25. Caroline
CAROLINE
The car ride back from Alaina’s hotel is a quiet blur. Traces of indecision were still there in our last conversation, but there’s nothing to be done about that for either of us. She can’t keep my children from me, and I can’t tell her the truth.
I grip the steering wheel so tightly that the blood drains from my knuckles.
Alaina knows something is wrong. She didn’t say it out loud, but it was written all over her face, her hesitant hug, the way she lingered at the car door, not quite stepping away.
And I couldn’t tell her. Not even when she asked if everything was okay. I lied.
“Fine,” I’d said. The lie tasted like blood.
The sun has nearly dipped below the trees when I pull up to the brothers’ house. The entire drive, I felt the eyes on me that they promised would be there. It’s hard to know what’s real and what’s imagined anymore. My whole life feels like a dream. A nightmare.
Shadows stretch long across the gravel drive, and something feels off.
Too quiet. Too still. If I were home in Washington, Joshua and Isaac would be running out into my waiting arms. They’d be screaming out to me.
I can’t even hear them screaming inside.
A lump rises in my throat—an awareness that something very wrong is waiting for me on the other side.
I step out of the car, every instinct in me screaming.
The gravel crunches under my shoes, and I pause by the porch, the wooden swing creaking at me like a warning.
I look at the wall of windows, ceiling to floor, but they’re completely dark.
I can’t see inside at all. I check my watch and see that it’s only seven p.m. Even my three-year-olds shouldn’t be asleep yet, let alone three criminals.
I cup my hands around my eyes to look closer, but it’s pitch-black darkness inside except for a light in the kitchen that leaves an orange blur in my peripheral.
What if they think I told? What if this is a setup?
“Hello?” I call, stepping inside.
There’s no answer.
The second I pass the threshold, hard metal is pressed into the thin skin of my temple. I know instantly that it’s a gun. There’s something about a gun—you just know when it’s there.
Just weeks ago, this would have been the worst thing to happen to me, but today, I face it with a still silence. Swallowing, I whisper, “I didn’t say a word. Please. The boys need a mother.”
I hear a foreign chuckle and a low voice, the Irish accent even stronger than the brothers’.
“So you’re where they’re getting that rhetoric.
They never talked like that before you.” The gun pushes even harder into my skin.
I stare at the feet, two loafers with gold clasps, and I try to think my way out of this.
Do I have time to grab the butt and twist it away? Am I strong enough, fast enough?
I don’t have long to consider it before a strong hand clamps around my wrist, twisting my arm painfully behind my back. Cold steel presses into my palm, and the mouth accompanying the voice is up against my ear, murmuring, “Hold it.”
Another voice—Kellan’s, sharper than usual—adds, “Don’t drop it.”
I look up toward his voice. His eyebrows are pulled together, and one hand is propping up his elbow, the other holding his chin. He watches me with care, but there’s a hardness in his eyes I don’t recognize.
I don’t need to look down to know there’s a gun in my hand.
I look around the room and see at the very end of it a man tied to a chair.
He’s lit up by one singular standing lamp like a quest, his mouth taped to his hair and the back of the chair.
Tears are gathered in his eyes, and I don’t recognize him.
He’s a stranger to me. He’s no one, and all at once, he’s someone.
My heart stutters. I try to wrench away from the grip on my arm, but it tightens.
“What is this?” I gasp, struggling. I’m staring into Kellan’s eyes, begging him to stop this. My voice sounds small, fragile, like it might shatter under its own weight. “Where are my sons?” I ask seriously, panic creeping up my throat.
“They’re safe,” Declan assures me. “They’re two floors down in their beds. They can’t hear anything.”
Kellan steps forward toward me. “You say you want to be a part of this family.” His shirt is splattered with something dark—maybe blood, maybe oil, maybe metaphor. Probably blood. “Time to prove it.”
“Prove it how?” I ask, even though I already know. My arm is guided up, the barrel of the gun steadying.
“Pull the trigger,” says Rian. His voice is deep and authoritative, different than I’ve ever heard it.
The man behind me releases his hold, but I don’t move. I can’t. My hands are trembling so badly I’m afraid I’ll shoot someone by accident.
“You don’t have to do this,” I whisper.
“No,” the father says. “You do.”
Declan watches me with gentle curiosity, his head tilted, his lips slightly open. It’s just me and this monster and the man on his knees.
“I won’t,” I say sharply, shaking my head too hard. It slaps my cheeks.
Then Declan is beside me, holding my shoulders, turning me to face him. He bends his knees so he can look at me in my face. I’ve never seen his eyes so gentle, and he whispers, “Think of them.”
“I can’t,” I cry back, gagging at the thought. Across the room, the man has started to struggle, shaking the chair underneath him. I snap my head toward him and look at the desperation stinking off him.
“You have to!” Declan barks from beside me. It’s so loud in my ear that it almost sounds like my own thoughts. “He’s no one!”
“Caroline,” Rian says softly, swooping in. “That man betrayed us. He’s the reason we’re running. He’s the reason you’re here. He told the feds about that night. Look at him. He’s your enemy, not us.”
Kellan’s voice is cold and calm. He’s leaning against the wall, sipping a drink. “It doesn’t matter what he did. He betrayed us, and that should be enough for you. If you want to be a part of this family, you’ll learn to be enraged by that. Loyalty is what binds us. Are you loyal to us?”
I slump under the weight of the questions and demands. “I—I have done everything you’ve asked of me.”
“Like what, Caroline?” Kellan asks sharply, his arms crossed. His lanky limbs look alien in this lighting. “You tried to kill us, that I know. And since then, what have you done that we’ve asked? You’ve said you would do plenty. But what have you actually done?”
His cruelty confuses me. It doesn’t feel like him. I didn’t know he had so much resentment built up toward me. “I didn’t tell Alaina anything,” I whisper, tears gathering at my ducts.
“How do I know that?”
The world around me tilts with even more confusion. “You said—people were watching…”
“It was a lie , Caroline, something said to keep you from speaking. Just like keeping your kids was a motivator. We have no evidence that you’re as loyal as you say you will be.”
My mind is blank. I have nothing left to argue, only a cold and penetrating wish to not kill a man I don’t know. So I just rely on begging. “Please don’t ask me to do this.”
The man who handed me the gun closes his hands over mine. My eyebrows quirk slightly, confused at the motion, but I don’t have much time to think about it. His fingers are cold and firm, like marble.
“I’m not asking,” he whispers. He lifts my arms, and his are made of pure muscle. I press outward with my elbows, but in the end, all I can do is turn my face away. I bury it into Declan’s neck, and his hands fly up to my face to cover it. His fingers spread across my cheek.
The man squeezes the trigger, and my finger is trapped, pulling with him.
A sound explodes. It’s too loud, too final, and my ears ring. My hands go slack. The gun clatters to the floor.
The man’s muffled screaming is gone, replaced by mine.
Their father mutters, “Good girl,” before he releases me slowly, like he’s savoring the moment. I sob into the air before Declan takes me into his arms. He picks me up and cradles me like a baby, shushing me gently in my ear. My fingers tremble against his back like I’m purposefully rapping a beat.
Declan’s eyes are alive with something like pride, and I can see from this close how long his golden eyelashes are, rimmed around his steel eyes. I don’t know how it happens, but my fingers on the back of his neck turn into his lips against mine.
I gasp against his kiss, and he pulls away for a moment to study me, to make sure I’m okay with it. I trace his scar, the way I’ve longed to, and I let myself come undone with his mouth.
He walks with me through rooms until I’m set softly onto the deep-set couch.
I pull myself into a ball and sob into my knees.
Something drops around me, weight, and I hold it tightly, smelling Rian on it .
I see sleeves and realize it’s his hoodie.
I grip them like arms, like real human comfort, and only know the difference when I feel Rian’s pliable, warm hand on my freezing forehead.
I hear him like he’s in a cave, saying, “She feels cold.” I know I do.
The father is in front of me, tipping my chin to make me look up at him.
He has fading red curls and a face that’s wilted with wrinkles.
His stubble sticks out of his face like it’s painful.
If he weren’t the evil incarnate that I know him to be, I would think he looks like an older Kellan.
His face twists into something resembling a smile, anemic lips lining yellow teeth, and he says, “I meant it. You did good.”
In response, I double over and throw up between his feet.
Then they’re pushing him out, out of the room or out of the house, I don’t know, but he’s out.
Rian gives me a glass of water.
Declan sits next to me while I drink it.
I rest my head on his shoulder, not out of familiarity but out of exhaustion, and he leans his cheek against me, trapping me against him.
His arm snakes around my waist, and I close my eyes while he rocks me.
I feel the vibrato of his words in my head when he asks, “Now you’ve met our father.
Do you still want to be alive if it means knowing him? If this is the life you’ll have?”
I feel empty, and the only thought I have over and over is:
I don’t know. I don’t know. I don’t know.