37. The Soul
Chapter thirty-seven
The Soul
Kira
I don’t know how long I wept in bed. Hours, probably, because it was dark through the curtains. Had I seen him through rosy glasses just because he knew about art, and because he kissed my hand? Because he gave me a hundred white orchids, and acted like a gentleman? But it was all an act. It was all a lie!
I gagged, holding my hand to my mouth as I tried to keep my breakfast down.
“Kira?” The door opened, quietly, and I squealed in fear.
Blink was right. They were absolutely fucking right. I wasn’t ready for this. I wasn’t trained to be in this deep of cover. Not with a man like him.
“Kira?” He came towards me, and I moved away, trying to stay away from his grasp, shaking my head and backing up until I hit a wall and was trapped in the corner.
“Stay away from me!” I said, trying to sound strong, but my fear was written in my voice. “Stay away!”
I held out my hand as if it would stop him, but I should have known better. I knew, more than anyone, how strong he was. But I had never thought he would turn his strength on me. Not once.
His hands came to my shoulders as he pulled me into him, and I punched him in the chest, again and again, trying to get out of his grasp.
“Let me go!” The tears streamed down my face in earnest. “Let me go!”
“Kira, you must see reason,” he said, holding on to me so tight that he’d leave bruises on my arms. “It’s not what you think.”
“It’s not…” I was shocked. Shocked!
I was so shocked that I started laughing. It was a loud, insane, maniacal sound I didn’t think I was capable of, but there it was. I was laughing at everything - the situation I had placed myself in. The exact situation I had worked so hard to stay out of.
Not just as an agent, but as a person. I had sworn to never be under the power of a man like the one who killed my father. But here I was, under the power of Eoghan Green, and imprisoned in his world with no way out.
“I need to make a call,” I tried a different tact. “I… I have to go back to work. I’ll just… get a taxi or…”
I wasn’t trained for this. I didn’t know how to lie my way out of this. I needed Blink to guide me, but he wasn’t here.
“No.” Eoghan’s voice wasn’t pleading. It wasn’t coaxing and sweet like it always had been. There was no grin or humor in it. His tone froze me in his arms, as I looked into his eyes. They were dark, as always, but worse. He looked like his father - cruel, and evil. Every bit the monster he had claimed to be. “You won’t be leaving my side. Not now. Not ever.”
“Eoghan, please…”
“No, Kira! You don’t understand. You’re surrounded by danger, and you can’t see it. I must protect you!”
“No.” My voice was weak, as I trembled, my knees buckling under me. “You are the danger that surrounds me. You are the one that will hurt me. I need to be protected from you!”
I was hysterical and scared, my body pent up with fear and emotion that I had never felt before as tears streamed down my face.
“Please, Eoghan, let me go. You promised you would let me go if I wanted to… you promised…”
His nostrils flared as he came up to his full height. He grew taller as I shrank further into myself, falling to the ground before him until his hands let me go, and I slumped on the ground, my arms covering my stomach- covering my most vulnerable parts from the monster that stood over me.
“I can’t let you go. You don’t understand…”
I shook my head, my hair surrounding me in a sad, funeral veil.
I remembered all those times someone had been taken hostage by the people Paradigm brought down - the criminals, and bastards we spent our lives eliminating. The people we tried to save.
We studied all the ways they pleaded, and all the ways those pleas went unheard. We were supposed to be the people that heard those prayers and answered them. But far from the rescuer in the tail, I was now the useless damsel, but there was no cavalry on the way.
I wanted to go out with dignity, if I had to. I wanted to be proud, like my father, who got to choose his end. But I had no such pride left. I wish I did, but there was something in my belly that made me want to live. It told me that I had to live.
“Please, Eoghan,” I begged, seeing the tear that fell from my cheek and landed on the black and green hem of my dress. “I won’t tell anyone what I saw. I swear it. You know I won’t… please…”
A lie. I reported everything to my superiors. I told my team everything.
Everything except this.
“Kira, I cannot let you go. It’s not safe. I cannot let you…”
He swallowed, his hand combing out his hair, pulling it from its perfectly parted style into something disheveled.
“Kira, it’s dangerous out there, and you’re a target because you’re my wife…”
“You made me a target,” I corrected him. “Please. If you let me go, then I won’t tell anyone anything… I swear…”
He paced away from me toward the door, and I almost thought he’d walk out. I thought he’d leave and let me slip out. I’d leave everything, and maybe he loved me enough to just let me out. Maybe…
But instead, he stopped at the door and flipped the small latch that locked it.
It was such an insignificant and minute gesture. Just a flick of his wrist that made the air grow heavy from the sheer power of his conviction. The man who turned around and looked at me was not my husband. It was not the man who looked at me as I walked down the aisle, and worshiped my body in a small stone cottage at the edge of the woods.
The man who looked at me wasn’t the misunderstood son of Alastair Green.
He was Alastair Green - a man created in his cruel image, looking at me with malice I didn’t know he was capable of.
“You will not leave,” he said evenly, even though each word was laced with acid. “You will stay by my side, wife. ” Never had a word sounded more heinous than that. “And in this, you will obey me.” Then a light flashed behind his eyes. Was that a look of regret? “It’s for your own good.”
He turned around and unlocked the door, opening it to the outside world before he shouted down the hall.
“Bourne!” he called out and his little soldier came to his side, peering through the door as he looked at me with lascivious eyes. Eyes that made my skin crawl. “Make sure Mrs. Eoghan Green does not leave this room unless escorted by me, do you understand?”
Bourne looked over to me, his lips coming up at the corner. I couldn’t shake the feeling that Bourne was a man very, very capable of violating a woman, given half a chance and the slightest permission.
“Yes, sir,” he said, with a little too much enthusiasm.
“Don’t enter the room under any circumstances,” Eoghan clarified, grabbing him by the collar and shaking him until Bourne had to pry his eyes from me and to the young prince of darkness who owned me. “Not unless she’s trying to climb out the fucking window. And even then, do not touch her. Do you understand?”
“Yes, sir,” Bourne’s brows furrowed, as if confused by the demand. But then he wiggled out of Eoghan’s hold.
My husband looked at me one last time, before he reached for the door knob and shut it, caging me in. I would have gotten up and locked it, but what would be the point? He’d just break it down and get to me.
I was a prisoner now.
I keeled over, my fingers twisting into my hair as I wailed like a madwoman, screaming at myself, at my husband, at the fucking world! At the life that I had sworn to never have. I wailed because I had a strange, and painful suspicion that there was something in me… something tragic growing from me, and the beast I had pledged myself to.