CHAPTER THIRTY-EIGHT
Tierney
For the next four days, all I did was drift in and out of consciousness.
They pumped painkillers into me at a remarkable speed.
Apparently, breaking your skull was no joke.
Lila might have been a little gentle when relaying what happened to me.
Because even though the bullet didn’t reach the brain, it left one heck of a dent in the back of my head and created some balance and vertigo issues I was going to have to work on.
The doctors who treated me spoke directly to either Tiernan or Lila. I had zero agency. For the first time in my life, I didn’t fight my own war, and even though I trusted Tiernan and Lila, I didn’t like being in this position at all.
Two Irish soldiers stood on guard in front of my room at all times.
When I asked Tiernan about Vello, he vaguely assured me the don wouldn’t be a problem anymore, but neither he nor Lila told me exactly what convinced him to drop his grudge. It worried me. Vello wasn’t the kind of man to simply give up a vendetta and move on to other ventures.
“All you need to know is that you’re safe,” my brother assured me. “I should’ve never let that eejit Achilles run after you. Should’ve put a bullet in his head when I had the chance.”
I took this as confirmation he was the one who pulled the trigger.
The gaps in my memory were consistently narrowing as more information trickled into my conscience.
Achilles had sent me off with maps, a fake passport, and a strategy for Prague.
I followed his meticulous plan, believing he’d tried to help me. It was the first time I’d put my trust in someone else, and it backfired spectacularly.
He cornered me in the apartment he’d instructed me to rent in Prague and killed me.
“Where is he now?” I asked.
“Achilles?” Tiernan twisted his wrist to glance at his watch. “Here in New York.”
I was a little surprised Tiernan had let him live after what he’d done to me. Then again, Achilles was his brother-in-law. Still…It wasn’t like Tiernan to forgive about something so egregious. He wasn’t exactly the merciful type.
“I see.” I was too exhausted to dig into the subject, so I changed it altogether. “And Tyrone?” I asked. “Why hasn’t he visited me yet?”
My father was usually first in line to put on the saint act.
I didn’t buy his charade but respected the hustle.
Almost everyone believed he was a levelheaded, good-intentioned man.
Only I knew he didn’t give half a shit about any of his children.
Case in point—when Fintan disappeared out of the blue, he didn’t so much as shed a tear.
Tyrone cared about nothing and no one but his own reputation and image.
That he hadn’t bothered visiting me once while I was in the hospital was puzzling to say the least.
“Tyrone…” Tiernan trailed off. “He’s…away.”
“Away where?” My eyes narrowed. “You make it sound like he’s an elderly hamster Mommy and Daddy sent to the farm.”
“Close enough. He’s chained in the Ferrantes’ basement.”
At first, I just blinked, processing the information. I’d wager Tiernan was joking, but I happened to know my brother did not possess a sense of humor or any trait that could be interpreted as such.
“What?”
“He’s in the basement of torture,” Tiernan clipped out, jaw twitching in irritation. “And will remain so for the foreseeable future.”
That made me sit upright. And that made me pass out from pain. It wasn’t a figure of speech. I did, in fact, faint right onto the pillow.
Only to wake up a few hours later to the most terrifying surprise of my life.
My eyes fluttered open to a quiet, ominous presence in the room.
It wasn’t one of the doctors or nurses. They always moved noisily and carelessly, bumping into stuff, causing a ruckus to see if I’d wake up.
I was still fuming at my body for fainting from just sitting upright. Apparently, I had some balance issues to deal with. Physical therapy was going to be a real challenge. I was bad at working out and even worse at following instructions.
Lila already assured me they had a room ready for me at their house.
She’d been interviewing physical therapists around the area and ordered special equipment for occupational therapy in her backyard.
I absolutely loathed the idea of being unloading onto them.
Of being the second baby, next to Nero. I hadn’t needed anyone since my days as an orphan in Siberia.
But… I didn’t have much choice, either.
The worst part was that I didn’t care—not about where I was going and not about getting better. Not much about anything, really, since I’d come to.
From the moment I first woke up from the coma, something fundamental had changed.
I woke up remembering.
Everything.
All the shit in Siberia that I’d buried in the back of my head so my life could resemble something normal had bubbled right up to the surface like an overflowing sewer.
The rapes.
The abuse.
The hunger.
The pain.
The despair—and the acute, bone-deep notion that humanity had stooped to places so terribly low—meant life was no longer worth living at all. Everything I’d run away from had caught up with me, and now I had nowhere to hide. I was stuck in a bed, forced to remember.
All the moments I wanted to forget.
All the trauma I drowned in parties and fake friends and lavish shopping sprees.
I didn’t want to get better. I wanted to close my eyes and never wake up again.
The other presence flicked the light on, shifting closer.
“Lila,” I groaned, blinking the world into focus. “How long have I been ou—”
The rest of the sentence perished on the tip of my tongue as soon as I opened my eyes.
Sitting across from me was Achilles Ferrante.
A wrathful beast of massive proportions. Imposing, scary, and dead in the eyes.
Our gazes clashed. My heart rode all the way up to my throat, and any lingering pain or dull ache disappeared from my body. My lungs scorched.
This wasn’t happening.
Can’t. Breathe.
He is here to murder you.
And considering you’re bedridden, this time he is going to succeed.
Dying didn’t scare me anymore. But I wanted to go on my own terms.
Still, I was me. So I decided to die with a smile.
“What, no flowers?” I tried to purr, but it came out all gruffy and wrong. “Oh well. Don’t bother putting any on my grave. My first order of business will be haunting your ass into an early grave.”
“I’m not here to finish the job.” His voice was unbearably soft, and it made me angry because it reached a place inside me he had no right touching.
“You should.” I plastered on my best airy-socialite smile. “Because once I’m back on my feet, I will certainly kill you.”
His brows slammed together, concern and confusion fighting for dominance in his features. “Tierney…”
“Get out.”
He stayed rooted in place, a war waging in his onyx eyes. He’d probably never gotten thrown out of anywhere before. If he had, he wasn’t the kind of man to linger and try pleading his case. This solidified my suspicion he was here to kill me.
I scooted to sit upright, willing myself not to faint again. I searched for a panic button, so if he did finish me off, at least he’d get caught and spend his remaining days in prison, where he belonged.
How did he get past security anyway? Past the Irish soldiers at my door? Some things didn’t click, but my mind was such a jumbled mess, trying to piece it all together made my head hurt.
Achilles’s eyes traced my movements, and his face cleared, like a penny had dropped. “No.”
“No, what? I didn’t ask you anything,” I attempted a weak, pathetic laugh.
“I wasn’t the one who shot you.”
“Spare me,” I bit out. “I remember everything.”
“You clearly don’t,” he growled doggedly. “Break it down for me.” But again, the bite was gone from his voice, replaced with gentleness that made my chest tight. It reminded me of my Achilles.
The one I loved so hard and so deep, I was willing to take my own life to spare his. “Leave,” I said.
“No, tell me,” he insisted, tone leaking desperation. “Tell me what happened. Play it back for me.”
He wasn’t going to leave until we did this song and dance. Just as well, as I was eager to remember more than him.
“We got to Prague…” I licked my lips, rolling the film back in my head. “I opened a bank account under the new name like you told me. Then walked across the street to meet with a real estate agent.”
“Yes?” The urgency in his speech was unmistakable. He leaned forward, like he was watching a soccer game, getting ready for his team to score. “And?”
“Uh…” His gaze on me felt like the first ray of sunshine I’d had in weeks, and I hated that it made me warmer than any blanket.
“The real estate agent and I went to the apartment—the one you told me to rent…” A headache started to form behind my eyes again.
I kneaded my temples with a groan. “But at the last minute, he said he’d gotten a text to pick up his daughter from school because his wife was stuck in traffic. ”
“Uh-huh.” Achilles’s tongue moved across his teeth in barely contained rage. It was the first glimpse of the Achilles I knew and remembered today. “Sure. Daughter. Traffic. Carry on.”
“I took the stairs up because a man I didn’t know entered the elevator just as I arrived at the building, and I felt…queasy about it.”
The man in the elevator was a new memory. I guess my mind had skipped over that minor detail because it didn’t feel important before. But maybe it was important. I remembered having the distinct feeling I didn’t want to be in close quarters with him.
“What did he look like?” Achilles shot off.
“I don’t know…” I squinted, desperate to remember. “Tall? Athletic build. Muscular but lean…” He wasn’t unpleasant to look at. But he gave off the same vibe Achilles and Tiernan did when they entered a room, supercharging the air with violence and malice.
“Did you see his face?”
“No.”
“Was he wearing a mask?”
I closed my eyes, feeling irritated, overwhelmed, but most of all useless. “I…I don’t know.”