Chapter 34
KIERAN
“ Y ou told me I could kill him,” Lochlan argues, eyes narrowed. His arms are crossed, and all traces of his playful demeanor are gone.
“That was before he tried to suffocate me and blew up a bridge I was standing on.”
“I. Don’t. Care.”
“ Fucking hell ,” Rohan mutters. “Can we just go inside? We are wasting time out here.”
“I like the anticipation.” Eden bounces on her toes with a grin. “He can probably hear us right now, getting nervous.” A flush spills across her cheeks. “Trembling while he waits?—”
“ Eden ,” I growl because her excitement is making me hard as fuck. I drag her into my body, lowering my voice so only she can hear me. “You are making it hard for me not to fuck you right here.”
Her tongue swipes across her bottom lip. “I can’t help it. Torture turns me on.”
I chuckle, looking up to find Rohan staring at us in disgust. “You can’t wait until you get home for that?”
Lochlan cocks his head. “I think they’re kind of cute. Why don’t we head inside while you two?—”
“No,” I snap. “We are doing this together.” Taking a long breath, I try to find a compromise. “Why don’t we drag Miles in here and have fun together? Eden and I get Conor. Lo, you can kill Miles. Rohan can help inflict damage?—”
“And make sure we get answers.”
“Right.” I nod my head, kind of forgetting that is part of the reason we are here. I’m mostly interested in making the bastard scream and watching Eden get worked up over the blood. “Everyone gets a little bloody, and no one does any killing until we have all our answers. Compromise?”
Lochlan huffs. “Fine. But I’m taking my time with him.” He points a finger at Rohan. “No rushing me.”
Rohan shrugs. “I think it’s worth dragging out this time.”
“It’s settled then. Ash?” I call up to the top of the stairs.
“Yeah, boss?”
“Can you send Larkin down with a key? We need to do a little rearranging.”
“I’m on it.”
I lean against the wall as the door to the stairs opens and shuts.
Ash is positioned on our side of it in case we need anything, while Jude is on the other.
Several of our high clearance guards are posted around the entrances to the cages, Jude not taking any chances this time.
He doesn’t like that all four of us are here at one time, and he doesn’t want anyone sneaking up on us.
I appreciate the precaution, even if I know they’d have to kill me to get to Eden again. And even then, I’d just drag her soul to the underworld with me. She’s never going to escape me.
Somehow, the four of us manage to muster enough patience to wait for Larkin to unlock Miles—who looks terrible— and chain him up in the same room as Conor. With a head nod, he leaves us to it.
“Where is my wife?” Miles croaks out as soon as the door shuts. I’m mildly surprised by the question given that I was pretty sure she hated him—and he barely acknowledged she existed.
“In the city.” It’s Rohan who answers, stalking forward toward his prey. “She’s been happily set free.”
Miles’s head drops, his stringy black hair flopping over his face. It’s clear that Ash and Gale didn’t hold back when it came to dragging him here—something I’d expect from Ash but not so much from her quiet counterpart. He’s dirty, scraped up, and looking nothing like his normal self.
“Any more questions?” Lochlan grins at Miles, all that darkness beneath his skin bubbling to the surface. His accent grows thicker with each word, a telltale sign that his blood lust is taking over. “Or is it my turn to ask them?”
Miles flinches, and I know I’m not the only one who catches the motion. He knows something, and Eden immediately pounces. “What about confessions, Miles?” Her voice is pitched higher with excitement. “Anything you want to share?”
He’s silent long enough that I have to join in on the fun. “No secrets? Or are you trying to protect Conor?”
At that, his head snaps up, and I see the pure confusion on his face. Whatever information he is protecting has nothing to do with Conor.
“I told you…” The words are barely more than a rasp as Conor gasps for breath.
“I might have broken a few ribs.” Lochlan shrugs. “Not sure if it punctured a lung.”
Conor coughs, blood splattering to the ground.
His head still hangs forward, but with his body fixed to the metal chair in the center of the room, he’s forced upright.
His glasses are missing, his clothing is torn, and bruises cover his neck and right side of his face.
One eye has completely swollen shut, his lip is torn, and it sounds like Lochlan might have inflicted some internal damage.
Well, I hope he lasts long enough for us to have some fun.
Heaving another breath, he finally forces out, “Miles doesn’t know anything.”
Miles squints at him, and the mild scratches on his face are nothing compared to what Conor has clearly been through. “What do you know?”
“Shut.” He gasps in a ragged breath. “Up.”
“No.” Eden pulls her blade from that sexy as fuck thigh sheath, her boots clicking against the concrete floor. “Answer his question.” She uses the blade’s tip to push his head up, forcing his one eye to focus on her. “Tell Miles how you’ve been manipulating and using him.”
Conor stares at her, pure venom in his expression, but he has to know he’s not getting out of this alive. It’s enough to get him talking, apparently. “I’ve been feeding information to the rebels.”
Miles jerks back, and if there was any doubt that Conor was lying, it’s gone. Miles didn’t know that—but he does know something .
We’ll get it out of him.
“Keep going.” Eden pushes her blade forward, keeping Conor’s chin on the flat side and the tip digging into his skin.
Panic flares in his eye, and that spineless prick I’m used to dealing with surfaces. “They needed information if they were ever going to get to you. The rebels were never concerned with the Elites as a whole—just the mafia.”
“So you told them our schedules?” Blood trickles down his throat as Eden’s knife digs in deeper.
“Yes. Yours and the guards. The plan was always to take you, to use a chemical that we had distilled from the toxins in the valley, and wipe your memories with a few injections. We were going to have you become the face of the rebels to get more people to defect to the cause. We needed the manpower to overpower the guards.” He’s trembling, and Eden pushes a little deeper.
“But that day, we didn’t know you’d be the one that would come for the rebel. That was pure luck.”
“You thought that you would convince an entire city to revolt against me because you had my wife?” I scoff. He knows nothing about Eden if he ever thought she would be so easy to use and manipulate.
“That’s what the clinics were for,” he squeaks out, and I know Eden is cutting too deep.
“Eden,” I say softly, my voice a low rumble, and she huffs.
But she pulls her blade from his throat, circling behind Conor. Dragging it down the side of his face, blood bubbling along the scrape, she whispers, “Keep going.”
“The clinics were finding a cure for the toxins. But I was giving it to the rebels. The city would never overpower the guards, but the gas I used on you? It would have kept us from ever having to fight.”
I’m annoyed that he actually came up with that plan. There are enough guards who are loyal to me that I’ve never worried about being overpowered. But that gas? That was something I’d never have been able to fight.
“And once you had control?”
Greed shines through Conor’s expression. “Then the city would be mine.”
That’s all it was this entire time. Conor wanted unlimited power, complete control, and he was willing to do whatever it took to get there. He would’ve turned on Parker in the end, I’m sure.
“Then why shoot at Lochlan?” The rest is brilliant, but that bullet doesn’t fit in. “Why not wait until the gas was ready?”
Conor’s head swings in a clumsy shake. “That bullet was never meant for Lochlan. He just stepped in the way of its true target.”
I cock my head. “Jude?”
“He has a lot to pay for.” He flinches as Eden taps her blade against his other cheek in warning. “He’s too valuable. Brilliant enough to lay traps and ruthless enough to kill the prey it catches.”
He’s not wrong about that, either. Jude is one of the few people I rely on, one that is always thinking steps ahead of everyone else. I should have expected him to be a target.
But despite all their careful planning, they still failed. Now, it’s time for them to pay.
I grin at him, my eyes never leaving his mottled face. “Eden?”
“Yes?”
My accent makes the words sound almost like a purr. “Kill him.”
Her smile lights up her face, and before Conor can even sputter a plea, Eden is digging the tip of her knife under his eye and flicking her wrist forward.
His eye pops free of the socket, blood pouring down his face as he screams, and I glance over at Lochlan and Rohan—who are watching with bloodlust and mild amusement written on their faces.
“Sorry. Did you have any questions?”
Rohan shakes his head, and Lochlan answers, “I think you two covered it.”
While Eden starts carving up Conor’s face, the three of us turn our attention to Miles. He’s whimpering in the corner, curled in on himself as much as possible with the restraints, and I think he’s pissed himself.
“He’s all yours,” Rohan says to Lochlan, lip curled in disgust.
Lochlan only grins, stalking forward. Miles looks up at the sound of his footsteps, trembling before Lochlan has even touched him.
“I’m sorry!” he shouts, pressing back into the wall. “I’m sorry! But you got what you wanted out of it. You have the power.”
That has Lochlan pausing. “What did you do?”
Miles shakes his head, terror making him frantic. Words start spilling out of him without us even having to press. “It was just supposed to be Cian. He put too many restrictions on my position, and he didn’t know what was best for this city!”
I step forward, anger running through me. “What was supposed to be just him? What did you do to my father?”
I don’t think he even hears me. He keeps going, half muttering and half yelling.
“But your father was no better. He basically got himself killed—and I had nothing to do with your mother.” Lochlan has gone so pale, eyes almost black at the mention of his parents.
“And then Tadgh went on a warpath, and his death was painfully obvious?—”
“ You killed him?” Rohan shouts. We always knew that his father’s death wasn’t an accident, but Miles? He was young at the time, only an apprentice.
“Saoirse was the only reasonable one!” I snort. I’d never call my mother reasonable. She was abusive, vindictive, and downright cruel . We all suffered at her hand—because we had no one left to protect us.
All because of Miles.
“You killed the mafia leaders? Our families?” Lochlan’s voice is unrecognizable. “And then you looked at us every day, made deals with us, came to our homes ?”
“I did it for the city!”
“You did it for power!” Lochlan lunges, and I don’t stop him. Miles deserves whatever happens now.
Lochlan’s hands wrap around his throat, and Miles screams as Lochlan slams his head into the concrete wall.
He is seething, so much pain evident as he practically rips Miles apart with his bare hands.
My mother was a bitch, and Rohan was never close to his parents, but Lochlan?
They were the perfect family, the home I would hide in. And that was all ripped away from him.
Turning away, I leave Lochlan to unleash twenty-five years of pain on Miles. Rohan will pull him back if he gets too far gone. I’d rather bathe in a bit of Conor’s blood before Eden does kill him.
My girl is still working him, taunting him as she skins him. His restraints have been cut, and I know she likes a bit of a fight. But Conor looks like he’s just sobbing, vomit and blood smeared across the front of his body. Pathetic.
I reach for one of my blades just as the door opens, and Ash is standing in the doorway, breathing hard. “There are rebels.”
My nostrils flare. “ What ?”
“Jude sent me to tell you that they’ve spotted rebels. They’re probably coming for the two, and he needs to get you out of here.”
Growling, I shout, “Eden!” Her head lifts, blood coating her neck and face. “Kill him. We’ve got to go.” She frowns, but she slashes her blade across his throat. It’s a deep cut, one he would never survive, and she wipes the knife off before sheathing it.
I hold my hand out to her, and she rushes to take it as a gunshot sounds from behind us. We both turn to see Rohan holstering his gun, a bullet in Miles’s skull and Lochlan on the ground. “We have to go,” he snaps at Lochlan, jerking him upright. I guess he had to step in after all.
Rushing upstairs, Jude is already waiting for me and Eden. He leads us out the back door while Till takes Rohan in a different direction. Ash will slip Lochlan out the side entrance and a few blocks away, keeping us all spaced out just in case.
My adrenaline pounds as we run to the car, Jude taking off as soon as the doors shut. It’s only then I look over at Eden, finding her eyes dark and her lips curled into a smile.
“Did you have fun?”
She nods. “So much.” She leans in, her voice dropping. “And when we get home, we’ll have even more.”
Jude huffs up front. “You two are the worst thing to ever happen to my car.”