Chapter 28
Annabelle
The room is silent except for the hum of the air conditioning. I lie in the light of the afternoon and wait for Aidan and Callan. Ethan is a ghost in the corner. He is my guard, my jailer and my king.
I thought the end of the mystery would bring peace.
It brought blood. It brought the truth about what really happened, and the terrifying reality that I am never going back to being the librarian who hid from the world.
That woman died with her mother. This woman has names written on her skin in black ink.
I shift under the sheets and feel the cold air.
“Sleep, Tinks,” Ethan says quietly.
“I can’t. I’m worried about Aidan and Callan.”
“They’ll be back soon.”
I close my eyes, but the darkness behind my lids is just a screen for the replay of the afternoon.
Bennett falling. The sound of that single, clinical shot.
The smell of dust and rot inside that farmhouse.
It doesn’t matter how many times Ethan tells me it’s over; the static in my brain won’t settle.
“They’re fine,” Ethan says. “They’ll be back soon.”
“I know.”
I roll onto my other side, facing him.
“Ethan?”
“Yeah.”
“What if there are more? What if Briggs wasn’t the only one at the top?”
He doesn’t answer immediately. I hear him exhale, a slow, heavy sound that tells me he’s already considered the possibility.
“That is what Finn will now find out. They sat around and were happy to let Aidan and Callan make the first move. Now it’s cracked wide open, and there is no more avoiding it. ”
“I don’t want more people to die.”
Ethan is out of the chair before I can even draw a breath, his gun in his hand as he moves toward the hallway, having heard something I didn’t.
“Stay here,” he orders.
I don’t. I push out of the bed as I follow him to the door. I know it’s them. I need to see them, need to know they’re whole.
Aidan and Callan step off the lift into the living room. They look wrecked. Aidan is pale, his hand pressed against his side where the blood has seeped through his shirt. Callan looks untouched, but his eyes are flat, devoid of anything but the cold residue of what they just did.
“It’s over. For us, at least,” Aidan says and sniffs the air. “Steak?”
Ethan gestures to the kitchen, but Aidan is already there, stabbing Ethan’s cold steak with the fork and biting off a mouthful like he’s starving.
“Heathen,” Ethan mutters as Callan comes to me.
He reaches for me, his fingers cold against my jaw as he tilts my head back. He doesn’t say anything, just searches my face, checking for cracks I haven’t even found yet.
“You’re safe,” he murmurs, his voice a low vibration that settles under my skin.
“Are you?” I ask, my voice sounding small in the vastness of the room.
He doesn’t answer. He lets his hand drop into mine and grips it tightly, moving toward the sofa. Aidan finishes the steak in three aggressive bites and joins us, his face tight with pain. Ethan grabs the first-aid kit and chucks it at Aidan.
The three of them together are a force that doesn’t belong in a world of libraries and quiet streets. They are the violence that kept the darkness from swallowing me whole.
Callan looks at the ceiling. “Everything he built is burning.”
“Good,” I say, and mean it. I lean my head against his shoulder. “What now?”
Ethan sits on the edge of the coffee table. His blue eyes never leave me. “Now we live,” he says.
It sounds like a threat. It feels like a promise. My fingers lace with Callan’s. He doesn’t pull away.
Aidan grunts as he peels back the bloody bandage. The wound looks angry. It is a jagged red line across his muscular ribs. I don’t look away. I can’t. This is the price of my safety.
“We’ll need to clean this,” I say. My voice is steadier than my heart.
Aidan looks up. A sharp grin cuts through his exhaustion. “You going to do it, little bell?”
Ethan stands and opens the kit. He hands me the antiseptic. “She is.”
I take the bottle and move to the floor between Aidan’s legs. Pouring some onto a gauze, I press it to his side. He doesn’t flinch. He watches me work. They all watch me. I am the centre of their world. It is a heavy place to be.
“I’m not going anywhere,” I whisper.
Callan’s hand finds the nape of my neck. “You couldn’t if you tried,” he says. “We won’t let you.”
“Good thing Annabelle has decided that she needs us,” Ethan says. “We are the ones who will look after her, clean her, feed her, dress her.”
Aidan’s hand reaches out to cup the back of my head, his fingers tangling in my hair tightly. “Back to basics, little bell.”
I swallow and nod slowly. “Yes. But I have an idea.”
“What is it?” Ethan asks.
I hesitate for a moment, wondering if they will laugh at me.
“Say it, Tinks,” Ethan says. “What’s on your mind?”
“Vigilantes,” I say quickly. “Help the ones who have been let down by the law. Really, this time. Not focused on one case, but all of them. Maeve, too, maybe…” I chew my lip, knowing how ridiculous it sounds now that I’ve said it out loud. “Never mind,” I mumble. “It’s stupid.”
Ethan doesn’t laugh. He remains perfectly still, his blue eyes narrowing as he weighs the weight of my words. Aidan’s grip on my hair doesn’t loosen; instead, it becomes a grounding pressure, a tether to the reality of what they are capable of.
“It’s not stupid,” Callan says. His voice is a low rasp near my ear. “It’s honest.”
Aidan lets out a rough, dark chuckle that vibrates through my fingers. “A librarian and three monsters playing at justice? That’s a bloody messy way to live, Annabelle.” He tilts my face up. “But it suits us.”
“It gives the violence a direction,” Ethan adds. He moves closer, his presence filling the space between us until there is nothing left but the four of us. “If that’s what you want, that’s what we do. We’ll hunt every prick who thinks they can hide behind a badge or a bank account.”
I look at the three of them, these men who have claimed me, marked me, and burnt a path through the dark to find me. The grief for my mother hasn’t vanished, but it has transformed into something I can live with.
“I want them to pay,” I say. My voice doesn’t shake. “Like Briggs did.”
The corner of Ethan’s mouth pulls up. “Then that’s the new mission. We take care of you, and we take care of the rest of the world’s rot.”
Aidan’s grin turns savage. “I’m going to need more ammo.”
Callan pulls me back against his chest, his arms wrapping around me like iron bands. I lean into him, closing my eyes as the silence of the penthouse settles into something new. It isn’t peace. It’s a beginning.
“But that is tomorrow’s problem,” Ethan says as he takes over cleaning Aidan’s stitches. He is more brutal than I was, and Aidan hisses. “Right now, you go to bed, unless you want or need anything else?”
I lick my lips, and my gaze fixes on Callan. “Callan and I need to talk. Alone.”
Ethan and Aidan don’t argue. They don’t even look surprised.
Ethan just gives a sharp, single nod and helps Aidan up, steering him toward the other side of the penthouse.
Callan stays where he is, his gaze fixed on mine.
His blue eyes are wide, pupils blown so large they swallow the irises.
He hates being touched, yet he lets me touch him.
I reach out and cup his face. He closes his eyes, stiffening only slightly.
“Callan,” I whisper.
“You don’t have to say it.” His voice is wrecked, a jagged sound that cuts through the quiet as his eyes open.
“I do. I saw you today. I saw the way you looked at me when the world was falling apart. You aren’t a monster to me. You’re the one who held my hand when I couldn’t find my own breath.”
He closes his eyes, his jaw setting so hard I hear the bone creak. “I’m not like them, Annabelle. I don’t know how to be less brusque.”
“Then don’t be. Just be mine.”
His hands slide up from my waist, fingers tangling in my hair as he pulls me closer. He doesn’t kiss me. He just rests his forehead against mine, his breath hitching. The silence is absolute, a vacuum where the rest of the world stops existing.
“Always,” he rasps. “I’ve been yours since the second I saw you. It just took me longer than Ethan and Aidan to admit it.”
I believe him. His grip turns crushing, possessive and desperate.
“Will you ever…” I swallow and force myself to continue. “Will you ever feel like you might not want to touch me?”
He frowns. “That’s an odd question.”
“I’d rather know now if you think that might happen,” I say in a rush, feeling idiotic.
“I don’t know why you hate people touching you, and I’d like to understand so I can be sure not to do those things that freak you out, but if you ever decided you couldn’t bear to touch me again, I’d rather know now that it’s a possibility… I’m rambling and not making sense…”
Callan’s fingers tighten in my hair, his grip borderline painful, but it’s the only thing keeping me upright. He doesn’t pull away or recoil. He simply stares at me with a look so intense it feels like he’s trying to memorise my soul.
“You’re making perfect sense, and I won’t,” he says, his voice a low, jagged rasp.
“It’s not you. It’s never been you.” He lets out a breath.
“The world is loud, Annabelle. People are messy. They take, and they take until there’s nothing left.
I built walls so thick I forgot how to climb over them.
” He slides his palm down to my throat, his thumb resting over my pulse.
“But you’re the only person who doesn’t feel like an intrusion.
You feel like the only quiet place I’ve ever found. ”
I lean into his touch, my heart doing a slow, heavy roll. “So I don’t freak you out?”
“You ruin me,” he corrects, his eyes dark and honest. “Every time you touch me, it’s a fucking miracle I don’t collapse. I’m not going to stop wanting this. I’m not going to wake up one day and find you repulsive. That’s not how this works for me.”
“How does it work?”
“I’m demi-sexual, Annabelle. I don’t feel shit for anyone else.
It’s just you. It’ll only ever be you.” He pulls me flush against his chest, his heart hammering a frantic rhythm against mine.
“I’ll kill anyone who tries to take this.
I’ll burn the fucking world down if it means I get to keep you. Today was just the start.”
I wrap my arms around his neck, pulling him down until our lips are a hair’s breadth apart. “Then don’t let me go.”
“Never,” he vows, and finally, he crashes his mouth onto mine.
I crawl onto his lap.
He hitches my thighs higher, settling me firmly against his hardening cock.
His hands aren’t gentle; they’re an anchor.
Every point of contact burns. I feel the tension in his legs, the rigid line of his chest pressing into my breasts.
He doesn’t move like Ethan or Aidan. There’s a desperation in the way he claims my mouth, as if he’s trying to draw the very life from me to fill the dark spaces in his own soul.
“You’re it for me,” he murmurs against my lips. His teeth graze my bottom lip, a sharp reminder of the marks he left earlier. “I don’t want anyone else’s touch. I don’t want anyone else’s noise. It’s just you, Annabelle. Always.”
I tug at his hair, pulling him back in. The adrenaline from the farmhouse still hums in my veins, mixing with the heat he pours into me. I don’t feel like the broken woman from the library. I feel like something valuable, something guarded by a man who’d slit a throat to keep me safe.
His palms slide under the hem of my pyjama top, his skin scorching. I shiver, my back arching as he finds the ink he put there. He traces his own name over my heart with a reverent, violent touch.
“Mine,” he mutters.
“Yours,” I promise. I don’t care about the blood or the fire anymore. I only care about the weight of him against me. He drops his fingers onto my waist, holding me with a possessive strength that tells me he’s never letting go.
I fumble with the zip on his jeans, but he helps me with steady hands. He moves my pyjama shorts to the side, leaving me open and ready for him.
I gasp as his fingers find my clit, testing the heat he’s built in me.
He doesn’t wait. He lifts me slightly and settles my pussy over the head of his cock, his eyes never leaving mine.
I sink down, the stretch of him filling the raw, sensitive ache left behind from yesterday.
Callan lets out a wrecked sound, his forehead dropping back to mine as I take every inch of him.
“Fuck,” he grits out. “Annabelle.”
He doesn’t move at first. He just holds me there, his hands crushing my hips to keep me pinned to his lap. He’s shaking—that deep, internal tremor of a man who has spent a lifetime holding himself back and has finally reached the end of his rope. I grind down on him harder, faster.
He thrusts up to meet me. It’s a desperate, soul-deep claim. I’m the only one he sees. The only one he wants. I give him everything, my pussy clenching around him as we find the rhythm that belongs only to us.
Callan’s hands are heavy on my hips. Every thrust pushes him deeper into me.
He doesn’t look away. His blue eyes are dark, fixed on mine with a focus that makes my skin burn.
I’m coming apart. The pressure builds, tight and hot.
My pussy pulses around him, taking the weight of his need.
He groans, a sound that starts deep in his chest and breaks in the air between us.
“Don’t look away,” he grits out. “Stay right here with me.”
I can’t look away. I’m anchored. My back arches.
My fingers dig into the fabric of his shirt as the first wave of my orgasm hits.
It is violent. It is sudden. I scream his name, the sound muffled by his mouth as he swallows my voice.
My pussy milks him with frantic, starving pulses, drawing every bit of his control out of him.
Callan goes rigid. His fingers bruise my waist as he thrusts upward one last, brutal time, burying himself to the hilt as he comes.
He let out a guttural sound, his head falling into the crook of my neck as he shakes with the force of his release.
He doesn’t pull back. He holds me to him like I’m the only thing keeping him from drifting into the dark.
I rest my head on his shoulder, my breath coming in jagged hitches. The room is still, the violence of the day finally settling into the heavy heat between us.
“I’ve got you,” he whispers, his voice barely a thread.
I close my eyes and let the weight of him anchor me. We aren’t the people we were yesterday. We are something new, something forged in fire and ink. And for the first time in four years, the silence doesn’t feel like a grave. It feels like home. “I’ve got you, too.”