There wasn’t anything about Kieran that looked sad.
Everything about him screamed he was ready to end a life.
“What happens when you leave?” he finally asked. “The way I see it, there aren’t many reasons for you to want to.”
I was about to point out all that had happened just over the course of the night, but he continued.
“You’re leaving to get out because Zachary has a team coming for us.”
“What? No,” I whispered.
“You’re leaving to reunite with Zachary and tell him exactly what he needs to know.”
My head was shaking slowly. It felt light, too light. “No.”
“You know that your leaving will cause even more of a rift within my family, and that’s what you want. That’ll make it easier to pick us off since they didn’t actually succeed in killing anyone last night.”
“No,” I cried out and quickly lowered Lexi’s feet to the floor, pressing her head close to my stomach and covering her ear. “I don’t want this, why can’t you see that? I don’t want what happened last night. I didn’t know it was going to happen. And I don’t—” A pained breath climbed up my throat.
Slow.
Choking.
“God, the last thing I want is what’s happening between you and Conor. It’s breaking my heart for him and for you, and I don’t even like you. But I know how much he loves you, and to see . . .” I reached for my chest before grabbing Lexi again. “He can’t lose you.”
Kieran’s jaw ticked, and for the first time since he’d appeared in front of us, his stare fell to the floor.
“You were right, there are things I haven’t told you.” When his eyes flashed to mine and hardened, I hurried to continue. “But it won’t help you find Zachary. It never would’ve helped or changed anything. It was nothing but lies on top of lies told to me that I had to figure out on my own. That I had to come to the horrifying realization of, only to bear that shame and regret.”
“You don’t know what could help us,” he ground out. “That was why we asked for everything. You should have told us.”
“You’re probably right, but it was too late long ago, and it wouldn’t change things now,” I whispered sadly. “I didn’t know about the houses or the bunkers. I haven’t known anything that you’ve told me. And before you accuse me again, no, I haven’t told Zachary or anyone else anything that you’ve done or planned. If I never see or hear from him again, I will consider myself lucky. But I know this is all happening because I’m here with you. You and Conor fighting.” My jaw trembled as I mouthed Diggs so Lexi wouldn’t hear. “I can’t imagine that it will stop as long as I’m here, and I can’t be the reason anyone else gets hurt. I can’t be the reason Conor loses his family. So, let us go.”
“Sutton . . .”
My eyelids slowly shut. My face crumpled with a grief so consuming I had to reach out and grip at the wall to ground myself.
Lexi gasped. “Mr. Conor!”
She slipped from my hold, and it was all I could do not to fall to the floor right then.
“Mr. Conor, Mr. Conor, look at your beard, it’s all different now. And you got a haircut. I like it a lot.”
With each excited and adoring word, I felt the shattered pieces of my heart dying. With his low response, I felt my soul reaching out, begging for him.
“Please let us go,” I whispered so low only Kieran would hear.
“You love him,” was his only response.
My chest pitched with a silent sob. “I can’t ruin his life.”
“Do you love him?”
“Please—”
“I can’t let you leave,” he said, his tone soft but final, and then he stepped back to stand against the door the way Conor always did.
My shoulders sagged, and the bag finally slipped from my arm.
I fumbled to catch the strap before the bag could hit the floor, only to set it down.
With a steadying breath, I lifted my chin and turned to face the stare I could feel piercing my back.
It was worse than I ever could’ve imagined.
Conor was crouched low in nothing but a pair of sleep pants, holding Lexi to him as she chatted animatedly at his side, but his eyes and the hard set of his jaw said it all.
Grief.
Betrayal.
Loss.
Confusion.
Anger.
The tears I’d held back slipped free.
He whispered something to Lexi and stood, breaking our eye contact with a shake of his head as his long strides carried him across the room and toward the kitchen.
As soon as he passed my line of sight, I stumbled back against the wall and sank to the floor, a muted sob breaking free.
Lexi curled up next to me, prying my hands away from my face, studying me intently. “You don’t have to be sad, Momma. Mr. Conor said we don’t have to leave. So, don’t be sad. We can stay with him instead of going back to the bad house.”
I pulled her into my arms and rested my head against the wall, remembering that Kieran was standing just feet away from us almost as an afterthought.
“It isn’t that simple, sweet girl,” I murmured.
“But you said we wouldn’t go back to the bad house. Remember, you said?”
“We won’t. Not ever,” I assured her. “Why don’t you tell me what you want for breakfast.”
That perked her up. “Breakfast! Where’s my Diggs?”
My heart.
I wasn’t going to make it through this day.
I situated her on the floor and straightened myself, taking calming breaths and wondering how I was supposed to do this.
By the time I looked into her excited eyes, all I knew was that I didn’t want to.
“You know how Diggs likes to have fun and play a lot?”
“Yeah!” Lexi’s eyes brightened, and her smile widened so big I thought she might actually have the capability to heal me.
Slowly.
One shattered piece at a time.
“Well, he was playing last night, and he got hurt really bad.”
Her mouth slowly fell into an O shape. “Did you kiss it to make it all better?”
The corners of my mouth tipped up before falling again. “No, that only works on you because you’re my baby.”
She rolled her eyes. “I’m not a baby.”
“Of course not.” I ran a hand over her hair. “He can’t play today or even tomorrow. He might not even be able to talk to you today because he needs a lot of rest. Do you understand?”
She made a face like she was thinking really hard and then asked, “If I say hi, can he hear me?”
“I’m sure of it.”
“If I eat breakfast for him, will it help him get better real fast?”
“I think that sounds like something he would definitely approve of.” I reached for the bag and then searched for Lexi’s toothbrush for a few moments before realizing I hadn’t even packed anything from the bathroom. “Can you take this back to our room for me? Brush your teeth and change while you’re in there, and then we’ll go say hi to Diggs.”
Once she was hurrying toward the bedroom, bag dragging behind her, Kieran asked, “You sure she should see him?”
“Don’t underestimate her, she’s braver than women twice my age.”
“If there’s anything I’ve learned in my life, it is not to underestimate women.”
I shot him a cold look. “Just don’t trust them.”
He held my stare before his eyes took on a faraway look. “Only when there’s a reason not to,” he said after a minute. “I pulled a knife on Jessica the first few times I met her. Wanted to kill her.”
“And she married you?”
The corner of his mouth tipped up. “She pulled a few on me too. Even stole one of mine once to do it. I fell in love with her at the exact minute I decided to kill her . . .”
“One of those clearly won out, and I have a feeling this won’t go in my favor, considering you won�
��t be falling in love with me.”
“I’m saying don’t take it personally. I was raised and trained to trust only myself and to eliminate every threat.”
“How can I not when you continue to remind me that I am a threat to you?”
A cold, cruel look stole across his face. “If I were sure about that, you would’ve been dead long ago. I wouldn’t have stopped when I had a knife to your throat last night. You wouldn’t have seen me coming.”
So, I had to wait for him to decide if I was.
Wonderful.
I stood, trying not to let him see any of the emotions coursing through me even though he had just been witness to my breakdown.
Before I stepped away, I whispered, “You should’ve let us go.”
Sutton
I joined Lexi in the room and took my time changing and brushing my teeth even though she was bouncing up and down, eager to see her Diggs.
There was no keeping her from him. She would ask and ask until she went searching for him on her own. I knew that just as surely as I knew there was no avoiding Conor.
To put it off for even a few more minutes was both fortifying and meaningless.
Because as soon as we stepped into the bedroom where they’d moved Diggs, and Conor turned that hurt stare on me, my walls crumbled and my soul cried out.
I kept a firm hold on Lexi’s shoulders when she tried to dart toward the bed. The closer we got, the more anxious she became.
When we reached the side of the bed, I bent to whisper, “Remember he’s really hurt, so don’t touch him. Try to stay quiet so you don’t wake Maverick and Einstein, okay?”
She nodded, not saying a word, and then slipped out of my hold.
I moved to grab for her but stopped when she simply leaned on the bed and whispered, “Diggs. Diggs, are you sleeping? Momma told me you got hurt. I don’t like when I get hurt, but I still act brave because I know it makes my momma sad. Just so you know, I’m sad you’re hurt, but I’ll act real brave for you.”
I placed a hand over my mouth, trying to stifle the choking noise in my throat.
My brave, sweet girl.
It would wreck her if she knew her father was behind this.
“And I’ll eat all the food for you,” she continued. “And I’ll tell you all the stories until you’re all better. And then we can play superheroes again.” She wriggled slightly closer. “Diggs . . . did you know your fort is gone? It’s okay, though, we can make it again it later.”
Movement off to the side caught my eye, and I glanced over in time to see Conor leaving the room, hands laced behind his neck and head hanging.
I stepped toward him instinctively and then forced myself to face the bed, knowing his hurt and anger were warranted.
I’d expected them.
I just hadn’t expected to be here to witness them.
Maverick stirred and then opened his eyes, shifting quickly in the chair when he noticed us there.
“I’m sorry,” I said quickly, keeping my voice low. “She wanted to see him.”
“It’s fine,” he whispered as he looked to Einstein and Diggs and then stood.
When he stretched out his injured arm, a hiss escaped his lungs and his face creased with pain as he lowered it back to his side.
“Bad?” I asked when he came to stand near me.
“Definitely hurts now that the adrenaline and everything are gone.”
“Do you need something for the pain?”
“Took something a couple of hours ago, I’ll be fine. Not the first time I’ve been shot.” The look on my face made him laugh. “It happened in our line of work. Except for the girls, everyone has been shot or stabbed at least once.”
“Conor?”
“I wouldn’t know about him or Kieran. Wouldn’t surprise me since they have the scars. Conor knows how to take care of them, though, and that was what mattered last night.”
“Yeah.” I looked to Diggs and worried my bottom lip before asking, “No one answered me about the hospital. Why didn’t you take him there?”
Maverick gave me a look that silently asked me how I hadn’t put it together. “Police are contacted if you go to the hospital with stab or gunshot wounds. Police can’t be involved in our lives—ever. Things happen, we take care of it. Our old boss, his mom has always taken care of us, no matter what happened. She took care of Einstein after—” He swallowed thickly, his eyes focused on where she was still asleep in the chair.
“What Zachary did,” I finished on a whisper.
He offered me a forced smile. “That was all I kept thinking last night. Sofia wasn’t here, I didn’t know how Diggs was going to survive something I was sure didn’t have good odds even in a hospital. And then Conor pulled through, rigging a transfusion like it was just another day.”
“He did it all like he’s done it so many times before,” I said, a cold chill running over my skin as the truth of that statement settled inside me.
“Probably didn’t have a choice but to learn. Sofia was forced to learn, picking up things as she went because someone had to do it. Her role has always been to take care of the gang, no matter what that meant. Why Conor was pushed into it . . .” He looked around the room and then gestured toward the doorway with his chin. “You’ll have to ask him when he wakes up.”
I didn’t tell him that Conor was already awake.
I didn’t want to have to explain what had happened in the last half hour.
“So, what now?”
“We wait,” he answered grimly. “It’s only been a few hours, but he isn’t clammy anymore. Checked about thirty or so minutes ago, there are no signs of internal bleeding, not that we can know for sure.”
“You said it was good that his rib broke. I don’t understand.”
“It isn’t that it’s good. It could’ve splintered and punctured something. But a bullet can go in one side of your body and bounce around in there on its way to the other side. This one hit his rib and shattered right there.”
Lexi came hurrying over to me, avoiding Maverick’s stare and pressing close to the side of me that was farthest from him.
I grabbed her hand in mine and squeezed tight. “We need to order breakfast. Lexi wants to eat all the food for Diggs so he’ll feel better.”
He let out an amused huff. “If anything will do it, that’ll be it.”
“Can we order you and Einstein something?”
“Anything would be good at this point. Coffee too. Please.”
I nodded in acknowledgement as we turned to go and said, “I’m really sorry, Maverick.”
His stare was on the bed as he dipped his head in response.
Once we slipped from the room, I took Lexi into the living room and turned the television on low to keep her occupied and away from Diggs’s room before going in search of the suite’s phone.
After ordering enough food and coffee to feed a small army, I slowly looked around the kitchen.
Where the blood and blood-soaked sheets had been hours before, there was just a kitchen.
It was as if nothing had ever happened.
I couldn’t wrap my mind around it all. Couldn’t believe that it was real even though I’d been standing right there when it happened. Even though we’d just come from Diggs’s room.
I shook the memories from my mind and started back to where I’d left Lexi, slowing when I heard hushed whispers.
Nothing I could understand, all of which sounded heated.
Near the door to the suite, Conor, Jess, and Kieran were standing in a circle talking quietly.
As soon as Kieran spotted me, he stopped speaking, and then Jess glanced at me with a sad smile. Conor was the last to look my way, and once he did, I wished he hadn’t.
I was sure that, by the time this was all over, I wouldn’t have a heart left because of what this was doing to me.
Because of that hurt I’d put there.
I cleared my throat and gestured behind me. “I, uh, ordered food and coffee for e
veryone.”
Jess was the one to speak. “Thank you.”
“Are you okay?” I asked as I started to step away.
Her head tilted to the side, her eyes shifted to Conor.
“From when you nearly fainted,” I prompted.
“Oh.” A breathless laugh left her. “I was just tired.”
I nodded, sure she was lying but positive it wasn’t my place to ask anything else.
I didn’t feel like I belonged there at all anymore.
Maybe that was what Kieran wanted. For me to suffer and feel wholly unwelcome and unwanted before he allowed me to leave.
As soon as I began walking away, I heard Conor stalking toward me.
Loud, sure, angry.
I stopped, knowing that he was only going to catch up to me in a step or two anyway, and tried to prepare myself for the onslaught that was sure to come.
He grabbed my arm and hauled me against the wall, the action purely Conor in all his gentle strength. Then he dropped his forearms to the wall so I was caged in and lowered his head so his captivating eyes were directly in front of mine.
All rippling muscle and strength.
Fury and pain.
“Why?” It was a demand, and it was filled with a soul-deep ache.
“Conor . . .”
“Why?”
“It needed to be done, you know that.”
“You leaving?” he said with a harsh laugh. “No. I don’t fucking know that.”
“I’m ruining everything by being here, by being near you,” I explained. “What happened to Diggs wouldn’t have happened if they weren’t here. What’s going on between you and Kieran wouldn’t be if it weren’t for me. I cannot be the reason for any more pain in your life, Conor.”
“You think losing you wouldn’t destroy me?” he asked roughly. “You think taking Lexi wouldn’t tear out my heart?”
“If we stay, it will only get worse. If I stay and you lose Kieran, you will resent me. I won’t do that to you.”
“You can’t tell me what would happen or what I would think.”
“I’ve never had this, Conor,” I whispered, begging him to understand. “I’ve never had what you all have together. But if I did and someone came and tried to ruin it or steal it from me, I would hate them. And don’t tell me I’m wrong either. I can already see it in the way Kieran and Einstein look at me and talk to me. One day, it will make you hate me too.”
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