28. Killian
28
KILLIAN
I held her tightly in my arms and listened to her cry.
Tears had never scared me.
I wasn’t like Silas.
I didn’t fucking care when a woman cried, and they certainly couldn’t manipulate me with their tears, but sitting here, holding her in my arms and listening to her cry…
Fuck.
I tightened my arms around her and wondered why each tear that hit my skin was like a fucking lash that burned.
She pushed away from me, heartbreak and hatred vying for a spot in those bottomless eyes of hers, and I didn’t know which I hoped would be the case.
Did I want her heartbreak or her hatred?
My brothers and I knew she would hate me for this.
Tracking might have been an idea agreed on by all three of us, but I was the one doing it.
And for a moment, I gladly welcomed her hatred if it meant she couldn’t run away from us.
If it meant she would be ours for the rest of the days in which my brothers and I spent breathing.
But this hatred of hers…
I swallowed hard and guided her face back to my chest, and perhaps the fight had left her after, because she let me.
We didn’t say anything.
Her tears continued to soak my skin and shirt. I reveled in the feeling of her in my arms, afraid if I blinked, she might disappear.
I didn’t know what that said about me.
Or what I wanted it to say.
Without thinking, I cupped the back of her head and placed a swift kiss on the top of it.
She tensed slightly, but didn’t do anything more.
I was glad.
I didn’t have the answers she was looking for.
Half an hour later, I felt her arms go slack.
Her breathing evened, and I pondered with some amazement that she had actually fallen asleep in my arms, as if I wasn’t the monster that haunted her nightmares.
I carefully stood and took the stairs.
She muttered something in her sleep, and I paused in my steps, entranced by her relaxed face.
Had there ever been a time when I saw her relaxed?
My stomach felt weighed down by lead.
I wasn’t a man given to guilt often—or ever.
With what my brothers and I did, there was no room for guilt to fester. That would have made our job infinitely harder. But staring down at her, I wondered why I was feeling like this.
It could have been because of her eyes when she realized what I was about to do in the office. Or, hell, perhaps it had started from the beginning, when Silas insisted that we take her with us. And all I had been doing by trying to fight this was allowing my past with Lilliana to touch her.
I continued up the stairs and paused in the hallway.
I should probably put her back in her room.
She would be more comfortable that way, and I sure as hell would too. I don’t think I could sleep well if I was next to her. I’d be afraid she might wake up at any moment and search for a weapon to end me.
I frowned, having a hard time conjuring up the image of her doing that.
She might want to hurt me, but kill me?
I shook my head and moved toward my room, laying her down on my bed and pulling the covers up over her.
I didn’t join her.
Instead, I stood at her bedside. She looked so fucking small wrapped up in my bed that my heart clenched.
I moved away and closed the door before heading into the en suite bathroom, quickly and quietly getting ready for bed.
It was early.
Too fucking early for me to be in bed, but hell, I was just so tired all of a sudden.
I couldn’t put a name to the pressure in my chest, the weight, that was pressing down on me. It was there nonetheless, and I just wanted it to leave.
We all had our own demons.
Maverick’s was his control. His tightly held control that he could lose the reins to at a moment’s notice.
Silas’ were the voices in his head, the noise.
And mine?
It was the pressure.
Sometimes it felt so real, it was as if I was slowly being crushed to death by a boulder.
And tonight was one of those nights.
I got into bed and took Mila into my arms.
She muttered something else in her sleep, a slight frown overtaking her features briefly before she relaxed once more and snuggled closer to my body.
I tightened my hold on her, took a deep breath, and stared up at the ceiling.
The only light source was a small, dim lamp standing in the corner of the room. It was enough for me to see the tattoo on my wrist.
VII · XXVI
For the first time in a fucking long time, I let myself get lost in the past, to the mistakes I’d caused, the pain and heartache, and to the making of monsters.
The night Daniel Hayes brought forty men to our home and killed my father.
Nineteen Years Ago
Maverick wasn’t sleeping again.
There was no surprise there.
His thoughts haunted him in the night as much as they did during the day, but at least during the day, he could distract himself with small reprieves.
At night, there was nothing stopping the nightmares from intruding.
No sense of safety, and no distractions.
Maverick didn’t sleep.
Instead, he quietly walked around the mansion at night like a ghost with no purpose, and often enough, he would wander into Silas’ room, or my room, and watch us sleep.
I had woken up to see his shadow sitting on one of the chairs I had placed in the corner of the room, his expression stoic, lost in thought, too many times to count.
Every time, I would ask him what he was doing, what he was thinking.
His answer was the same.
Nothing.
It wasn’t nothing, but I didn’t press for more.
Nightmares haunted me, too. How could they not, considering who our father was?
The old man truly believed the only way he could prepare us for this world, prepare us to take on the family business, was by introducing us at an early age to the kind of violence only men were capable of.
One of those instances involved him locking Silas in the wardrobe of our parents’ bedroom, while I stood guard, as he stabbed our mother over and over.
The sounds our mother made during her murder were all Silas had, but I was forced to watch.
Maverick didn’t know that.
We never told him.
Maverick was the one who found her as our father had planned.
He was the one who had to dispose of her body, and the one who cleaned up the room.
He spent an entire weekend scrubbing all the blood from the walls until it was spotless.
After that, he had trouble sleeping, and I?—
I didn’t know what I was.
I was fucked up, that was for sure, but fuck, just how fucked up was I when I couldn’t even see it for myself?
I shifted on my bed and took in Maverick’s tall form.
At sixteen, he was already taller than our father.
Not as wide, but we all knew he would be.
Someday soon, he would be bigger than the bastard, and our father could see that.
I would sometimes catch him staring at Maverick with a sort of hatred and fear.
Maverick was set to take over his empire, and he feared it might happen sooner than he should.
He was afraid the three of us would kill him.
He wasn’t wrong.
Maverick’s body was tense. “What are you doing? I asked.
I was only eleven months younger than Maverick, but at fifteen, I needed my brother more than he needed me.
And Silas…
I didn’t want to think about him.
Didn’t want to think about how we hadn’t been able to protect him.
“Nothing,” Maverick answered, his eyes glued to the window. Because of where my room was located, he could see the entire back property of the mansion.
It was the best spot for surveillance, and it was where I often found Maverick.
Suddenly, he tensed.
I tensed along with him.
“Killian.”
I stood, my entire body going on high alert.
“Go wake Silas. Tell him to put his shoes and jacket on, got me? You do the same,” Maverick said, his voice stiff.
“What’s going on?”
“No time. Just do as I say, and come back to this room right away.”
I nodded and got up, heading for Silas.
He was sleeping in his bed, but judging from the frown that marred his face, I’d say his sleep was anything but peaceful.
I shook his shoulder, and he gasped, his eyes bursting open as he reached under his pillow for the knife he had placed there.
I pushed his wrist away before he could hurt me, or worse, hurt himself.
It took him a moment to see me there. “What’s going on?” he asked.
“Get dressed. And put your shoes on.”
He opened his mouth, obviously wanting to ask more questions. I shook my head and made my eyes hard. He shut up and listened to me, for once.
Two minutes later, we were back in my room.
Maverick was still there, but I knew he’d left for his room, because by his feet was a duffel bag he had prepared months before, in case our old man ever went on a rampage and decided to kill us all.
I looked at the bag, then at him.
“Get dressed,” he said, throwing an old shirt hanging on the back of the chair at me.
I did so without protest, and once we were ready, he led us down to the main level of the house and under the staircase, which was built to look like a closed one, but there was a secret passage door in the corner. Maverick opened it and ushered Silas and me inside before he followed.
“What’s happening?” Silas asked.
“There are men on the property. I recognized the Heartless Saints cut some of them wore,” Maverick answered, sharing a look with me.
The Heartless Saints was a local MC that had been giving us trouble recently. They’d gotten big, too, which was why we couldn’t afford a direct attack on the club, but still, to do something like this?
It would be an all-out war—if we survived, that was.
There were guards around the house, but was it enough? And the MC had the element of surprise on their side.
What was our father doing now?
Probably had his nose high up in drugs and whores.
He would never see them coming, which was probably what they were counting on.
We stayed where we were, waiting with bated breath for signs of the first attack. None of us even thought to warn our father.
Whatever they wanted to do to him was less than what he deserved, but this empire?
This was ours, and I had a feeling the president of the MC would soon take it away before we had the chance to rule over it.
My fists clenched by my side, and Silas moved closer to me, though he didn’t try to seek my protection or comfort.
I didn’t know how much time had passed. It felt like hours or mere seconds. It didn’t matter because the boom that knocked off our front door still came unexpectedly.
Silas flinched, and I grabbed his hand, holding it tightly in my own to ensure he wouldn’t make a single noise.
Not that he would have been heard.
Not over the noise of the gunshots and the screaming of men as they were being slaughtered.
“I don’t give a fuck what you do, but Declan Tiernan and his three sons are mine to deal with,” a gruff voice shouted over the noise. The voice belonged to Daniel Hayes, the president of the Heartless Saints MC.
“Yes, prez,” another voice answered.
My grip on Silas’ hand tightened.
Among the screams, we could hear our father’s voice, the usual arrogance was absent. All that was left was anger mixed with fear as he cursed the men who had invaded his home.
Then silence reigned in the house for a quick second, and I wasn’t sure which I hated more, the booming silence, or the noise of violence. Voices rang out once more, but they were from men I didn’t recognize.
This could only mean one thing.
The MC won.
The voices got closer and louder.
Silas shuddered against me.
“Where are those bastard sons of yours, Tiernan?” Hayes asked.
Father’s voice shook when he answered, “Probably ran away like the cowards they are.”
I looked over at Maverick, but his face was a blank mask.
Hayes cackled. “Of course they did. We know your shit sperm can’t create anything useful.”
“You sent men into my territory in the middle of the night and attacked like a fucking coward. You are no better than my sons,” Father said.
A noise rang out that sounded the way it did when Father got drunk and slapped my face for the fun of it. Only this time, the old man was on the other side of the treatment.
He grunted in pain, and Hayes laughed louder.
“You see here, boys? This is the head of the Tiernan crime syndicate. Crying like a fucking baby.”
I couldn’t see if that was true, but Father did not deny it.
Maverick shook his head in disgust. Even when Father beat the shit out of us, even when he’d broken bones, Maverick and I never cried. And Silas hadn’t done it in months, and now a fucking slap and our father was crying.
“Do you know what is in store for you, old man?”
“Please,” Father begged. “Let me go. I’ll give you anything you want. I’ll give you the location of my brother.”
“I don’t need to know where the head of the Las Vegas syndicate is hiding. It ain’t my city… yet. But Chicago? This is my territory, and I’m fucking taking it back,” Hayes said to loud hoots and cheers.
“I—fuck.”
Father’s voice was cut off, and then a thud sounded.
“Take the piece of shit back to the clubhouse,” Hayes said.
“What about his boys?” someone asked.
“Let the little fuckers go. If they’re anything like Tiernan, they’ll know to stay the fuck out of my territory.”
“But—”
“Enough, Sebastian. I don’t want to waste any more resources looking for ’em. What I want is to take back my city and make sure the Irish know never to take a piss in Chicago without my permission again.”
“Well, this is no fun. You didn’t even spare anyone for me to play with,” another voice said. A voice I recognized, and judging from the sound, I’d say she was standing right by the wall.
My blood ran cold and Maverick looked over at me, his brows pulling together.
He recognized her voice, too.
Daniel laughed and came closer to her. “Later, when I have my fun with Tiernan, you can join in on the fun. How about that?”
Lilliana laughed, that same laugh she had shared with me just yesterday before I dropped her off at her house.
“And my reward?” she asked, her voice sultry.
“Oh, you’ll definitely get your reward. Wouldn’t have made it past the fucking gates without your codes.”
I looked down at my lap, unable to meet my brothers’ eyes.
Fuck me.
Lilliana had the codes for the house because I gave them to her.
And she teamed up with Hayes for the fucking slaughter of our empire.
I had done this.
We were exiled from the city because I was thinking with my fucking dick—no fuck that, I was thinking with my heart. I thought I was in love. Fuck, maybe I was. I didn’t know anymore. Lilliana had been like a fucking dream. She was three years older than me. At just eighteen, she was beautiful in an unattainable sort of way, and I was completely captivated. I thought she could be the one good thing in my life.
I thought wrong.
Never again. I would never let another woman get to me.
I let go of Silas’ hand, afraid I might hurt him with the rage that was burning in my veins.
This was all my fucking fault.
Lilliana’s laughter disappeared as she walked out of the mansion with Hayes, the sound haunting me, echoing in my mind, with no fucking way to erase it.