Chapter 32
Chapter Thirty-Two
Killian
Exhaustion dragged at him as they made their way home. But there were things to be discussed, plans to be made, revelations to be shared.
His instinct was to keep Aria as far from all of it as possible. To bundle her away upstairs with her books while he handled the messy bits.
But Reagan’s words from earlier were still playing on a loop in his mind. If you want her to fall in love with you, then you need to show her that you trust her.
Trust wasn’t an easy thing for a man like him. Especially now, when it seemed as though everyone he’d thought he could trust with the basic niceties—like not trying to murder him over calamari—was determined to prove him wrong.
Reagan was right, though. Not just because he did, indeed, need to convince Aria to marry him, but because Aria deserved his trust. She deserved to know what kind of world she was stepping into by having his child, and she deserved a voice in what came next.
Standing in the foyer, he turned to Reagan and saw the same shift he felt in himself. The happiness she’d been all but bubbling with the whole ride home drained away, leaving behind the ruthless strategist she’d had to become at far too young an age.
“Family dinner tonight. We need to talk about what happened today.”
“On it.”
Confident she’d rally the troops, he turned to the mother of his child, standing just off to the side, her expression closed to him. He ached for the distance he could suddenly feel between them, a distance that hadn’t been there at the doctor’s office or in the car.
“I’m going to ask you to do something, and you’re not going to like it. You’re going to want to argue with me, but I need you to understand that I’m not asking it of you because I think you’re weak or because I’m trying to send you away.”
Curiosity lit her pale eyes. “That sounds ominous.”
“It is. Very.”
A twitch of her lips gave away her growing amusement. “What is it you want to ask me, O’Rourke?”
Determined to close the distance between them, even if only physically, he stepped forward, cupping her face in his hands. “I would like you… to take a nap.”
She blinked, and then she did exactly what he’d hoped she would do—she laughed.
“I think I will, but only because I’m feeling tired. Not because you told me to.”
“Of course. Wouldn’t want me getting a big head and thinking I’m in charge.”
“Exactly.” She hesitated, looking uncharacteristically uncertain before she rose up onto her toes to press a kiss to his cheek. “You’ll wake me for dinner?”
There was so much more beneath that simple question. She was asking to be included, to be part of the conversation, and he knew then he was making the right call, even if it went against his baser instincts. “I will.”
“Good.”
He watched her go, watched the gentle sway of her hips as she made her way up the stairs. “And Aria?”
Turning, she cocked a brow at him. “Yes?”
“If you need any help getting to sleep… you know where to find me.”
A knowing smirk curved her lips. “Or you could give me the code to the cabinet where you keep all the toys so I could help myself.”
“Not a chance, princess.”
“Can’t blame a girl for trying.”
The laughter came more easily than he’d expected it to, given the events of the day, and it burned away some of the lingering exhaustion. Satisfied she’d do as she was told for once, he turned away from the stairs and headed for his office.
Aria
The nap helped, which wasn’t nearly as annoying as it should have been. But she woke refreshed and even had time to indulge in a long, hot bath before dinner.
She was just pulling on a soft purple sweater she’d found in her closet when someone knocked on her door. And her stupid heart leapt at the thought of Killian coming to escort her down to dinner like the proper gentlemen he pretended to be.
“You do know I can find the—oh.” Pausing with the door halfway open, she blinked up at Reagan. “You’re not Killian.”
Delight sparkled in the other woman’s brown eyes as she raised a brow. “I’m not, but I’m told the resemblance is uncanny.”
“It is, especially when you do that thing with your eyebrow.”
The brow in question raised higher. “Like this?”
“Yes, like that. You need to teach me that look.”
“Of course. It won’t work on my brother, but you’ll need to learn the art of being coldly intimidating if you’re going to be standing by his side someday.” Her gaze raked up and down Aria’s body. “And that, dear sister, starts with your clothes.”
Before Aria could protest, Reagan was pushing past her, making a beeline for Aria’s closet. “What’s wrong with my clothes?” Even though she was just wearing jeans and a sweater, she was pretty sure the outfit cost more than most people in South Carolina made in a month.
“Nothing, if we were just hanging out.” Reagan’s voice grew increasingly muffled as she disappeared deeper into the closet. “But this isn’t simply a family dinner.”
“It’s not?”
“No.” Popping out of the closet again, Reagan held up several dresses Aria had deliberately ignored when she’d been looking for something to wear. “It’s a strategy meeting.”
She’d spent enough time in her father’s circles to understand that clothes in and of themselves often were the strategy. A way of establishing your standing in any given situation.
Too dressed down and you were overlooked. People assumed you weren’t on their level. Too dressed up and you were trying too hard.
“So what’s my strategy with these?” She gestured to the dresses as Reagan laid them out on the bed for her.
“Showing people you’re aligned with Killian. That you two are a unit, a team.” Rolling her eyes, Reagan held up a hand to cut off Aria’s protests. “I know, I know, you aren’t marrying him. But that’s not the point and it’s time you faced the facts.”
Annoyed at having her arguments so efficiently cut off before she’d even voiced them, Aria pinned the other woman with her best haughty ‘Queen of the Castle’ look. “And what facts, exactly, am I facing?”
Reagan’s expression shifted, ever so slightly, but enough for the breath to catch in Aria’s chest. She was no longer looking at her future child’s aunt. She was looking at a soldier, a ruthless creature who would do whatever it took to protect her family.
She was looking… at an O’Rourke.
“Whether you marry Killian or not, you are forever aligned with him. The Italians know who you are and that you’re pregnant with Killian’s child.
Which means the Russians likely know, along with pretty much every criminal element in a hundred-mile radius.
And that news will continue to spread like wildfire.
” Stepping forward, Reagan placed her hands on Aria’s shoulders, grief turning the brown of her eyes a molten amber.
“For the rest of your life, you’ll be a target.
It’s time to show them you won’t be an easy one to hit. Starting with our family.”
“Is Lochlan going to try and take me out over shepherd’s pie?”
“You joke, but it happens. Not in our family, but it does happen. No, tonight is about showing the rest of the family you stand with us. That you can be trusted. If we want outsiders to see you as an O’Rourke, then you need the men downstairs to believe you are an O’Rourke.”
I’m not an O’Rourke. But even as the protest burned on her tongue, she realized how futile it was.
The child in her womb was an O’Rourke. So that meant she was an O’Rourke, whether she bore the name herself or not.
“All right. Make me one of you.”
Killian
What the hell was taking Reagan so long? She’d gone up to ‘fetch his reluctant bride’ as she’d put it over a half an hour ago, and they still hadn’t made an appearance.
He was just about to head up there himself when he spotted her. And everything in him froze with wonder and terror.
The dress she had on wasn’t anything special, other than the way the deep purple made her eyes seem even stormier than usual.
But the curve-hugging cut showcased the slight roundness of her stomach, highlighting the fact that she was, indeed, carrying his child.
She had—or more likely, Reagan had—pulled her hair up in an elegant sort of twist that made her seem less like a college student who’d been thrown haphazardly into their world and more like a woman who belonged there.
None of that was what really caught his attention, though. As stunning as she looked, it was the pin affixed to her dress, just to the left of her collarbone that drew his attention. The O’Rourke lion, mid-pounce, just as it was depicted on their coat of arms.
Did she know what it meant? That it wasn’t simply a piece of jewelry, but a statement of her place in their family?
Judging by the way her chin jerked up when his eyes found hers, she knew exactly what it meant.
And he had no fucking clue how he felt about that.
He also didn’t have time to parse it. The front door opened right as Aria stepped down onto the marble foyer and his cousins poured in.
Lochlan and Tiernan first, with the former for once looking as somber as his twin.
Murphy was on their heels, without Rowan as he had made it his life’s mission to keep his son as far from the darker aspects of their family business as possible.
Brody joined them from the other direction, having gone to check on dinner while Killian waited for Aria and Reagan to join them. His gaze locked almost immediately on the pin at Aria’s breast, and while his brows rose slightly, he wisely didn’t comment.
“Dinner will be ready soon. We should get started,” he said instead.
“We should,” Killian agreed, turning back to the woman who had captured and held his attention from the first moment he laid eyes on her. Heart pounding, he offered his elbow, curious to see if her outfit was simply a change of clothes or something deeper. “Shall we?”
She hesitated, but only a moment before sliding her hand into the crook of his arm and giving a single, regal nod.
Arm in arm, they led the way to the dining room. And again he wondered if she knew what a powerful statement she was making, standing at his side, his family’s emblem shining from her chest as she settled in the seat to his left.
Once everyone had taken their seats, he met his sister’s gaze from across the table.
And prepared for anarchy.
“Richard Williams killed our parents.”
They didn’t simply fall into silence. They crashed headlong into it, a soundless cacophony of horror, disbelief, and fury as his cousins grappled with this new information.
And then the silence shattered, everyone shouting at once, and he waited them out, let them have their moment before they finally settled again.
“How do you know?” Brody asked, his voice thick with the emotions he was trying so desperately to keep inside.
“Lorenzo told me. Not outright, because that isn’t his way. But he made a very pointed comment about mothers and then he said it was ‘deliciously ironic’ that I had chosen Richard to take over the docks.”
“I want him.” Lochlan’s eyes burned with the same fury they’d all been wrestling with for a decade.
The lovable sociopath he usually was had been stripped away, revealing the brutal killer that lurked underneath.
“I want to take him apart, piece by piece, and remind the world why fucking with the O’Rourkes is a big fucking mistake. ”
“We can’t.” At Lochlan’s snarl, Killian shook his head. “I’m sorry, Loch, but that’s not who we are anymore.” He paused, locking gazes with his cousin. “But believe me when I tell you that we will have our revenge.”
That seemed to mollify Lochlan, at least for the moment. But they would need to move quickly. God only knew what Lochlan would do if he decided things were moving too slowly for his tastes.
“What about the DeLucas?” Brody asked, the whitening of his knuckles as he made a fist on top of the table the only outward sign of his anger. “They came for your…” He paused, glancing over at Aria with a frown. “They came for Aria in broad daylight, with plenty of bystanders in the way.”
“And they tried to poison us,” Reagan added, her expression darkening as she glared at her wine as if it had offended her merely by being the same kind of drink Lorenzo had used in his assassination attempt.
“We need to make a statement.”
Silence once more fell as everyone, himself included, turned to look at the mother of his child. Calm, head held high, the golden lion glistening at her breast, she looked as much like an O’Rourke as if she’d been born into it.
What had he done?
There was no time for the grief clawing at his insides, however, not with so much at stake. “What kind of statement?”
Her pale eyes met his, the rage of millennia of mother warriors protecting their young storming in the blue. “The kind that tells them, and everyone watching, not to fuck with us.”
At the end of the table, Lochlan and Tiernan both grinned and shared a look. “We have some ideas,” Lochlan said.
They spent the better part of two hours discussing the plan over dinner, then dessert before he sent everyone home. Reagan slipped away somewhere, giving him the privacy he needed with his woman.
Standing at the bottom of the stairs, he gave in to the need to touch her, to reassure himself she was real and unharmed and here. “How are you feeling?”
“Pissed off.”
“Oddly enough, I picked up on that,” he said with a low laugh, brushing his thumbs over her cheeks as he cupped her face. “But then, you’ve been pissed at me from the moment you learned who I was.”
“I was. I’m not now.”
Hope unfurled in his chest. “Oh?”
“No.” Moving in, she slid her arms around his waist, her head tilting back, inviting him to touch and taste.
“I still don’t approve of your methods, but after today I understand why you reacted the way you did.
And I’m genuinely sorry I didn’t take your warnings seriously at first. Forgive me for being a stubborn, self-righteous idiot? ”
“You weren’t an idiot. It’s impossible for most people to truly understand the life we lead and the danger inherent in it without having lived it themselves.”
“I’m starting to see that,” she murmured.
“Aria…” Again the words he wanted to give her burned on his tongue. But perhaps he was more of a coward than he was willing to admit, because he once more held them back. “Come to bed with me. Not for sex,” he assured her when her brows furrowed. “I just want to hold you. To know you’re safe.”
Those stormy blue eyes searched his face, as if looking for any hint he might be trying to trick her. Apparently satisfied with what she found there, she nodded.
“All right. Take me to bed, O’Rourke.”