Chapter 30 – Gabriella
Today was all about testing theories. There were two of them, and the one was already panning out. As I wandered the aisles of the supermarket, ten guards in tow, I noticed a figure watching us in the distance.
The funniest part was that my guards were oblivious to Connor’s stalking. If they knew the boss’s right-hand man watched them, they would have subtly smirked or nudged one another, looking in his direction.
Which meant Connor was spying on all of us.
What a freaking waste of time.
He was undoubtedly Liam’s most valuable soldier, and there he stood, staring into a case of dairy goods, watching us through the foggy, condensation-coated door.
I threw a few random items into the cart, sighing under my breath. “Crap.”
“Missus?” Finn piped up. “Is everything alright?”
“Oh, yes, it’s fine.” I flashed the guard a smile, which made him uneasy. The poor thing. Liam probably scared these men regularly with threats about being too friendly with his wife. “I just need sage to make the butter sauce for the gnocchi. Forgot to grab it when I was getting the potatoes.”
“No problem, missus. We’ll just stop back in produce on our way to the registers.” Finn gave me a clipped, professional nod.
Adorable. These guys were too cute. They shuffled about, throwing menacing glances left and right, while keeping a healthy distance from me.
If I didn’t have an ulterior motive for baking them treats every morning, I would do it just to do it.
In a way, they were like a pack of hounds.
I went from a girl who didn’t have pets to having a zoo.
But while the way they blushed when I brought them plates of muffins, cookies, or sweet bars was priceless, it also served the bigger picture. They were practically eating out of my hand. When the time came to run, they would suspect nothing.
Laughing to myself, I turned the cart down the main aisle. The ghost followed us toward the front of the store.
From the cereal aisle, a movement caught my attention. A man of average height and medium build wearing a hoodie and medical mask held a box of sugary flakes. But his gaze? It was focused on me.
I tripped into my cart.
“Missus!” Finn was at my side. “What’s the matter?”
My heart was in my throat. The way that man looked at me…. The gleam in his eyes….
“Nothing.” I forced the word out. “Nothing. Let’s go.”
Breathing hard, I made a bee line to the register. One of the other guys reminded me about the sage. He even offered to get it. Keenly aware that the ten pairs of eyes were looking at me funny, I swallowed the unnatural fear and tamped the urge to leave the store.
“No, it’s fine, let’s grab it,” I said.
My words fell flat. Unconvincing. I kept my movements as natural as possible, but I pulled up short when I noticed the cereal guy, without the box, selecting bananas.
We stared at one another.
He lifted his phone, looked at the screen, then back at me.
There was a moment where his brows drew together in a frown. With a small shrug, he put the device back in his pocket and began to walk toward us.
Toward me.
My pulse notched up ten speeds.
The hoodie guy wove through the crowd of shoppers. I wanted to call out, tell the guards, but…what if I was wrong?
If it was just a regular shopper, then I was a frightened little freak who cried wolf. I forced myself to look away. To reach for the packet of fresh herbs.
“Those ones are browning,” Finn observed. “You sure you’re alright?”
I dropped the plastic box. “Yep!”
Fumbling to pick it out of the bags of carrots and grab a different pack of sage, I shot a look over my shoulder.
A knife glinted in the masked man’s hand.
This was real. He was coming straight for me.
I angled the cart in his direction, gave it a hard shove, and screamed. It tore out of my throat without words, raw and panicked.
My guards reacted instantly. Hands went to jackets. Bodies shifted. The air changed. But it was Connor who appeared as if he had been summoned by my fear itself. One second, there was nothing. The next, he was there, crashing into the man in the hoodie with enough force to rattle the floor.
They went down hard.
All hell broke loose.
The knife skittered across the tile with a sharp metallic scrape.
Shoppers screamed. Someone dropped a basket.
Glass shattered somewhere down the aisle.
Three of my guards shoved me backward at the same time, forcing me down behind the cart.
My knees hit the floor. The cold tile burned through my skin.
I could hear Connor.
The sound of bodies colliding. Grunts. A wet, animal sound of pain that made my stomach lurch. I tried to crawl forward, but a hand clamped around my arm and yanked me back.
“Stay down,” someone shouted in my ear.
I could smell blood. Copper sharp and unmistakable.
Connor’s voice cut through the chaos, strained and furious.
I lifted my head just enough to see him straddling the masked man, his fist coming down again and again.
The hood had fallen back. The mask was twisted, half torn free.
The assassin’s eyes were wide and glassy with terror now, no longer hunting.
The knife flashed again. A final, desperate attempt to escape the Irish monster.
He was going to hurt Connor!
I screamed the Irishman’s name.
The blade plunged forward. Connor twisted, but not fast enough. The sound it made was wrong. Too dull. Like it stuck. Connor jerked sharply, his breath tearing out of him like something had been ripped loose inside.
“No,” I whispered. Then louder. “No. No. No.”
Liam would never forgive me.
Gunshots exploded.
The sound cracked through the store, deafening. People hit the floor. Shelves rattled. The masked man’s body went rigid beneath Connor. His mouth opened, but no sound came out. Blood bloomed across his chest, dark and spreading fast.
He was dead before his head hit the ground.
Everything slowed.
Connor staggered back, one hand pressed to his side. Blood seeped between his fingers, warm and red and horrifying against his shirt. His face had gone grey. Sweat slicked his hair to his forehead.
I shoved free of the guards and crawled to him, my hands shaking so badly I could barely touch him. This was Liam’s most trusted soldier. Maybe even a friend—if monsters were capable of such human connections.
“Connor,” I said. My voice sounded far away. Broken. “Look at me. Please.”
His knees buckled. I caught him, my arms wrapping around his shoulders as he collapsed against me. The weight of him drove the breath from my lungs. Blood soaked into my clothes. It was hot. So very fucking hot.
“Let go of me, cailín,” he said. His voice was rough.
“You’re hurt,” I said. I pressed my hands harder against his side, panic clawing up my throat. “You’re bleeding. You’re bleeding so much.”
He winced. His jaw tightened. “I know. But ya cannot touch me.”
I lurched back, stung by his words. Even to the injured, Liam’s claim held more weight than death itself.
Luckily Finn grabbed Connor, helping him to a bare patch of floor.
Sirens wailed in the distance, growing louder by the second. Someone was shouting orders. My guards formed a tight circle around us. I barely noticed. All I could see was Connor’s face, the way his eyes stayed locked on mine like he was afraid to look away.
Like if he did, he might disappear.
A faithful dog, protecting his master’s treasure.
“Stay with me,” I begged. “Please. Stay with me.”
No one was going to die on my account. Not today!
“I’m not going anywhere,” he said, but his laughter was jagged and laced with pain.
I prayed he was right.
***
Liam parked the car in the driveway. He stared through the glass, jaw working back and forth. If his molars weren’t pulverized to bits at this point, it was a miracle.
The whole drive, I’d been too cowardly to admit what was happening. Yesterday felt like a coincidence. Today, there was no escaping reality.
Just tell him!
The tracker burned a hole in my pocket. The sooner it was out in the open, it could stop haunting me.
But what if the truth was more painful? Liam already looked at me as if I was a problem he wished would go away.
After dinner and some deliciously rough sex, I’d fallen asleep only to wake up to an empty bed only to meet a man who was almost a stranger in the supermarket.
When he’d walked through the doors of the grocery store, his lawyer in tow, Liam looked like he wanted to kill me himself.
The murder still raged in his eyes.
Taking a deep breath, I spoke. “I have to tell you something.”
“Yeah, you do, cailín.” Liam turned abruptly in his seat. “Who the fuck is Luca?”
The world tilted.
The sounds of the idling engine faded away. My mouth went dry. Shit, even my heart stopped beating.
In a moment of bravery, I wrote that name. Once. I spoke it into existence, consumed by the idea that by putting my dreams into the world, they would manifest into reality.
Well, now they were stopped by a nightmare.
“How do you know that name?” My voice shook. But not from fear. Wrath, a holy, all-consuming anger, flooded every fiber of my being.
“Where is he?” Liam demanded, words equally deadly.
I tossed my head. “Safe.”
Because…he was.
That was both my solace and my agony.
Liam cursed. His hand shot out and those strong, capable fingers wrapped around my throat. “I will pry the truth of your infidelity from your lips, wife!”
I would have scoffed.
If I could have drawn enough breath to do so.
I grabbed his forearm with both my hands, trying to tear him off. I gagged. My lungs convulsed from the suffocating hold.
“I could snap your neck without a thought,” he snarled.
But his grip loosened a second later. It was still there, a reminder of what he was capable of.
“I’m not cheating on you!” I wheezed.
What I’d written in my journal was my secret. This beast didn’t get to pry it out of me. And if I had ever been insane enough to think about telling him the truth, this reaction proved my husband couldn’t be trusted.
Liam let out a deranged, hideous laugh. “Oh, but you’re planning on it.”
The accusation stung.
Of all the sins piled on my life, that was never one of them.
“Let go of me,” I hissed, shoving at his arm.
His fingers slid around my throat. Gripping the back of my head, he tugged me forward.
His gloved hand wrapped around my shoulders as he crushed my body to his.
His lips found mine, hard, bruising, all teeth and heat.
The kiss was violent with need, like he was trying to steal my breath to prove I was still alive.
I tasted leather and blood and him, felt the scrape of his stubble against my skin, the pressure of his grip forcing me to stay right there.
And damn me, I didn’t pull away.
I kissed him back just as fiercely, mouth open, desperate, my hands fisting his jacket like I could anchor him to me.
It wasn’t tender. It wasn’t romantic. It was fear and anger colliding, the kind of kiss that comes after thinking you might lose someone.
When he finally broke it, his forehead pressed to mine, both of us breathing hard and shaking as the raw emotions swirled between us.
“Get out of the car,” he growled.
“Why?” I taunted. “So you can storm off, feeling self-righteous in your delusions?”
“I said, get the fuck out of the car, Gabriella!” Liam shoved me back. “Don’t you see what you do to me?”
I did.
It was the same madness that coursed through my veins. I wanted to launch across the car, tear his shirt from his body, and score him with my nails. With my teeth. He needed to know that I might have a past, but it was so far from what he thought that it was almost comical how wrong he was.
But if I told him, he might forbid me ever making contact with my past again. Being killed would be easier than locked away.
I shot out of the car and slammed the door.
That thunderous blue gaze followed me into the house. My husband was possessive. I was his. A pretty little wife that he didn’t allow anyone else to touch. The claim was right there, shadowing me even when he wasn’t around.
I had no idea how I was going to manage it. For now, I needed to juggle my murderous father, keep his plans for making me a widow in check, and keep the insanity of my jealous husband at bay.
But as I poured myself a whiskey, not caring that it wasn’t even ten a.m., I realized that keeping the information of the tracker to myself still wasn’t the best course of action.
“I’ll find a way to tell him.” I raised the cup in a salute and downed the liquid fire. Storm pranced into the kitchen, wagging his tail and nudging my calf. At least he wasn’t judging me for my life choices.