11. Caroline
CAROLINE
What was that? The question echoes in my head as the tall man with the sharp features, the one whose mouth I remember around my nipple, turns away from me.
My body betrays me, and I feel heat building between my legs.
It’s not just the tension stuck there, lust on the edge of a cliff.
It’s also being in the same room as all three of them again.
It’s something I prayed would never happen again, and now that it has, all this damned body can remember is the feeling of their hands and mouths working in tandem.
The spot underneath me is growing uncomfortable as my naked skin sticks to the wood floor beneath me, and I squirm a little, wriggling my thighs out of the wetness.
“What the fuck was that, Rian?” the angular one asks, seething, unable to hide his disdain for his brother.
I had come to know Rian as Paul. I had imagined a life with Paul, the insurance guy with the biting sarcasm.
I saw some love in his eyes when he looked at me.
I saw strength in his arms. I let myself hope.
Now I see what happens to hope around me.
My first thought, pathetically, is, Told you, Alaina.
Alaina. She’s with my kids, and she has no idea what’s happened to me. How long will she wait with them before she calls the police? Before she decides I’ve abandoned them? Will she tell the police about Paul? Will she come looking for me?
My heart races as I imagine Alaina coming to look for me only to find her mixed up in this bloody game.
“I had second thoughts about killing her,” Rian mutters to his brother.
How romantic. I tug at the handcuff and wince at the way the metal pinches the peach fuzz on my arms. I wince at the phrasing.
Second thoughts . He thought about killing me, while I was thinking about him fixing my gutters.
I’ve never been so wrong about someone as I was about him—and I’ve done it twice.
I watch the two of them talk like I’m not even here, like I’m a piece of furniture. I might as well be—they know how this will end. I guess I do too. The angular man’s pointed nose scrunches with disgust, and he leans close to Rian to murmur, “Maybe we should just kill you.”
Rian swallows, and I see his Adam’s apple bob. “Declan, even if you don’t agree with my choices, I’m still your brother. I’ve never steered you wrong.”
Declan. It seems fitting. Sharp like him.
He looks infuriated to be reminded they’re brothers.
He has the same look he wore when he took his mask off—vulnerable, incensed.
“It is possible for you to steer me straight into the ocean the first time you do, however. I’m starting to feel that I’m looking straight into the water, and you’re telling me it’s land. ”
Rian looks at him the careful precision that he looked at me with when I almost walked away, the way he looks straight into your soul. My lungs are emptied, breathless, still against my ribs, watching the interaction that determines my fate. “I’m sorry that you feel that way. But it isn’t true.”
“Da told us what we needed to do.” Who’s Da?
“ Da doesn’t run this show,” Rian answers, looking at me. My breath stills. Up until this moment, I felt like a fixture in the room—something they might bump their toes into in the dark.
Suddenly, I realize: Are they talking about their fucking dad? They want to kill me for their dad ? A sickness spreads through my stomach, and I start slamming the handcuffs against the leg of the bed, whimpering like a wild animal.
“You know that he does,” Declan says curtly, walking over to me and grabbing my face with one hand. “Stop,” he hisses through bared teeth at me, and the gray of his eyes chills me to the bone. He lets go, pats my cheek, and walks back to Rian.
“I know that it’s our legacy too. He has to learn to trust our judgment,” Rian says, flickering his gaze between me and him.
It’s like they’re discussing whether or not to open a second franchise location of a pizza place. A sick laugh bubbles in my throat, and I rest my chin against my chest as the truth of where I am and what position I’m in washes over me.
Both of their heads whip around to face me, and the one with the angular face stares at me for a moment. He looks at Rian, then back at me. “She thinks you’re a joke, deartháir. ”
“No, she doesn’t,” Rian says quickly. “She’s traumatized. Stop. Look at me and listen to me. I think we should wait. We can bring her back home and plan from there.”
“More time means?—”
“More eyes, I know. When you said that, it got me thinking, Declan. What if she told someone?”
“What?”
“It’s been four years. We’ve looked for her, and she’s done a good job hiding. What if she’s told people? The police? FBI? It’s been four years. We don’t know what’s happened in all that time.”
Declan steps toward me, and my breath stutters. My nipples tighten. I hate that my body reacts. He leans down until our eyes lock. Storm-gray meets hazel. His voice is low and clipped. “Did you tell anyone what you saw, doll ?”
My breath hitches. He’s so close I can smell faint spearmint on his breath. A scar curves over his cheekbone. I have the strangest urge to touch it.
I don’t know what the right answer is. If he thinks I told someone, they might torture the answers out of me and then go and kill those people too.
If he thinks I told no one, they might kill me now.
Worse, I can’t lie to him, to them . I’ve been lying to people for four years about why I moved and what brought me here, but faced with lying to these men, I suddenly just can’t.
“No,” I say honestly, setting my jaw and sucking on the inside of my cheeks.
“She says she didn’t,” Declan says resolutely, standing.
“We can’t have any loose ends,” Kellan finally speaks up from the door. He’s been silent so long that I’d forgotten he was there. He looks at Declan sternly and shrugs. “We don’t have a choice, mucker . We need to be sure.”
Declan sneers, the life gone from his eyes. I get the sense he’d been excited to kill me. “Dress her,” he snaps, and he leaves the room so I’m alone with Rian and Kellan who, for reasons I can’t explain, seem to want me alive.
For now.