Chapter 41 Keira
FORTY-ONE
KEIRA
Tristan's expression doesn't change. "You don't have to."
"Yes, I do." I wrap my arms around myself, suddenly cold in a way that has nothing to do with the morning air. "You deserve to know why I—"
"Keira." He moves into my space, hands gripping my arms protectively. "I don't need to hear it."
"But I set you up. I let you think I betrayed you."
"You did what you had to do to survive." His voice is steady. Certain. "I've known that since the moment I realized what you've been living with."
My throat constricts. "You don't understand. He threatened you. Said he'd kill you if I didn't go with him. Said he'd kill our baby and make me watch."
Tristan goes very still.
"I was already pregnant and had no idea. I never thought—"
"Keira—"
"No. Let me finish." I push through before I lose my nerve.
"I need you to understand what happened that last night.
Ewan showed up at my apartment with a file.
Photos of you. Of us. Dated and time-stamped.
Routes. Contacts. Safe houses. Bank records.
He even had surveillance on people from our childhoods. "
My voice wavers, but I force myself to continue.
"He told me if we went forward with Operation South Tide, you'd die. Everyone around you would die. And he'd make me watch every second of it. The only option was to give up everything and go with him."
My chin quivers, but I refuse to stop now.
"I tried to think of a way to warn you, but the apartment was compromised. He had men on the door, the hallway, the windows. I wasn't free anymore, Tristan. Not from the moment he walked through that door."
After years of swallowing the truth, setting it free feels like bleeding out.
"So I made a choice that would make you hate me. I fed you the wrong location. I let you get taken because at least then you'd still be alive. You could escape. And I went with him because I knew what he'd do if I didn't."
Tristan hasn't moved. Hasn't blinked.
"Later, when I found out I was pregnant, it got worse.
He didn't know at first that the baby was yours.
But when Hale came and the timelines didn't add up…
" I swallow hard. "He lost his mind. Stopped seeing me or the baby as people.
All he saw was ownership. A way to keep me compliant forever. To hurt me."
Tears stream down my face, but I keep going. I have to.
"I needed you to hate me so you'd stay behind a wall Ewan couldn't climb. I was trying to protect you, even if it meant destroying us."
Silence.
Horrible, suffocating silence.
Then his hands are on my face, cupping my jaw, tilting my chin up. But I can't look at him. Can't bear to see the disgust or the hatred.
"Please look at me."
I force my eyes to his.
There's no disgust. No hatred. Only devastation. And the beginning of something that looks like a wildfire waiting for fuel.
"I don't care."
I blink. "What?"
"I don't care why you left. I don't care what you did or what you had to tell yourself to survive it." His thumbs stroke my cheekbones, catching tears. "I knew you would never choose him. The woman I fell in love with would have burned everything down before letting someone own her."
"Tristan—"
"He threatened you and our child." The words come out serrated. "I need you to tell me exactly what he did to you."
His entire body is vibrating now. I can feel it through his palms where they press against my skin.
"It doesn't matter anymore."
"It matters." His eyes have gone dark. "Every bruise. Every threat. Every time he touched you when you didn't want to be touched. I need to know all of it, Keira. Because I'm going to pay it back. Every. Single. Moment."
"You can't just—"
"I'm going to pull him apart piece by piece.
" His voice drops to something barely human.
"I'm going to make him feel every second of fear you felt.
Every moment of helplessness. He's going to pay for every smile you had to fake, every performance you had to give, every second you were dying inside while pretending to be his. "
I'm struggling to stay composed.
"You were protecting me." His voice cracks. "While he was destroying you. You were trying to keep me safe."
"I didn't have a choice—"
"I know." Tears track down Tristan's face.
This lethal, dangerous, terrifying man, crying in front of me like his heart is being ripped from his chest.
I reach up and brush them away with my fingertips.
"I know you didn't," he whispers. "And that's the part that's going to haunt me until I put him in the ground. That you had to make that choice at all."
I tug on his arm and he leans in, pressing his face into the curve of my neck. I feel his shoulders shake. Feel his tears hot against my skin. Feel this man, who could kill everyone in this compound with his bare hands, come undone in my arms because he couldn't protect me.
"I'm sorry." The words are muffled against my throat. "I'm so fucking sorry I wasn't there."
"It's not your fault."
"I should have found you sooner."
"You found me now." I run my fingers through his short hair, crying with him. "That's what matters."
"It wasn't soon enough." He pulls back, and the look on his face—rage and loss and love all tangled together—breaks my heart.
"Nothing will ever be soon enough. But I swear to you, Keira, on everything I am and everything I have…
he will never touch you again. He will never threaten Hale again.
And before this is over, I'm going to make him pay for all of it. "
I can't believe someone actually cares whether I live or die. And that someone is the one man I never thought I'd see again.
"I spent years thinking you'd moved on," I breathe. "That you'd forgotten about me. Built a life without me. I wanted that for you—to be happy. To have what I could never touch."
"There is no life without you." The words tear out of him like they've been trapped for years. "There's just existing. Going through the motions. Pretending any of it matters when the only thing I ever wanted was a million miles away, trapped somewhere I couldn't find."
"The lockbox," I manage. "I didn't send it. Someone else—"
"I know. We'll figure it out later. Right now, I need you to understand something."
"What?"
"You're not alone anymore." His voice steadies, hardening.
"Whatever happens next, whatever we have to do to get out of here, you're not doing it alone. I'm right here. I'm not going anywhere. And anyone who tries to take you or Hale from me"—his jaw tightens—"is going to spend their last hours on this earth wishing they'd never been born."
A broken laugh escapes me. "That's very romantic."
"I'm a romantic guy."
"You're also insane."
"Completely," he agrees, a hint of dark humor threading through his voice. "Certifiably deranged. The kind of man mothers warn their daughters about." His thumb brushes my lower lip, featherlight. "But I'm insane over you. Only ever for you."
I stare at the man I've been dreaming about since the moment we met. The eyes I've searched for in every stranger. The man who crossed oceans and infiltrated a criminal empire and poisoned a predator at a dinner party, all because he refused to let me go.
"I'm broken," I say, offering him the ugliest truth I have. "You know that, right? Whatever I was before, whoever you knew…she's not here anymore. Ewan took pieces of me that I don't know how to get back."
"Then we'll find them together."
"What if they're gone forever?"
"They're not. I've seen them. Glimpses, when you forget to hide. The fire is still there, Red. It's just buried under years of existing." His forehead drops to mine. "And I'm going to spend the rest of my life helping you dig it out."
I open my mouth, but nothing comes out.
I've had to be strong for so long. Numb myself to all of it.
Throw my heart in a locked box and swallow the key.
I taught myself that needing someone was the most dangerous thing a person could do.
Learned to bite down on every scream, every sob, every plea until my jaw ached from the effort of holding it all in.
Until eventually, I felt nothing at all.
And now Tristan is standing in front of me at dawn, saying things like rest of my life and together…and I think he means them.
I don't have the right words.
So I grab his jacket with both fists and pull him down to me.
The first second feels like a glitch, a pause in time as my lips press against his. Then he exhales against me—this shaking, fractured breath that sounds like a man setting down something impossibly heavy. His hands come up to cradle my face.
I taste salt. My tears or his, I can't tell. It doesn't matter.
The kiss deepens gradually, not desperate but more like pieces falling into place.
His mouth moves against mine, and it's like finding a language I'd forgotten I spoke. My body remembers before my brain catches up.
The way he tilts his head, the way his thumb traces the hinge of my jaw, the way he kisses like he's trying to say something he can't figure out how to put into words.
I melt into him. There's no other word for it.
My fists loosen on his jacket. My palms flatten against his chest. I feel his heartbeat slamming underneath—fast and frantic, completely at odds with how gentle his mouth is.
I forgot what it feels like to be kissed by someone who knows the worst of you and wants you anyway. Someone who looks at your wreckage and doesn't see a project or a problem or something to fix.
I forgot what it felt like to be completely, devastatingly wanted.
After everything, Tristan is here, in my arms.
That's enough. Right now, standing in the ruins of everything we lost, with dawn bleeding gold through the branches above us, it's perfectly enough.