Chapter 22
Chapter Twenty-Two
KILLIAN
The document is twenty-three years old, and it is the ugliest thing I have ever read.
The header reads: JOINT VENTURE AGREEMENT.
Below it, two signatures.
Salvatore Falcone.
Padraic Kavanagh.
My father.
"Read it," Alessandro says. His voice is neutral—the operational register he uses when he’s trying to keep me from putting my fist through a wall. But his hand, resting on the back of Rory’s chair, is white-knuckled.
Rory reads. His voice is thin, reedy.
"It’s structured like a business contract," he says. "Clauses. Sub-clauses. Definitions of terms. But the business isn't real estate or import logistics. It’s territory."
He scrolls down. The screen glow illuminates the dust motes dancing in the studio air.
"The agreement outlines a coordinated campaign between the Falcone and Kavanagh families to systematically dismantle three smaller organizations—the Devaneys, the O'Connors, and the Ferrara Group. Method: manufactured conflict."
"Manufactured conflict," I repeat. The words taste like ash and bile.
"The two families would stage a public feud," Rory reads, his finger tracing the lines on the screen.
"Escalating provocations. Retaliatory hits.
The appearance of a blood conflict so violent and so consuming that the smaller organizations, caught between two larger powers, would be forced to choose sides or be ground to nothing.
The war would serve as cover for coordinated strikes against shared targets. "
"The consolidation clause," Alessandro says, pointing to the screen. "Section four."
Rory reads it. "'Upon elimination of the specified competitors, the surviving parties will divide territorial holdings according to the map appended as Exhibit A, with revenue-sharing mechanisms as detailed in Schedule B.'"
Revenue sharing.
My father and his father, splitting the profits of a war they manufactured from a document they signed in the same room. They sat across a table, drank whiskey, and decided to kill hundreds of men for a profit margin.
"The dates," Rory whispers. He looks up at me. His green eyes—our mother’s eyes—are wide with horror. "Kill, look at the dates."
I look. The agreement was signed twenty-three years ago.
"The 'war' started eighteen months later," Rory says. "And the Devaney consolidation—the campaign that—"
He stops. He can't say it.
I say it for him. Inside my head, the words scream.
The Devaney consolidation. The desperate push back from a smaller family being squeezed by two giants. The night a Devaney enforcer walked into our house.
Into Rory’s bedroom.
The night I became a killer. The night I crushed a man’s throat with my bare hands because I thought I was protecting my brother from an enemy.
My father sent that man.
Not directly. Not with a phone call or an order. But by design. By constructing a war that made the retaliation inevitable. He built the machine. The machine produced the violence. And when the violence came for his sons, he sat in the kitchen with his whiskey and waited for me to handle it.
Because handling it was my function. My purpose. The reason he showed me where the throat is weakest—not to save me, but to make me the tool that protected his investment.
The Reaper was never my father's failure. The Reaper was his product.
Something in my chest detonates.
The sound I make is not language. It comes from a place below words—a low, building pressure that exits through my throat as a roar.
I grab the nearest object—a heavy wooden stool covered in paint splatters—and I throw it.
It hits the brick wall with a violence that shatters the seat. Wood splinters spray across the room. A canvas falls from its stack. A jar of brushes topples, spilling turpentine across the floor.
It’s not enough. The rage is a physical thing, a creature trying to claw its way out of my skin.
I grab a metal shelf unit. I rip it from the wall. Jars of pigment crash to the floor—blue, red, yellow powder exploding into the air like smoke. I kick a crate of supplies, sending wood and metal skittering across the concrete.
I want to tear this room apart. I want to tear the world apart.
My father. My da. The man who told me I was strong. The man who told me I was the shield.
He made me a monster for profit. He sold my childhood, he sold my innocence, he sold my soul for territory.
"Killian."
Alessandro’s voice. Quiet. Calm.
"Killian, stop."
I stop. I am panting, my chest heaving. My hands are clenched so tight my nails are cutting into my palms. I am standing in a cloud of blue pigment dust, surrounded by wreckage.
Alessandro steps into the mess. He walks right up to me. He isn't afraid.
"This document is not a wound," he says.
"It’s a lie," I choke out. "My whole life is a lie. Everything I did... everyone I hurt... it was for nothing. It was for a fucking spreadsheet."
"No. It’s a weapon." His voice is steel. "It’s proof. Proof that our fathers orchestrated a war to consolidate power. Proof that every death in the last twenty years was a line item in a business plan."
He grips my forearms. His fingers dig in, grounding me.
"If we release this to the families," he says, "both patriarchs lose their authority overnight. The Morettis, the Rileys, the surviving Devaneys—they will turn on them. The coalition against our fathers would be unanimous. They would have no choice but to step down. Or be removed."
"You're talking about a coup."
"I'm talking about the only move that addresses every threat simultaneously.
" His eyes burn into mine. "We take this document to the Volkov meeting.
We present it to both families. We use it to remove our fathers from power, dismantle the Russian leverage—because Volkov's entire strategy depends on exploiting the divisions our fathers created—and we restructure the alliance. "
"Under who?"
"Us."
The word hangs in the silence. Us.
The arranged marriage. The political tool. The joke.
"We were supposed to be pawns," I say.
"We were supposed to be managed," Alessandro agrees. "We were supposed to bleed for their arrangement. And instead?"
He steps closer. His body heat radiates against mine.
"Instead, we are going to take everything they built and make it ours."
My breathing steadies. The rage doesn't leave, but it changes shape. It condenses. It becomes a cold, hard knot in my stomach. A weapon I can aim.
I look at Rory.
He hasn't moved. He is staring at the screen, his face pale. He looks like a child again. The child I failed to protect from the truth.
"Rory," I say.
He looks up. "I'm okay, Kill."
He’s lying. But it’s a kind lie.
"I'll prep the document," he says, his voice shaking. "Clean copies. Authenticated. When you need it, it’ll be bulletproof."
He closes the laptop. He shoves it into his bag. He stands up, moving toward the door. He knows. He reads the room the way he reads everything.
"I'll work from the café downstairs," he says.
The door closes. The lock clicks.
Silence.
Alessandro and I stand in the wreckage. Splintered wood. Spilled pigment. And the twenty-three-year-old lie that defined us.
I look at him. The Prince. The son of the other architect.
I close the distance.
My hands find his hips. The grip is hard, desperate. I need to hold something real. Because the ground under my feet has turned to sand.
"You," I say. "You're the only thing that's real."
His hands come up to my face. He cups my jaw. His thumbs trace the bone.
"I know," he whispers.
I kiss him.
It isn't fast. It isn't violent. It is a desperate, searching connection. I taste him—coffee and warmth and life. I drink him in. I need to fill the hollowness inside me.
My hands move from his hips to his belt. The buckle opens. The button. The zipper. I lower myself—not falling, not dropping, but descending with a deliberation that mirrors the one he gave me in the kitchen.
My knees hit the floor. The wood is hard and scattered with debris, and I don't feel it.
I pull his trousers and briefs down his thighs. His cock is half-hard—filling, thickening under my gaze. I take him in my hand. The weight of him in my palm is warm and solid—real, undeniable.
I lean forward. My lips close around the head.
The taste is salt and skin and Alessandro. It grounds me. It pulls me out of the past and into the present.
I take him deep. I override my gag reflex. I force my throat to open, to accommodate him. I want him inside me. I want to be filled.
Alessandro’s hands tangle in my hair. He grips tight. His hips buck forward, a small, involuntary movement.
"Killian," he breathes.
I work him. I use my tongue, my suction. I pour everything I have into this act. The rage. The grief. The love.
Yes. Love.
I love him. I love the man who stitched me up. I love the man who stood in front of a bullet for me. I love the man who is standing in the wreckage of my life and telling me we can build something new.
I suck harder. I drag my teeth lightly over the head. He groans, his knees trembling.
I look up.
His head is thrown back. His eyes are closed. His face is open, vulnerable in a way the world never sees.
He is mine. And I am his.
I speed up. I make wet, sloppy noises. I want to hear him. I want to break him.
"Turn around," I say.
I pull off him. I stand up. Alessandro looks at me, dazed, his eyes dark.
I spin him around. I press his chest onto the drafting table. The wood is covered in sketches and dust, but I don't care.
"Spread your legs," I order.
He obeys. He widens his stance.
I step behind him. I undo my own pants. I free myself.
I grab a bottle of linseed oil from the counter. I pour it into my hand. It’s thick, warm.
I reach between his legs. I coat him. I push a finger inside him.
He gasps, his back arching. "Killian..."
"I need inside," I whisper against his neck. "I need to know you're mine."
"I am," he chokes out. "I am."
I add a second finger. I stretch him. He is tight, hot.
I can't wait.
I line myself up. I press the head against him.
I drive forward.
He screams into the table. It’s a tight fit. The friction burns. I force my way in, inch by inch, until my hips slam against his ass.
I hold still. I am buried in him. I can feel his pulse around me.
"Mine," I growl.
"Yours," he sobs. "Yours."
I start to move.
It is brutal. It is desperate. I piston into him, chasing the darkness away. Every thrust is a claim. Every impact is a promise.
The sound of skin slapping skin fills the room. The table groans under our weight.
I reach around and grab his throat. I squeeze.
"Look at me," I demand.
He turns his head. His face is flushed, sweaty. His eyes are wild.
I kiss him. Hard. Messy. Our tongues tangle.
I feel the edge approaching.
"Alessandro," I roar.
I drive into him one last time, hitting deep inside. I come with a force that shakes my whole body. I pour myself into him, emptying everything—the hate, the fear, the pain.
He comes too, his seed spilling onto the table, a white mess on the dark wood.
I collapse against his back. I hold him. I listen to his heart racing.
We stay there for a long time. The studio is silent except for our breathing.
Eventually, I pull out. I help him stand. I pull his pants up.
I turn him around. I cup his face.
"You are the only truth I have left," I say.
He leans his forehead against mine.
"Then we protect it," he whispers. "We protect each other. And we burn the rest down."
I look at him.
"Thirty-six hours," I say.
"We bring the document," he says. "We bring the evidence."
"And we walk in as the new leadership."
"Us," he says. "On our terms."
I kiss him again. Gentle this time.
We are going to destroy our fathers. We are going to face Volkov.
And we are going to do it together.
Side by side.