Chapter 54 #2
That’s what The Rabbit Hole is now. The Queen of Hearts took over and the rules have indeed changed—but now they’re posted on the wall where everyone can see them.
Kian’s people have been helping untangle Castle’s betting mess too, pulling apart shell accounts, wiping out his prediction boards, shutting down every last trace of the sick little market he built out of other people’s pain.
It’s slow, ugly work, but at least now when the TVs light up around here, it’s for betting on the Carolina Cup or football games like the intended.
And me? I’m calmer here than I ever have been. This sin island makes sense to me, in the same broken way I do.
When she’s finally done, Lucy releases a long exhale. “There. See? We’ve kicked sin island ass.”
“Perfect for the Queen of Hearts, don’t you think?” I say into the speakerphone.
“What!” Kian snaps. “He’s there?”
Lucy trills her lips as she exhales. “Yes, Dad. He’s here. He kind of lives here.”
“No. There’s no way we’re letting you stay,” he says flatly.
“Let me?” she repeats, lifting one brow at the air in front of her like she’s dressing the King of Vegas down in person.
There’s a beat of silence.
“You sound like your mother,” he mutters.
Mrs. McKennon snorts softly. “Which means she’s made up her mind. She’s chosen, Key.”
There’s something about the way she says that, she’s chosen, that feels like the words carry more weight for the two of them than on first blush. Like the way I talk about Lucy being my peace. It makes my chest twist tight.
Lucy seems to feel it too, as she traces around the mock-tattoo on her hip.
“Yeah, Dad. I’ve chosen.” Then her voice hardens to something playfully serious. “Which means back off dangit.”
Kian curses under his breath, then sighs so hard I can hear all the defeat that comes with being a male among powerful women.
“Jesus Christ. Fine. You have to promise to be safe there. Wait, you know what? I’m sending some of my men, and before Fury objects—”
“Do it,” I say easily.
“What?” he asks.
I shrug, though he can’t see me, and travel my hand over Lucy’s thigh on the way back up to her hip.
“There was a power vacuum after Castle. This place was neutral ground before. Then there was that Wildes hiccup. Now we’re taking it back, piece by piece.” My thumb brushes the elastic of her thong. “But we’re family now, right? I’ll take all the help I can get.”
Lucy bites her lip as she looks down at my fingers, and I lean in to kiss her forehead before I can stop myself. She smiles shyly, and I leave her thong to rest my hand over her heart.
Then, quieter, just for my girl, I say, “I love you.”
Her heart gives this little stumble under my palm that I’ve already gotten addicted to.
Louder, I add, “Truce between the Troisgarde and the Furys, right?”
“No. Not the Troisgarde. Bordeauxs, yes. McKennons…” Kian trails off, then grumbles, “Unfortunately.”
Lucy’s body softens for half a second, then tightens. We both know what’s coming.
“But you’ll never get the Lucianos,” he continues sadly. “Not after Brylie.”
The name hangs heavy in the air.
Brylie is gone. But then came something somehow worse. She was cremated before anyone who loved her could say goodbye.
The hospital was Wilde territory, something that Dash and the rest of us figured out way too fucking late.
Neutral on paper but rotten underneath. We’d never say it out loud, but knowing our enemies, Orion and I suspect my brother was the only reason Brylie lasted as long as she did, pushing his way in, checking on her, being a constant needle in everyone’s side and refusing to let her be abandoned while everyone else played politics around her body.
Then came the call. She passed overnight.
There was a clerical error. She was already cremated. Now there’s nothing left but ashes.
Dash has been missing ever since he left that voice message a month ago. Gone just like Lucy. Only I know without a shadow of a doubt, he doesn’t want to be found.
We don’t know why she was targeted so heavily, and the unanswered questions Castle proposed back at Old Stone Church still stifle the air every time we breathe.
As far as the Lucianos are concerned, it’s war with the Wildes, the Furys, anyone within striking distance after their only daughter fell asleep and was gone before they could say goodbye.
I don’t blame them.
Ironically enough, the only thing we have left to reconcile the Troisgarde and the Furys is the one enemy we came together on exactly twenty-nine days ago.
Castle better fucking make good on his promise, or heads will fucking roll. Again.
My jaw tightens. “We’ll never stop looking for the men responsible.”
Kian’s voice softens a fraction. “Have you heard from him?”
Dash? Castle? The question is loaded, but the answer is nearly the same.
Lucy’s been true to her word, keeping tabs on Castle while not “accosting” him, as he put it. But he’s been keeping a low profile, and other than knowing his location, we haven’t heard jackshit from him.
Kian knows all that though, so I answer the other option, shaking my head even though he can’t see me.
“Not recently. Last I knew, Dash was in North Carolina. Lucy’s the best of the Troisgarde girls at disappearing. Dash is the best of the Furys.”
Mrs. McKennon sniffles quietly. Then she asks the only question that actually matters to her. “You will keep my daughter safe? Won’t you, Hatch?”
I smile and press a kiss to Lucy’s shoulder so light it barely counts. “I will. I love her.”
The words come so fucking easy to me now. Seeing Lucy light up every time is the dopamine hit I never knew I needed.
Anndd pissing off her father in the process is just a nice little bonus.
He groans. “We know. But you remember our bargain, Fury—”
“No,” Lucy growls, and my brows shoot up. I trace the sketch on her hipbone without thinking, the half-finished Fury skull suddenly feeling a whole lot less theoretical as she glares down at her phone like she might fight her father through the speaker.
“That bet is null and void. Remember what I said at Old Stone? No more deciding things without me! If I want to get married to Hatton Fury, I will do as I damn well please.”
My jaw drops.
There’s a loaded silence on the other end, only punctuated on our side by the gentle lapping of the marsh water against the hull and the soft rumbling purrs coming from Dinah and Chessy.
I’m staring at my girl with something between wonder and a little bit of fear. We’re all fun and games until hearts get involved. If she’s fucking with me right now just to get a rise out of her parents, I might not make it.
“Well, okay then,” Mrs. McKennon says at last, the laugh in her voice warm and amused, before her tone grows stern.
“Hatch, I know you and my husband have a cute little love-hate-we’re-actually-too-alike-to-cope thing going on.
But if you don’t come officially ask us for permission to marry our daughter like an old-school gentleman, I will personally go to Wander Isle and drown you in a steel drum at the bottom of the ocean with scuba gear on so you slowly die from the pressure rather than lack of oxygen. ” A beat. “Got it?”
That was… oddly specific.
I clear my throat—now, I think, appropriately terrified of both McKennon women for slightly different reasons.
“You’ll be the first to know when I’m about to propose for real. I swear.”
Lucy’s cheeks pinken, and she threads her fingers through mine where my hand rests over the skull on her hip.
It is definitely too fast for a true, honest-to-God engagement.
I know that. She knows that. But the fact that she’s the one bringing up Fury tattoos and arguing with her overbearing father about us?
Yeah, I’m a fucking goner for this girl.
She’ll be my wife come hell or high water.
And apparently, if I don’t go about it right, Mrs. McKennon is both the hell and the high water.
Kian sighs heavily. “Alright, that’s enough fuck-with-Kian-McKennon time for everyone, I’d say.”
“Aw.” I pout. “But it’s my favorite hobby.”