Chapter 35
Colton
I’ve laughed more this morning than I have in…
well, ever. The fact that my baby brother is locked in psychological warfare with Liam is hilarious.
But when Ollie calls Ronan, Pa, I can’t help the tears that sting my eyes.
He says he loves me, and that means the world to me.
There is something more, though, with his easy acceptance of Ollie.
I glance around the room. This is what family is supposed to feel like.
It’s not just Ronan’s acceptance but everyone else’s as well.
Kieran is a scary man, large and imposing.
He’s the kind of man that if you saw him walking toward you, getting out of his way would be your only option.
Yet he lets himself be called Ki-Ki. Kieran also said that Ollie will learn Irish.
It’s just a given that we will be here, part of this family.
I’m so happy that a tear rolls down my cheek.
“Why are you crying, a stór?” Ronan’s arms tighten around me.
“Ad?” Ollie presses his finger to one of my tears.
“No, baby, I’m not sad. These are happy tears.” I smile at him. “Happy tears.”
“Good morning.” A deep baritone voice comes from the doorway. Ollie’s head whips around.
“Duck!” He reaches for Duncan, who, surprisingly, takes him without a second thought. “Did he just call you Duck?” Liam asks. Before Duncan can respond, Ollie goes into a full babbling mode and ends with ack ass. At his questioning look, Ronan tells him Ollie is saying jackass.
“Yes, they’re all jackasses at times.” Duncan agrees with the baby.
Ollie points to Ronan. “Pa.”
“Pa, huh? Okay, Liam is a jackass, and Ronan is pa. Got it.” Duncan grabs the coffee that Alessia slides over to him. “Thank you. Taylor and Finn are bringing the parents and one other person to the compound. Moses and Ezra weren’t there.”
“Why the fuck did they move on the house without all of them being there?” Ronan grits through clenched teeth. “They were supposed to take everyone at the same time.”
“They were packing to leave. They would’ve risked losing them if they went to a secondary location. I made the call to grab them.”
Ronan is not happy with the turn of events. He, like the rest of us, figured that all of this would be over today. But the main person who needs to be stopped is in the wind.
“What happens now?” I ask.
“We get the information from them, end them, and then track down the others,” Duncan answers. He’s so calm with his response that if I didn’t hear the words end them, it would have seemed like he was talking about a business meeting. I tilt my head so I can see Ronan.
“You promised that I could be there.” I remind him.
“And you will be, for part of it. You can say what you need to and ask any questions. But you won’t be there for the rest of it.”
“You don’t get to make that decision for me.
” I know what the rest of it is. The torture and murder of my parents.
Can I watch them do it? I don’t know. I feel as though those people stopped being my parents a long time ago.
And what they were going to do to Ollie and what they did to the other kids makes me want to watch them suffer. Still, I feel sick.
“I do.”
“No, you don’t.” I snap back. Ronan spins me in his arms and grips my face between his large hands.
“You’re pure, Colton. I don’t want the dark ever to touch you.
I will be the darkness you need to end this.
” Holy shit. My brain just went offline.
The man standing before me has been so logical until this very moment.
Now he says something that takes my breath away.
If there had been any doubt in my mind that I love this man, it just evaporated.
I wrap my arms around him and gently kiss him.
“Thank you,” I whisper against his lips.
“You never have to thank me, a stór.” He places his forehead against mine.
“Can we get going? The longer we wait, the further Moses can get. Besides, all of this lovey shit is getting on my nerves.” Liam says as he starts toward the door.
“What about Ollie?” I ask. I don’t want to take him with us, but after what happened, I don’t want to leave him either.
“Kieran and I will stay with him. I swear to you, Colton, no one will touch him.” Alessia cups the side of my face as she smiles gently at me. “You can trust us, sweetheart.”
And I do. I trust this family. Alessia has already put herself between Ollie and danger. She was willing to take the chance with her own life to save ours. “I do trust you.” I look around her to Kieran. “Both of you.”
“Let’s go,” Liam yells from the hallway.
“What the fuck is his problem?” Ronan asks no one in particular. He grabs my hand and leads me from the room just as Ollie yells “uck”. “Shit, Mom is going to make me pay for that.”
Ronan leads me to the largest garage I have ever seen.
It looks like the inside of a car dealership showroom.
There are car lifts with cars that I have only seen on TV.
I don’t have time to really look around before Ronan helps me into the back of a large, black SUV.
Liam is driving while Conor is in the passenger seat.
I haven’t interacted with him very much and have forgotten just how big he is.
He takes up more than his half of the front seat.
He is the largest of the family. Duncan slides in beside me as I sit in the middle.
Ronan reaches across me and pulls my seatbelt into place.
“So what’s the plan?” Conor asks.
“We start with Colton’s parents. He wants to talk to them first. I doubt they have all the information we need. Jeremiah will, though.” Ronan tells him.
“You just want to talk, Colt?” Conor turns in his seat as much as his large frame will allow.
“I just want to know why.”
“Most of the time, there is no answer to that.”
“I still want to ask it, then I want to tell them that I hope they burn in hell,” I say with all the conviction I can muster.
We sit in silence for a while. My hands are shaking, and I twist the seatbelt around my fingers over and over.
“Why are you nervous?”
“I’m not.” I lie. Not sure why I do. I’m more nervous now than when I ran with Ollie that night.
“You are. You’re doing the fabric thing.”
I turn to look at Ronan. “What fabric thing?” I ask.
“When you get nervous, you play with the closest piece of cloth.” He removes my fingers from the seatbelt and holds them in his hand. I forget sometimes exactly how observant Ronan is.
“I don’t know why I denied it. I’m freaking out.”
“It’ll be over soon, and they can’t hurt you,” Ronan assures me.
I lean my head on his shoulder and just breathe in his smell.
It’s clean and crisp, like linen dried in the sun.
It fills my lungs and calms me. I’m going to confront my parents for the last time. That part of this nightmare ends today.