25. Killian
25
KILLIAN
I burst through the doors of the police station, Maverick and Silas following behind us.
I could hear Mila’s voice carrying out through the hall, and I ran faster, trying to get to her as quickly as possible.
If even a hair on her head was missing, I would fucking burn this police station down to the ground.
When I finally found her, the scene I saw was not what I was expecting. Mila was red in the face, arguing with a police officer twice her size, that fire that I loved about her so much clearly present in her eyes. Conor was between the officer and Mila, doing a good job of holding the officer away from her. Though, at this point, I wasn’t sure if he was trying to keep the officer away from Mila or the other way around.
Rachel was standing off in the corner, looking as angry as Mila but not as loud.
“Ma’am, I’m going to ask you to calm down, or I’ll lock you up for contempt.”
“You touch her, motherfucker, and that’ll be the last thing you’ll regret doing,” Conor said, placing his hands out but not touching the man directly.
The young officer glared at Conor. “Was that a threat?”
Conor smiled. “No. It was a promise.”
“Why you?—”
“Enough.”
Everyone turned around when Maverick spoke up. My brother’s always had that way about him that commanded the entire room without raising his voice.
Mila saw us, and her shoulders sagged in relief. She ran up to me. I wrapped my arms tightly around her, feeling my barely controlled rage licking at my insides, begging to be let out when I felt her shaking in my arms.
She pulled back, looking at me, then at Maverick and Silas before turning her attention back to me once more. “They have him.”
I frowned. “Who, baby?”
I hadn’t bothered to ask for the details when Conor called. All he said was that he and Mila were at the police station, and that was enough to have me running to get to her.
“Liam. They have him locked up. You have to get him out. He didn’t do anything wrong.”
“Didn’t do anything wrong?” the young police officer asked. He took a step back when I glared at him. He continued, though with not as much bluster, “He assaulted an FBI agent.”
My arms tightened around her. I had a fucking idea of who that agent was.
“He was defending me,” Mila spat.
“Defending you? Last I checked, Agent Jones didn’t even touch you.”
Silas moved in front of Mila, leaving her in between us. His shoulders heaved. If Maverick didn’t control him, Silas might punch out the young shithead… before I got to.
“And where is Agent Jones?” Silas asked quietly.
The son of a bitch shifted on his feet. A shuffling sound came from my left, and we all turned to see the fucker Jones moving into the room. He looked worse for wear, but he was smiling. I didn’t fucking like his smile one bit.
“Gentlemen,” he greeted through one fat lip.
“Is it true you have one of my men locked up?” Maverick said, intervening, obviously afraid things would get out of control if he let either Silas or me talk.
“Just a misunderstanding. He’s in the process of being released as we speak.”
“Misunderstanding,” Maverick repeated mildly.
Jones nodded. “Misunderstanding.”
“But sir?—”
The young officer just didn’t know when to shut up. Didn’t he know drawing our attention to him was just as bad as a death sentence? As if to echo my thoughts, Silas cracked his knuckles, staring the fucker down. He blanched.
Jones brought my attention back to him when he said, “Oh, don’t look so disappointed, Officer Scott. Do you really think any man under the Tiernan Organization would blab from mere pressure from the police?”
“Organization, Jones?” I asked. “You make it sound so… criminal . We’re simply businessmen who happen to have some luck.”
He laughed. “My mistake, then. Merely businessmen who made time out of their busy schedule to come down to the police station at the news of a man working under them locked up.”
He knew we didn’t come here for Liam. He might be a loyal man to the organization, but he was more than capable of taking care of himself. And he knew our lawyers were at his disposal.
The fucker's eyes moved to Mila. I resisted the urge to pull out my knife.
I was going to enjoy killing this fucker. And I’d make it slow, too.
Mila was now his target. I could only guess why he decided on that now. His informant, the former waiter at our restaurant Elysium , had just turned up dead a couple of days before. The fucker Jones thought he had done such a good job protecting his informant from me. What would he think if he knew just how easy it had been for me to find the little rat hidden in a cabin up north of Chicago?
Jones was now out for revenge, and I was sure he was going to do whatever it took to find out as much about Mila as possible. It wouldn’t be long before he realized Daniel Hayes was missing—if he didn’t know about that already.
Unlucky for him, there was no body for him to find. Daniel was merely ashes, long scattered in the Chicago River.
“We’re leaving,” Maverick said. I didn’t need to be told twice. I lifted Mila up in my arms and walked out of there.
“I can walk, you know,” she muttered.
“I know.”
“Are you just going to give me curt answers?”
I grunted at her.
“I’ll take that as a yes,” she said under her breath. I squeezed her to me. I couldn’t fucking believe we had let this happen. Mila shouldn’t even have met Jones. And now she was his next target in his unfeasible ambition to take us down.
He was no longer fucking harmless.
He was a dead man walking from this point onward.
I paced back and forth in a room that suddenly felt small. I wanted to destroy something, kill someone, or at least, hell, pound some poor fuckers in the cage just to get all of this pent-up energy out of my system.
“Is he going to be okay?” Mila asked. I didn’t need to see her to know she was looking at me.
Mila had just recounted all that happened while she was out with Rachel. The fucker had approached her. He fucking approached her when she had no skin in the game.
“Sure he is,” Silas answered casually. I scowled at the fucker. My little brother didn’t look worried. It had been years since I’d last kicked his ass, but I wouldn’t mind doing it again. The fucker winked.
“How are you so fucking unconcerned about this?”
His face turned serious. “There is a difference between being unconcerned about this and not needing to worry our little firecracker . Don’t you agree?”
“Silas is right,” Maverick chimed in.
I clenched and unclenched my fists. They weren’t getting it. He approached her.
“You.” I pointed my finger at Mila, who was currently sitting on the bed between Maverick’s legs.
“What about me?” she asked, pouting a little.
If she thought acting cute was going to calm me down, she’d need to think again.
“You are never leaving our sight ever again.”
She scowled at me. I was impressed. She almost looked mean enough. “That is absolutely ridiculous. I can’t always be in your sight.”
I nodded, agreeing. “No, not always in my sight. But in one of our sights at all times.”
She crossed her arms over her chest. “Killian.”
I took in a deep breath.
“What is it? What’s got you so worried?” Maverick asked me.
I didn’t answer him. I didn’t fucking know why, but there was this heavy weight in my heart since that fucking call from Conor, and it hadn’t left me, even when we left the police station.
“You know this isn’t like how it was with Lilliana,” Silas said quietly.
I tensed as Mila frowned at me. “Who?”
Fucking hell, but I never wanted her to know about that bitch. If I could, I would have made it so that Mila would never hear that name. “I fucking know that,” I said.
“Do you?” Silas asked, moving so that he was blocking my view of Mila.
“I’m not going to fucking hurt her, so stop acting like it,” I said.
Silas’ face was set in harsh, serious lines. “Then get yourself under control. Do what you have to do to make it so because you’re letting the past fuck with your present and future again, and I’m not okay with that.”
I didn’t say anything. For once, my laid-back brother didn’t look or sound so laid-back anymore. He was telling me to kill Lilliana. Something I should have done years before.
A fucking loose end, indeed. And I had been so adamant about taking Mila out from the beginning because that was what she was for us. She still was. She could blab to Agent Jones and tell him we killed her father in revenge. That we had annihilated nearly the entire MC club and taken over the narcotics trade.
Hell, she could even tell the fucker that we were keeping her against her will.
That was all true.
But I trusted her.
And I realized, as I thought about it, how true that was. I trusted her, and I was letting my past mistakes affect my future with her.
I looked away from my brother’s concerned gaze. He was still blocking my view of her and, essentially, my view of Maverick. I didn’t need to look at my big brother to know his face was set in an inscrutable expression or to know that beneath all that indifference was worry for me.
“I have to go,” I said softly.
Silas relaxed, his face set in understanding. He nodded and moved out of my way.
I didn’t dare look back at Mila. I knew one look at her, and I wouldn’t be able to leave the room.
I stood in the dark in a sketchy neighborhood just near the border of Illinois and south Indiana.
It was past one o’clock in the morning.
She would just be getting home now after a night of dancing at the strip club.
Was it karma that helping Daniel Hayes destroy my family and take over our empire didn’t give her the result she wanted? That she had been nothing more than easy pussy and someone Hayes could manipulate to get what he wanted, and that he had discarded her as soon as her usefulness ran out?
He didn’t kill her. Was it a blessing that she ended up in the life she had now? Or would it have been mercy had he killed her?
I didn’t know, and for the first time, I didn’t care to know.
I had always known where Lilliana was. I never told my brothers, though I wouldn’t be surprised if they knew as well. They left her alone because I asked them to.
I let her live for so long, perhaps as a way to punish myself for my own faults in all that happened. To know how much I fucking hated loose ends, but that I had let this one go.
I straightened when I caught sight of her. She looked worse for wear. Her bleach-blonde hair was cut into short, uneven layers. Her makeup was dark and heavy, and the clothes she wore barely covered anything.
She had this dead look in her eyes that most people get after life had beaten them down multiple times, and they couldn’t find the courage to get back up anymore.
I didn’t know what I had expected to feel seeing her again after so many years had passed, but indifference wasn’t one of them.
But I was feeling that now.
I silently followed her as she entered the shabby apartment building. A light flickered overhead. We both ignored it as she walked to the room at the end of the hall, so unaware of her surroundings.
It wasn’t until I heard the lock unlatch on her door that I stepped in closer to her. I pushed her inside the dark apartment, ignoring her screams. I shut and locked the door behind me, reaching to the side and turning on the light.
She was on the floor, staring up at me with fear in her eyes. “Please. I don’t have any money.”
“I don’t want your money,” I answered gruffly.
She closed her eyes. “Then what d-do you want?”
“I want you to look at me.”
I watched as she slowly opened her eyes and looked at me. What had once been vibrant green eyes were now dull from drug and alcohol abuse and whatever else she might be taking. She looked different, but not. She still had the face that, for so long, had fucking haunted my thoughts, reminding me of all my mistakes.
I waited for recognition to take hold.
It never came.
She looked at me like she would a stranger. Had I had such little impact on her life that she had forgotten all about the shit she’d put my brothers and me through? It was with her help that Daniel Hayes had found a weakness in our family home and attacked.
And she’d done it all for what?
To be the fucker’s wife? Never mind that the fucker had been married to Mila’s mom at the time.
For money? For power? It didn’t fucking matter because the end result was still the same. My brothers and I were still forced to leave our family home.
“W-what are you going to do?” she asked. I looked away from her and took in her small, dingy apartment. There was trash everywhere I looked. Her kitchen sink was filled to the brim with dirty dishes, and there were opened containers of takeout food that looked past their expiration dates.
There was an unidentifiable smell coming from somewhere, and as far as I knew, she was alone. I had kept tabs on her periodically and knew she had boyfriends on and off in her life but no kids. Thank fuck for that.
She was fucking miserable.
“Nothing,” I finally responded.
I made a move to turn back around and leave when I felt her hand wrap around my leg. I removed her hand with my own and backed off.
She looked up with bloodshot eyes. “Please.”
I didn’t say anything. Was she begging me to kill her?
“Not worth it,” I said, and though my words were soft, she still flinched, as if they had the power to lash right through her.
I didn’t look at her when I walked out the door. This would be the last time I ever kept tabs on her. Wherever she decided to take her life next, I wouldn’t know about it. And if possible, this would be the last time I’d ever think about her. I refused to let what happened in my past with this woman affect my future with Mila.
My brothers had long forgiven me for all my past mistakes, for my role in our family home getting attacked. It was time I forgave myself as well.