Chapter 5
EILISH
I wasn’t a “sneak out at night” kind of teenager. I mean, it’s not like I was a total square, or didn’t have any friends. But sneaking out of the house to go hang out with friends was more Neve’s thing, not mine.
So it’s Neve I’m channeling when I come home after hiding in one of the academic buildings on campus for the rest of the afternoon.
After my meeting with the devil himself. The one where he smiled while telling me he basically owns me now. I shiver at the thought. But I still manage a smile at Barry and Jon—the two guards on front entrance duty tonight at the Kildare family home—before I unlock the door and quietly slip inside.
These days, the huge, rambling Upper East Side brownstone I grew up in is a bit quiet. It’s just Castle and me left now, and while he’d never openly admit it, I know even he’s just here because I’m still here.
Castle isn’t officially my or Neve’s bodyguard anymore. He’s basically Cillian’s number two for the whole organization. But, try telling him that he doesn’t have to look after me anymore.
Neve lives with Ares now, obviously. And I guess even overly protective Castle has conceded that she’s more than safe over there, with an army of Drakos guards watching over her, not to mention Ares himself.
But me? I have a feeling I could move into Fort flipping Knox and Castle would be setting up a sleeping bag outside my room “just to be sure”.
It’s a good thing I love him like the big brother Neve and I never had.
So, yeah, Neve’s gone. And Cillian’s moved into his place with Una in Brooklyn full time. Which leaves just Castle and me here. And the reason I’m using Neve-inspired sneak tactics tonight is that Castle is the last person I want to face right now.
The man is a freaking bloodhound when it comes to picking up on things that might be bothering or worrying you. There’s no way I could be in a room with him right now without him knowing in a nanosecond that something’s amiss.
Well, “amiss” is putting it lightly.
“Defcon one” would be more apt.
Gavan knows .
A cold, cruel shiver curls its way up my spine as I tiptoe through the front entryway and toward the grand staircase that leads up to the sanctuary of my room. My memory flashes to the growled voice in my ear, to the raw, dark power emanating off his sculpted, imposing body.
To the baggie he dangled in front of my face containing a single spent bullet casing.
He fucking KNOWS .
He knows what I did that night. Which means he saw me. Fuck me, he might have even filmed—
I cringe as my weight sinks onto the foot I’ve just placed on the first step of the staircase, causing the old wood to whine like a screaming baby.
“Eilish?”
Shitshitshit .
I swallow back the groan, pulling a smile out of my ass just as Neve pokes her head around the corner from the direction of the kitchen. She beams when she sees me.
“Hey hey! I was wondering when you’d be home from class.”
“Surprise?” I shrug with an awkward smile.
My sister smirks. “Were you just trying to sneak upstairs?”
“Not at all.”
She snorts. “Yeah, sure. For future reference, steps one, six, eleven, and eighteen—but just the right side—squawk like motherfuckers. Not that you were trying to go unnoticed, but if you were—”
“I wasn’t!”
She rolls her eyes with a grin and nods her chin at the kitchen. “Well, since you’re not avoiding humans, come have a drink.”
Crap. I can’t say no without raising serious suspicion flags with her. So I shrug and start to follow her back, steeling myself as I hear the sound of Ares and Castle laughing it up about something in the kitchen.
“I didn’t know you guys were coming over.”
“Yeah, it was just a spur of the moment thing…” She frowns, pausing in the hallway before turning to me. “Okay, that’s a lie. I wanted to talk to you.”
Dread pools in my stomach.
“ About ?” I wheeze.
She sighs. “I…might have heard about the McKinnley thing.”
My insides relax. “Oh, that.”
“Yeah, that.” She makes a face. “You know it’s seriously just an idea, right? Like, there’s no real reason for Cillian to push for that, and he’s not—”
“It would be a smart play, linking the family with a potential future President.”
Neve’s gingery-auburn brows knit above her eyes that are as green as mine and Cillian’s.
“Okay, business-nerd, turn off the strategy brain for once. I know you don’t want to marry Brooks.”
I shrug.
Neve doesn’t know about what happened to me in my senior year of high school.
Nobody does.
The weird thing is, of all people I could talk to about it, Neve would be the most understanding.
She went through something similar, when two assholes she went to school with took a bunch of gross pictures of her when she was blacked out at a party—like, up her skirt and stuff. Really horrible, disgusting shit.
But I can’t talk to her about it. Partly, that’s because that’s who I am. I internalize everything, and file it all away in color coded folders.
But the other thing is, I literally cannot talk about it to anyone . Because if he finds out…
“Hey, you okay?”
I blink, focusing again on Neve. “Oh, yeah, fine. Sorry, weird day.”
She frowns. “Just say no. To the Brooks thing, I mean. He was a douchebag, Eilish. I never understood why you dated him.”
Because I was young, inexperienced, and desperate for the cool kids to like me.
“I’ll probably say no,” I shrug. “It’s just smart to at least consider the potential—”
“Okay, okay, I get it, Ms. Analytical. C’mon. Wine beckons.”
Neve and Ares don’t end up staying long. After they leave, Castle convinces me to hang out in the upstairs living room with him, where we watch Say Anything on the huge projector screen for the eleven millionth time.
“You know this is just how I’m guaranteeing your loyalty for life, right, big guy?”
Castle glances over at me from the couch he’s sprawled across. His hand absently strokes the furry black and white ball curled up on his chest—Una’s cat Bones, who’s staying here while she and Cillian are in Ireland.
Castle arches a brow. “Huh?”
“If you ever try and cross me, I mean. You know that I know that you fucking love cheesy 80’s teen comedies.”
He snorts. “ Say Anything is a classic. There’s nothing embarrassing about that.”
“Yeah? There’s a lot embarrassing about the number of times you’ve watched Dirty Dancing .”
“Whatever. Jennifer Grey was, and is, a babe. And Swayze was a god in that movie.”
“ Nobody puts Castle in the corner, ” I grunt in a truly terrible Patrick Swayze impression.
Castle rolls his eyes and tosses a throw pillow at me as I crack up.
“Hey, before you try and sneak upstairs again…”
I swallow. “I wasn’t trying to sn—”
“You do realize it’s impossible to tiptoe past an Army Ranger, right?”
I make a face. “I just wasn’t feeling social.”
The smile fades from his face. “The Brooks thing, huh?”
I look back to the credits of Say Anything scrolling across the screen, my teeth clenching a little tighter as I nod.
“It’s a no,” Castle grunts. “I mean, it’s an easy no. Like, fuck that little douchebag. I didn’t like him when you guys went out, and I can’t imagine he’s done anything but become an even more insufferable piece of shit since then.”
For a second, I try to imagine how Castle would react if he knew the depths of my hatred for Brooks, and the reasons for it.
Yikes .
I shrug, the “good, loyal Eilish” mask slipping easily back into place, like a bad habit I can’t break.
“I don’t know. It could be hugely beneficial to us. To the family, I mean.”
When he doesn’t say anything, I glance over to see a dark look etched across Castle’s face.
“What is it?”
He sighs. “I just…” he shakes his head. “I just feel like I’m letting you down.
Like I’ve already let you down. You and Neve both.
I mean I was supposed to protect you guys.
And first she goes off and gets herself arrange-married to our enemy, and now you’re seriously considering marrying some snotty little douchebag for the political clout it would give our family. ”
I grin. “I thought you liked Ares now.”
“Oh, I do. Obviously.”
“Is it the fact that he saved Neve’s life, or that he hooks you up with Dimitra Drakos’ baklava on a weekly basis? Be honest.”
Castle snorts and rolls his eyes before frowning. “Seriously, this Brooks situation—”
“You’re not my protector anymore, Castle,” I say quietly.
He glances back to me. “I’ll always be your protector, Blondie.”
I grin.
“Hey, we don’t have to talk about it if you don’t want to. But…” he frowns. “Why did you and Brooks split up? I mean, don’t get me wrong, I hated the little shit. But you two seemed pretty serious for a month or—”
“It just didn’t work out,” I say quickly. I don’t know if Castle buys it or not, but he lets it go with a nod.
“All right,” I yawn as I stand. “I’m going up to bed. Night, love ya.”
“Love ya too, kid.”
As much as I wanted to disappear and avoid people when I first got home, it was a nice reprieve from my thoughts to hang with Neve and Ares, and then have movie time with Castle.
But the minute I’m upstairs in my room, alone, the darkness and the dread swirls back in from every side. Like it’s been just lurking there, waiting to consume me again.
He knows what I did .
I shudder as I try to shower away the day. Dread fills my heart as I slip into pajamas and crawl into bed.
Gavan knows .
He knows that a year and a half ago, Neve’s and my father, Declan, was going to a sit-down with Vasilis Drakos, Ares’ uncle. Things were tense between the Kildare and Drakos families, and even though they were meeting to discuss a possible truce, I knew my father would still bring his gun.
His gun that I loaded with blanks an hour before he went to that meeting.
When I think back on it, it’s almost surreal how calm I was.
I mean, yes, I was livid, and in so much pain after I’d discovered the truth about our mother, and what that bastard did to her.
But when I was in his study—in this very house, actually—and silently loading his gun with bullets that wouldn’t protect him if things went south, I was totally calm.
I was praying for things to go south, to be honest.
I didn’t learn until later that neither Vasilis Drakos nor my father started the shooting that got them both killed that night. But from the spent rounds I picked up after the carnage was over, I knew my prayers had been answered.
My dad did try to defend himself. The blanks I loaded his gun with made sure he couldn’t.
I might not have pulled the trigger myself, or fired the bullets that ended his life. But I did kill my own father that night.
I’m a murderer.
And now, the devil himself knows it.
In the darkness of my room, my eyes squeeze shut miserably.
We finally have peace. After all the drama between our family and the Drakoses.
After all the ghosts of the past. After all the enemies that have tried to hurt us time and time again, it feels like we’ve finally hit a place where there’s not a threat of violence always lurking around the next corner.
And now I’ve gone and welcomed that violence back into our lives by crossing Gavan.
I swallow as I replay our meeting: the vicious, lethal and yet at the same time sinfully smoldering look in his gray eyes. The malevolence and raw sexuality oozing from his very pores.
A shiver ripples through my core.
Whatever he wants, I can do it. I can face Gavan Tsarenko.
I won’t let my family down.