …
“Connor?”
“Mmm.”
“Get up,” Evelyn murmured into his ear.
Usually, he’d love all her noises, even if they were too early in the morning, and the cause of him waking up.
“No,” he said simply, rolling to his stomach on the bed. The pillow made for a good face rest, even if he couldn’t breathe, and his voice was muffled. “No talking until I am out of bed on Sundays.”
“Connor.”
“No.”
He was tempted to tell his lover to go away, but he couldn’t gain the balls to do so. She had been back with him for a couple of weeks, and while it was easy for him to slip back into a routine with Evelyn, he had not forgotten that she had just gotten up one day, and left him behind. Actually, it was feckin’ impossible to forget. He did have her close for now, though, so he kept her that way.
Even if that meant having her annoy him awake on a Sunday morning.
“I missed it last week because I slept in and you never go, but I don’t want to miss it this week,” Evelyn said, bringing Connor out of his thoughts.
“What?” He rolled over to his back, and rubbed at his eyes. Seemed he had missed a part of her conversation somehow, as he didn’t know what in the hell she was talking about. “Missed what last week, lass?”
“Church.”
“Oh, feck that. No.”
Connor rolled back over, this time, using his arms as a pillow and the actual pillow to cover his head. He didn’t do church. His father had gone, but that was mostly for appearances, as anyone who knew Sean was well aware the bastard was going to hell.
Connor probably wouldn’t get to heaven, either.
If such a place even existed …
“Connor, I want to go,” Evelyn said firmly, her hand skimming up his back.
“Stop touching me.”
“Why, is that helping my case?”
Just to make a point, Evelyn’s hand skimmed back down his spine, over his naked arse, and then back up again.
“If I roll over, will you just focus that on my cock?” Connor asked.
Evelyn laughed
. “Obviously, it’s not helping my case, if sex is all you’re thinking about.”
“I’m naked. You can get naked. We’re already in bed. This doesn’t have to be difficult, love.”
“We don’t have time for that—I want to go to church, and I know the one down the road has Mass that starts in an hour,” Evelyn said firmly.
Then, her hand smacked him hard on the arse, making Connor jump and curse. By the time he had gotten into a sitting position, Evelyn was already wrapping herself in a robe as she flew out the bedroom doorway.
“Get up and take me,” Evelyn said over her shoulder, “or call someone to do it for me.”
Jesus.
There went his Sunday.
“Close the feckin’ door!” Connor shouted. “The wee one might walk in here, for feck sakes.”
Sometimes, the child was so quiet, Connor forgot she was even in the house. He wasn’t used to having a child living in the same vicinity as him, let alone in the next room.
“She’s already downstairs eating,” Evelyn called back, her voice growing fainter with every word. “You’re the only one still in bed, Connor.”
“There’s a goddamn reason for that!”
Like the fact it was feckin’ Sunday.
“Not today.”
• • •
Connor stared up at the church’s name, inscribed on a large plaque and hanging over the entrance door. He loosened his tie just enough to take a decent breath, and willed the sudden urge to bolt to die the hell down.
Just standing on the front steps made him feel as though he were going to burst into flames.
This was too much.
“Evelyn,” Connor muttered, trying to get his lover’s attention.
She was already doing her own thing, passing Ciara off—the wee lass was dressed in a pretty, pink dress—to the lady who apparently ran the Sunday school.
“She’ll be perfectly fine,” the woman said, “and the other children will be excited to have someone new attending.”
Evelyn nodded, and smiled. “Great, thank you.”
Connor could see she was still nervous about letting her daughter go off alone, somewhere without her and where she wouldn’t be able to keep her eye on her twenty-four-seven. Even Ciara looked back over her shoulder at her mother, and then quickly to Connor, before being led through the front doors and down a hall where they could no longer see her.