Chapter Twelve
Killian
Lyra settles down in the days after my warning. She takes my cock whenever I’m in the mood to give it, takes my hand on her ass or pussy in the mornings and evenings, and doesn’t make a nuisance of herself in between.
I barely have time to see her outside of meals and when I need to take her; navigating the situation with The Eyes is even more treacherous than I expected it would be, and it seems to be reaching a head.
I don’t bother trying to get a hold of Carter again, not until I have a proper incentive aside from killing Silas.
The only way to pin down a man like Carter is to get something he wants, which means I need to find something he wants, acquire it, and offer a trade in return for him joining The Eyes.
My only problem is that he has a way of getting what he wants the instant he wants it… save for Annalise. And I can’t go after her without risking destroying any future potential of a relationship I have with Lyra. Going after her friend will have to be a last resort.
When I summon Locke to my home office a few days later, carving out some time for him between meetings, he looks more wary than eager. I suppose, considering my threats during our last real conversation, that’s fair.
“I need you to dig up everything you can on Carter Black for me,” I say. “Dealings, businesses, moves, territories.”
“Got it.” Locke nods solemnly. “Anything I’m looking for in particular?”
“Yes, his future plans. Things he plans to acquire—things he wants or needs for survival.” I’m walking a fine line here.
If I step too far, I risk pissing Carter off, and then he’ll never join me simply out of spite.
But if I find just the right deal… I might get him to change his mind about only helping me after I kill Silas.
“Fine. I’ll get your team on it.” Locke pauses on his way out of the office. “Lyra looked a bit… off when I saw her.”
My brows slam down, and my hands grip the edges of my desk. “Why were you looking at her in the first place?”
“She was in the living room,” Locke enunciates slowly. “I saw her on my way in.”
I relax, but only by an inch. “What do you mean, she looked off?” Has she gotten sick?
Could she already be pregnant? Possibly, but I wouldn’t know for another week at minimum.
“I’m not sure, but she was staring at a wall with a blank look in her eyes.”
Ah, she was probably plotting, then. I look forward to the next move she makes against me.
It’ll give me a delightful reason to punish her.
So long as it doesn’t endanger her, I don’t actually much care what she does.
She can try to run, try to fight, try to best me however much she wants—it won’t make a difference.
At the end of the day, I’ll win, and I’ll enjoy every battle it takes before I claim my prize.
“Fine.” I flick my hands, dismissing him and returning my attention to my screen monitors.
He lingers in the room. I let thirty seconds pass, giving him an opportunity to leave, before turning my attention back to him. “Something else?” I drawl.
“Yes,” he replies with a nod. “All these months, you searched for her in every corner of the world. Now that you have her back, have you bothered asking what made her believe that there was no version of staying with you that wouldn’t destroy her?”
“Why ask? The answer’s obvious. She thought I was going to kill her for the expose.
” With anyone else, I would’ve, but Lyra should’ve known better.
She’s not going to die until she’s lived a very long and very fulfilling life with me.
Depending on how my own pharmaceutical endeavors go, her life might be vastly extended.
“Right.” Locke leaves after giving me one final, lingering look. But the words he spoke remain, bouncing in my head for a while and planting a seed of doubt.
“You should invite Anna over,” I tell Lyra later that evening, over dinner. “Or set up a time to go out with her.”
Her eyes flash up from her salmon. “What?”
I cut my steak into cubes. “I won’t prevent you from having friends.” Actually, I was planning on doing just that, but Lyra has been unusually sullen, and Locke’s earlier words got to me.
When Lyra doesn’t speak again, I pin her with a gaze. She’s staring at me with wide eyes, but as soon as she catches my look, she glances back down at her plate. “Thank you, but I’ll pass.”
…What?
“Why?” I inquire.
She hesitates for a few moments, then shrugs. “Don’t feel like it.”
“Give me the non-petulant answer.”
She sighs, toying with her food like a child. “I don’t want to.”
“Okay,” I drawl. “Why?”
“Because it’s different,” she says. “Everything’s different.
Any value of a friendship with Annalise is gone.
Best case scenario, if she manages to forgive me for disappearing on her, she’ll become leverage you can use against me.
But we probably won’t get to that point, because she’ll have questions that I either can’t answer or would have to lie about.
And I don’t want to lie to her, and she’d never accept non-answers.
So, it’s fucking pointless, Killian. I’d rather keep her away from all of… this, if it’s all the same to you.”
My food momentarily forgotten, I lean back in my seat and examine my caged Little Bird. Really examine her.
Bags under her eyes. Dim irises. Slumped posture. She looks… defeated. That’s not my Lyra.
Was my threat a few days ago that far-reaching? I only explained what would happen should she choose to go to untenable extremes. So long as she doesn’t attempt to abort the child I will put inside her, we won’t have any problems.
So why is she like… this? And how hadn’t I noticed it until now?
Because whenever I’m not fucking her or playing with her, I’m working. That hasn’t left much room for conversation.
This is the drawback with being emotionally stunted, I think.
I don’t quite comprehend the mental impact of things the way some others would.
Were our positions reversed and she issued that threat to me, I’d understand that a certain course of action is blocked off for me unless I want to face unspeakable consequences, and find another way forward.
Lyra’s always done the same, no matter what challenge I’d set before her.
“Tell me about your time abroad.” Maybe there’s a piece to the story I’m missing. Where did her fiery spirit go?
“Not much to tell.” Her tone is flat. “You already know where I was. I moved from place to place a lot. Spent too much money doing so. Boring stuff.”
“Remind me, what was your first stop?”
“Mexico.”
“Whereabouts?” It’s a large country, and not a terrifically safe one for a young, beautiful American woman.
She rattles off a rural city. It takes me a few beats to recall it. “Where did you stay?” I ask curiously. I’m not sure there are many tourist spots in that area, and even if there are—
“Does it matter?”
“Yes, to me. Start talking.” Or else lingers in the air.
“If you must know, a hospital.”
The fuck?
“What?”
She eats a miniscule bite of her salmon, taking her sweet time chewing. “A hospital,” she repeats slowly, as if speaking to a toddler.
I blink. “Why?” Were there some sort of complications after she miscarried? Was she sick?
“Sepsis.”
Oh, fuck.
The mere thought of her in a run-down hospital, where she didn’t speak the language, in an unsafe area, bedridden with sepsis…
“Lyra, why the fuck didn’t you call me?” I could’ve gotten her the best care on the planet in a flash.
“Are you kidding me?” A spark returns to her eyes.
“You’re really asking me why I didn’t call you…
when you were the reason I ran? I don’t know, let’s see.
You filmed a sex tape of me during one of the most terrifying nights of my life and used it to blackmail me into having more sex with you.
At the end of our eight-week arrangement, you knocked me up, then informed me that we were going to get married.
The sex tape leaked. I miscarried and briefly contemplated jumping out of a window to escape the humiliation.
Instead, I found the strength to get away from a country where I was now famous for all the wrong reasons and started getting a fever.
Which got worse and worse as I traveled, until I landed—delirious and half-dead—in a place so remote nobody would know about me.
I was grateful to be in that hospital, where a doctor told me in broken English that there was a 50% chance I’d die, over being anywhere with you. That’s why I didn’t fucking call.”
She pants in the aftermath of her rant, while I stare at her, picturing it. Her skin, pale and clammy. Her eyes, dim and flickering with lifelessness. Some unclean hospital room in a barely-civilized city in a dangerous country.
A deep sadness slowly creeps through my chest. While I was losing my mind and threatening murder left and right, Lyra was fighting for her life.
Perhaps a sizeable donation to the hospital where she stayed is in order.
“You should’ve reached out to me,” I press.
“I would rather have died,” she replies harshly. She stands up from her seat, tossing her napkin on her plate. “I’m going to bed.”
I watch her go, lost in thought. The niggling sense of grief—what we both lost—creeps up on me. I try not to let it completely overtake me, because I have things to do. A future to look toward, not a past to dwell on.
That doesn’t make it easy, however.
Locke’s earlier words come back to haunt me.
Have you bothered asking what made her believe that there was no version of staying with you that wouldn’t destroy her?
No, I hadn’t. It didn’t seem relevant… but maybe it is.
“Get dressed,” I tell Lyra the following night, straightening my bowtie. “We have an event to attend.”
She gives me a petulant look from her spot on the couch, where she’s leafing through a random historical fiction she plucked from my shelves.
“If it’s all the same to you, I’d rather not.”