Chapter 4
KIERAN
Present day…
M y wife has no clue who I am.
That thought has been circling my mind since I took my mask off and she stared up at me with confusion. Since she tried to fight me when I pulled her into one of my vehicles. Since she spent the entire ride back up the mountain trying to escape the car.
In true Eden fashion, she went completely feral once her shock wore off, and I’ve gotten nowhere trying to talk to her. I couldn’t reason with her, couldn’t calm her. She didn’t want me touching her, nor would she answer any of my questions.
She treated me like a threat. A danger. Someone she wanted to get away from.
And Eden has never looked at me like that.
Not the first time I saw her in the cages. Not every time I sought her out to win her over. She’s always had this fire I fucking loved, but never has she reacted so violently to me .
“They did something to her,” I growl, lifting the glass to my lips. It’s one of the few that survived after I stormed into the sitting room and took to breaking everything in sight—mostly the extensive whiskey collection that had been on the bar behind me. Before I broke it all.
“We can have the doctor look at her immediately.” Rohan twists his own glass on the table, brows furrowed. “I’m shocked you left her side.”
I hear the question in his voice. As my second-in-command, Rohan had to stay back at the compound.
Typically, he and Lochlan would deal with matters like this so I wouldn’t be jeopardized, but since it was Eden, they both knew that wouldn’t be the case.
I would be going after her, with Lochlan’s help, of course.
Nothing says loyalty like following me into a rebel camp just to taunt death for the hundredth time. Heaven knows that’s Lochlan’s favorite activity.
Despite our titles, we make our decisions together. They are my brothers, even if we don’t share any blood, and they were just as devastated when they learned that Eden had been targeted.
Which is why Rohan is staring at me with concealed worry. He’s not one to be overly emotional—thank fuck—but he knows me. Knows I have been unstable since Eden went missing, and I should be glued to her side right now.
That’s where I fucking want to be, too.
Instead, I’m in the sitting room on the opposite side of the house like I’m not one second away from fucking losing it altogether. I have no doubt the shattered glass behind me after returning with my wife makes very little sense to Rohan.
“She doesn’t want me there.” I swallow the rest of my whiskey, hating how the words are more painful than any blade I’ve ever taken. “She didn’t recognize me.”
Rohan blinks. “She didn’t recognize you.”
“That’s what I fucking said.” I nearly throw the damn glass. “They did something to her, and she wants nothing to do with me.”
She made that abundantly clear the entire way back.
And it fucking killed me. Not that I’d admit it out loud.
Some people think I am the devil incarnate, but believe it or not, even men like me can fall in love…in our way. Eden Kelly has carved my damn heart out of my chest and holds it for herself.
So, to find her like this…it’s nearly leveling me.
I expected a teasing remark. A joke. Her telling me that she saved me a few arseholes to kill as a form of foreplay. Any of those sassy remarks that made me fall for her so damn hard. She’s always been so witty, so strong, so full of fire that I couldn’t get enough.
That is not who I found waiting for me.
But I’m also shite at expressing my emotions, so I’ve taken to destroying bottles and trying to drink myself into this making sense. My two favorite coping mechanisms: alcohol and violence.
And they say the city I rule isn’t paradise. Fucking sounds like it to me.
Rohan studies me for a moment before picking up his glass again. “I think I’m going to need a little more here, Kier.”
I swing around and pick up one of the few remaining bottles from the bar along the wall. As I pour myself a refill, I contemplate what I’ll even say. I’ve never been good with words—worse when I need to explain my damn emotions—so I’m almost relieved when I hear footsteps heading toward us.
Almost.
Because I know that gait.
Lochlan rounds the corner with a big grin on his face. “Rohan!” His accent is extra thick when he’s feeling playful, high on the bloodlust.
It’s a telltale sign of who we are. Very few people in the city remember much of anything before my family rose to power, but the mafia has deep roots in its culture.
Which is why my mother—the cold bitch—made sure I knew where I came from.
She tried to ingrain my Irish heritage into me, and some of it stuck, like the whiskey we still have made the Irish way and the accents we developed listening to our parents.
Some of the guards even speak in the same lilting tone.
According to the history our parents shoved down our throats, half the population in the city has roots back to the country.
But one word can give us away even if our faces are covered. And Lochlan, more than Rohan and I, is shite at hiding it. It’s on full display right now.
“You should have been there, Ro!” he continues, sounding far too excited. “They were scurrying like little bugs. I’ve never had so much fun picking off the pricks?—”
He freezes as I turn around, dark blue eyes going wide. “What the fuck are you doing here, Kier?” He stalks closer, and I spot blood smeared in his blond curls and down the side of his face. I’m sure he had the time of his life down there. “Where’s Eden?”
My jaw works, and I swallow back the glass of whiskey I just poured. Instead of answering, I turn away to refill it.
Rohan takes the opportunity to cut in. “You’re going to have to wait on telling me what all I missed, Lo. Kieran was just about to explain why he’s in here instead of with his wife, and why he’s saying that Eden didn’t recognize him.”
Lochlan lets out a low whistle. “So she’s here?”
Oh, fuck it.
“She’s here,” I snap, finally tossing the glass. It shatters against the far wall, but that doesn’t ease the rage clawing beneath my skin. “She just doesn’t fucking want to be.”
I pick up the bottle. I’d rather drink myself into a stupor than keep admitting that. I can’t handle the way it feels like a blade is cutting through my fucking chest, ripping me apart from the inside.
Lochlan and Rohan laughed when they realized I had fallen in love.
But it had been worth it. Eden was worth it.
Only, now I’m drowning in shite I don’t want to feel, and the only person that could ever look at me and understand what was going on in my head without me having to fucking say it won’t be in the same room as me.
My life is fucked.
I thought it was when my dad died. I thought it was when my mother started training me to be her perfect little leader—and those were not lessons any child should endure. But no. What is sending me over the edge is knowing what it is like to have Eden and then lose her.
If this is my life, I don’t want it.
I’m really starting to empathize with Lochlan’s mom. I always thought she was selfish for abandoning him after his father died, but now I get it. If I can’t have Eden, I don’t want the air in my lungs.
But I’m never going to say that kind of shite out loud, so instead, I start trying to literally drown myself in whiskey.
“Woah.” Lochlan snatches the bottle from me and darts back as I swing at him. He knew it would be my reflex. “You need to tell us what happened.”
“Before you are too drunk to do so,” Rohan adds.
I snarl at them, but Lochlan dances back. He has that look in his eyes that tells me he’s about to piss me off. He’s just barely younger than Rohan and me, but he plays the little brother role so well.
“I’ll down the whole thing if you come at me again.” His eyes are challenging me to do it, too.
Rohan kicks out a chair. “Lochlan, sit your arse down, and quit provoking him.”
Lochlan hesitates, but he finally drops into the seat and tips the bottle back. I’d rather launch myself at him, lose myself in a brawl, than tell them the sordid story that has unfolded, but I suppose I owe them the truth.
I land in my own seat, running a hand over the scruff coating my jaw that is far thicker than I like.
In the week it took me to find Eden, I didn’t shave.
At first, I thought that was the source of her confusion, but it should have only taken a second for her to recover from it.
The sound of my voice, the rest of my face, me calling her mo chuisle, should have been enough to clue her in to who I was.
But it didn’t.
“I saw Eden running,” I finally start, not liking the way my stomach immediately drops. Even with these two, I don’t know how to let my guard down like this, not really. “So I went after her while Lochlan and Jude handled the rest.”
“I got a few good kills, too.” Lochlan smirks. “Couldn’t get my hands on Parker or Damian, though. They’re probably regrouping in the woods.”
“Not the point,” Rohan hisses under his breath.
“She had a rock in her hand as a makeshift weapon.” A smile tugs at my lips, but it doesn’t ease the pain in my chest. “When she tried to fight me, I pulled my mask off so she could see it was me.”
“Kieran,” Rohan growls in warning.
I hold up a hand. “It was brief.” I swallow hard, itching to yank the bottle back from Lochlan. “But she just stared at me. I thought it was shock. I thought she’d finally crack some wise-arse remark and tell me she was ready to go home. But then she just swung at me.”
My fingers prod the sore spot on my jaw. I was unprepared for that second attack and didn’t move in time before she got me.
“I caught up with her again, but this time, she was ready. She fought me, even as I told her it was me. She wouldn’t listen, wouldn’t stop trying to get away from me.
I had to pick her up and carry her back to the vehicle.
In the car, she tried to escape, threatened to kill me if I touched her, and when I tried again to tell her that it was me, it was Kieran, she snarled that she didn’t know me and wanted to be let go. ”
Normally, Rohan’s face is better than mine at staying expressionless—the only person who rivals me besides maybe Jude. But right now, he is as wide-eyed and open-mouthed as Lochlan.
Which I understand. It makes no sense to me either.
Everyone in this city knows who I am. It is hard to not know what I look like.
My face is everywhere, serving as a reminder to the city that despite what anyone says, I’m the one that everyone answers to.
Even if the person had never met me before, they’d know who I was.
But this is my wife .
The very woman that my friends gave me shite for pursuing. That they founded a friendship with, too. That they watched me stand outside as the snow fell four months ago and made mine—a moment she was a very active participant in.
It was as if she had her memory completely wiped, and without it, even her personality has shifted.
Rohan recovers first. “So you brought her here.”
“What else was I supposed to do?” I stand and snatch the bottle finally, and Lochlan doesn’t even fight me. “Leave her in the woods? Of course, I brought her home.” Even though she snapped at me and told me this wasn’t her home when I tried to coax her out of the car.
“Then why are you in here?” Lochlan looks around like he’s suddenly going to spot her. “Why aren’t you with Eden, finding out what happened to her and helping her understand what’s going on? If she doesn’t recognize you, she’s probably confused, right?”
I take a drink instead of answering. It should be obvious to them.
I don’t do long conversations. I don’t spill my feelings or patiently help others process theirs.
Eden and I have always been the same in that aspect.
Not to say we didn’t know each other inside and out.
We just paid attention, learned what the other person was thinking without having to say it.
Now, I’m the only one who speaks that language.
How am I supposed to sit in a room and get her to hear me when I don’t know what to say? I won’t force her into my company—I never have—so when she told me to leave, I did. After I carried her inside despite her protests.
“Kieran.” Rohan’s eyes are boring into me, and it annoys me that he can read me nearly as well as Eden can.
Or could.
Fuck, it’s like our relationship died, and I’m the only one standing around the pyre, mourning it.
I quirk a brow at him, not sure I’ll answer his question, either.
“Where is Eden?”
I grit my teeth, knowing that it was stupid. But I was out of options. She wouldn’t listen, wouldn’t stop fighting me, and I wasn’t letting her go. I’ve always given Eden her freedom—she isn’t one to be contained—but right now, I’d rather have her safe than happy. Fucking fight me.
Still, I know it’s a shite answer as I say, “I locked her in a guest room.”