24. Cian
Chapter 24
Cian
Harper collapsing again is the last thing my already-abused nerves need. In public, no less.
I was still pissed off by the way she turned me on back there at the motel. We both came quicker than a couple of teenagers. I was so livid that Harper has the power to finish me off that easily, I handcuffed her to the bed and left her there.
And now?
My pulse goes crazy as I move her to the back seat and climb in with her. It’s not ideal, but the tinted windows provide a little bit of privacy until the rental car agents come by.
My ribs squeeze at the sight of her pale, fragile face. “Harper, look at me.”
With gentle fingers, I tap her cheek, but she doesn’t stir. Alarm bells wail inside me, like I’m still twenty and just found my mom unconscious in our apartment.
No! I want to scream. She survived that bastard, don’t let her die now.
I used to think that, with my father dead, my mother could go on to live a happy life. I thought him being alive was the only thing standing in her way. That getting rid of him would clear the clouds from her mind, allow that smile to come back to her face.
But I was a dumbass kid.
I didn’t know anything about how trauma lingers, sometimes forever.
I never imagined that the real harm my father inflicted damaged my mother’s mind.
He broke her beautiful spirit.
My mom once told me she stayed with that foul, violent man for me. I didn’t know she meant that she was only alive because she wanted to protect me, and that if I made that monster disappear forever, if I became someone who could protect myself, all her motivation to stick around would disintegrate into ash.
Why couldn’t I have been enough?
Why am I never enough?
Fucking hell.
I pinch the bridge of my nose, using the jolt of pain to wrench the moisture back to where it came from.
Anything that resembles crying is absolutely forbidden, trauma be damned.
Scrunched into the back seat with Harper half reclined in my lap is not how I thought our journey home would begin, but we’re here now, and I can’t shove her off of me. Not when I open my eyes and she’s awake with that expression on her face.
Like a kite tied to a fraying string, soon to be untethered and lost to the wind. Like she’s losing it, teetering on that brink.
Fear grips me. I’ve never seen her so scared.
She’s quivering.
I need to get her back to New York and get the fuck away from her, before she gets us both killed. No matter how much it hurts .
Those are the thoughts circling my mind as I stare, cotton-mouthed and grateful, into her glassy blue eyes.
“Cian…” She whispers my name like this Porsche is a sacred place. “Please don’t take me back to New York.”
“What are you so afraid of?” I ask. Then I remember what’s waiting for her. Shane, her father, Finn… Even I don’t know what punishment she’ll be given when we return.
“Don’t take me.” She shakes her head. “He’ll…”
She can’t finish her sentence, but something clicks in my mind when I see the way her lip trembles. I’ve seen that trembling before. It stabs me through the chest with a jagged blade.
That tremble signifies the hesitation of someone who’s suffered harm.
And it makes every gear inside my body grind to a halt.
I’ve spent plenty of time thinking about the De Lucas hurting Harper, and how I would do everything in my power to eviscerate them if I discovered that they had.
Something I’ve never considered until this moment is whether anyone within the Kings has ever harmed her.
My internal temperature starts to rise.
I know exactly what that’s like. What that kind of stress and conflict does to a person…
I was that person, so why is it that I’m only now recognizing this trait in Harper? All those times I watched her from a distance, why did I never notice this primal fear lurking beneath her party girl veneer?
She’s like a well-trained circus animal, dazzling enough that I never thought about what abuse could be happening when the curtains close and there’s no audience to applaud.
I thought Harper ran away to avoid an arranged marriage.
What if she ran for entirely different reasons?
“Harper…”
My tongue grows heavy with dread and the idea that I’ve done something I’ll soon regret.
“Just listen,” she begs with a small, exhausted voice. “I know you think taking me back will keep me safe, but it won’t.”
The strength of my swallow causes my shoulders to twitch. “What do you mean?”
“First, he’s going to break me because I didn’t follow his orders.” She hurries through the words, like they’re hot on her tongue. “Once he’s broken me, he’s going to sell me to the highest bidder.”
“Shane would never do something like that.” I rub her arm from her shoulder to her elbow. “Don’t worry.”
The head of this mafia is the one who wanted the marriage between Harper and his son. He wasn’t pleased when he found out what happened, but I know for a fact he’s not so angry with Harper that he’d beat or sell her.
She’s not an object. Shane values the mafia daughters, as though each one were a daughter of his own. Abusing any woman within his jurisdiction is grounds for serious punishment.
“I’m not talking about Shane.” Harper’s response thrusts me back into chaos. Her eyelids droop. “I’m talking about my father.”
My heart falls to its knees. The memory of my mother’s face races behind my eyes like a film strip. When I think that Harper’s been through even a fraction of what my father put my mother through, rage consumes me, so outsized and uncontrollable I’m surprised the car doesn’t detonate with us inside.
My voice sounds like a different person’s when I set my jaw and say, “Tell me everything.”
I sit there like a ghost, listening, envisioning her every word like she’s narrating a documentary.
I don’t know why Thomas Brennan’s cruel and abusive treatment of his children shocks me. No one becomes a capo in a mafia family because they’re gentle. Obviously, the man is tough, ruthless, cunning, and unforgiving. I just didn’t expect that he’d subjected his family to the same tyranny as my own father did mine. It feels like lava’s pouring down the inside of my chest.
Did I really think returning Harper to New York was the right thing to do? I was only thinking about myself.
I never considered she might have a perfectly good reason for running away. And aside from protecting her from De Luca cronies, it’s just like she said back at the motel. I’ve ruined this new life she built for herself.
Guilt stabs me with a thousand knives. The truth is, I’ve never felt so awful in my life. Even killing my own dad wasn’t this bad.
I never thought I’d regret finding her, but I do now. Look what I’ve pulled her into.
My lungs freeze solid, denying me breath out of pure self-loathing.
“Please say something.” Harper’s lips press together, her blue eyes still alight with fear in this semidarkness. Her expression is like a hundred pushpins being stuck into my heart.
I try to swallow, but the lump of guilt won’t go down. I’ve been silent as the grave this entire time, but I’ve got to speak. I even know what I’m going to say, and that’s what scares me.
Because I’m about to make a commitment.
“Cian, please.” Harper smushes the palms of her hands into her eye sockets, like she’s trying a manual approach to slowing her tears.
“Harper Brennan, look at me.” I wait for her to drop her hands. When she eventually does, I tilt her chin up so our eyes meet and hold her gaze. “I’m sorry. That should have never happened to you. And I promise that I will never, ever let anyone hurt you like that again.”
“What are you saying?”
“I’m saying I don’t care who the perpetrator is. I won’t allow it.” I pull her close, her soft scent wafting over me. “If your father ever tries to lay a finger on you again, I’ll kill him. It’s that simple.”
At that announcement, she sucks in a shocked breath. “But…he’s your boss.” Her words land on my collarbone.
My hands ache to coil into fists, so I run them over her back. “I know, and I don’t care.”
“What about Shane?” She’s trembling again. “You’ll be killed, Cian.”
“So be it.”
“How can you say that?” Harper attempts to draw back from me, but I hold her tighter, drawing her deeper into my chest. Her heart’s clamoring against mine.
I place a kiss on the top of her head. “When we get back, we’ll face them together. And if either of them threatens to hurt you, I’ll intervene.”
“You’re just trying to get me to go with you.” The waver in her voice gnaws at me like screws and nails digging into exposed flesh. “You don’t mean it.”
“What do I have to do to make you believe me?”
She shakes her head against my chest. “Don’t take me back.”
I exhale into her hair. Why is this so fucking difficult?
She drives me so crazy that I would commit myself to her, knowing full well it would pit me against my friends and my employers. The Kings are the closest I’ve had to family since adolescence. They’re the closest to family I ever expected I’d have, and now…
Somehow, Harper’s fucked my heart up so badly that I’d sacrifice everyone and everything to keep her safe.
And she doesn’t even think I’m telling her the truth.
This woman kills me.
A sane person would ask, “Is Harper Brennan really worth all this trouble?”
And I would shoot that motherfucker between the eyes for such a dumbass question.
My mind clears, abrupt and concise. I know what to do.
“What if I swear to you that the first person you’re going to see when you step off that plane is your sister?”
“Riley?” That microscopic inkling of hope in her voice announces my victory.
“I’ll call her and Finn right now and ask them to pick us up when we land. You can call them yourself, if you think I’m bluffing.”
Harper tilts her head all the way back, her lips brushing the underside of my jaw. Her mouth on my body is a quick recipe for instant fucking, so I need to wrap this up before we cause a scene in the rental car parking lot.
“Are you serious?”
When I tilt my head toward hers, our foreheads connect. “Yes.”
“Why would you do any of this for me?”
I clear my throat. The fuck am I supposed to say to this question?
“I…”
For fuck’s sake, I’m stammering like an adolescent boy on his first date.
Eyelashes shining with tears, Harper nods at me. “Yeah?”
“I…don’t like to see you scared.”
Harper shrugs, as though all hope is lost, as though nothing matters. “Even so. Give me one reason I should believe that you’re telling me the truth.”
Why do I find this so fucking hard? “ Fine .”
I seethe with frustration, and desperation moves my lips to hers right after.
“Ci—” Her protest comes too late.
Our bodies press together as I tongue her mouth like I’m starving for it.
Who am I kidding? I am starving for it. After that hotness at the motel, I’m ravenous for another taste, and this might be our last chance.
I kiss Harper until she’s moaning as my fingers drag down her back and tighten around her waist. Her arms fasten around my neck, and then she does that thing that makes me nuts and bites my lower lip like she wants to eat it.
Heat accumulates in my lower back. The muscles in my arms flex involuntarily, chanting for me to do it, so I do.
One adjustment and she’s in my lap, straddling me, and fuck , I want to spear her with my cock all over again and damn the consequences. In more ways than one. My fingertips dig into the denim covering her ass while my other hand disappears up the back of her shirt.
Harper shivers when my bare skin brushes hers. And I know why. Because when we touch, it does the same thing to her that it does to me.
Just this little bit of skin-to-skin contact drives my senses insane.
I kiss Harper until she understands, until she’s panting for breath, same as me. And then I try to explain myself again.
For once, I even let myself drown in her eyes.
“You need to trust that some things are real…even if you don’t know the reason why.”