Chapter 48
With my face buried in his chest, I breathed in the musky warmth of his skin. It wrapped me in a cocoon where our problems didn’t reach, where my pain only murmured instead of screamed, and where I pretended nothing had changed.
It had though.
As much as I tried to imagine us back in bed in his condo, like any other morning, the world conspired to burst the bubble.
There were the sharp beeps of the heart monitor.
The harsh rustle of unfamiliar sheets. The stiff achiness of my body.
The pacing footsteps beyond the door. The foreign smells.
Each one roused me back to reality and brought it all back in vivid colors.
From the poison that stopped the heart of the man I loved.
To the friend I shot twice, and the serial killer who stabbed me and regretted it.
There was her betrayal but also her devotion.
My fear that she was dead. My worry that she wasn’t.
My anger. My sympathy. All my hate and love.
My hope and dread. It all swirled together into a melting pot of warring confusion.
I thumped my head against Cillian’s breastbone, but it did nothing to set my thoughts straight. I knew what I should be feeling after discovering the person closest to me hid a monster, but wasn’t I one too? Wasn’t Cillian? My brother? Erel?
Did the truth burn because of Maeve’s crimes?
Or because she concealed it from me? Was I softening with a desire to forgive her because of what her mother put her through, or because of Maeve herself and everything we had been through together?
A gritted groan scratched a path up my throat and burst out.
“You should know, she’s in surgery.” Cillian’s words shot through me, freezing me solid.
I tried to piece together his possible motives for revealing that detail unprompted.
“Why are you telling me this?”
“Didn’t you want to know?”
I gripped the front of his hospital gown and pulled him closer. The wound at my back sparked to life and stabbed up through my gut. I winced, trying to catch my breath.
“Don’t hurt yourself,” he whispered.
He caressed my hair. The softness of his touch, in contrast to the violence he was capable of, nearly broke the dam of my self-control.
While I knew he’d never do anything to me, Maeve was another story entirely.
She might not have been innocent, but she was like a sister to me, and maybe I’d failed her by not looking more closely at her difficult relationship with her mother.
Maybe if I hadn’t been so focused on my own meager problems, I would have seen she was suffering in silence.
“Don’t kill her,” I choked out.
“Why not?” he goaded, his continued gentleness toying with me. “She deceived you. She stabbed you. Don’t you think you should be begging me to?”
In my current condition, I couldn’t stop him if he tried. I had no vials, no bra—hence no concealed knife—no sharp hairpins, and no defense to count on from my fatigue-logged limbs.
“I’m asking you not to.”
His lips whispered a kiss on my forehead, something delicate and sweet and a complete contradiction to his words. “What would you do if I did?”
I clenched my teeth, and despite how hard I tried to keep it all in, a tear leaked out and dampened his pillow.
“I’d never forgive you.”
He shifted down the bed until we were nose to nose. “Couldn’t have that now, could I?”
My chin trembled the more I fought to contain the pot of my churning feelings from boiling over.
“She was groomed, Cillian, since she was an infant. She was brainwashed into believing—”
He pressed a finger to my mouth and hushed me.
“She never had a chance,” I whispered around it. “I know how you want me to feel about her. I know she is not who I thought she was, but I cannot forget what she means to me. I cannot abandon her, not when she could not have helped how she was raised any more than you or I could.”
“I know, love. Calm down.”
I rolled the inside of my bottom lip between my teeth. He was never this unruffled where the Love Knot Killer was concerned.
“She is your half sister,” I tried to reason. “And she is like a sister to me.”
The twitch of his mouth into a tentative smile made my anxiety soar.
“If you do anything to her, I swear I will return it tenfold on Brody.”
He snickered. “Makes sense you’d choose him, but trust me. With time, you’ll get along.”
“I’m not joking,” I gritted out, curling my hand around his finger and squeezing as tight as I could. I might not have much range of motion right now, but I’d claw his eyes out to get my point across. I’d still love him without them.
“Listen to me, sweetheart. I. Know.” He swept a lock of my hair behind my ear, and I held onto him tighter as another tear spilled over my nose and plopped onto the sheets.
“My brothers and I already agreed she’ll live for all the reasons above, but we can’t exactly do nothing.
She deserves punishment. A taste of her own medicine. ”
I nodded slowly, every shift tugging on my spine. “How?”
“Your gunshots already dealt justice for the stabbings. But the poison remains.”
“That’ll—”
“In a controlled hospital setting, she’ll be fine.” His confidence released some of the pressure straining my emotions. “But this needs to happen before any of us can move on.”
Mafia life dealt in absolutes and the basic laws of retaliation and retribution. If this was the limit of their justice, I’d accept it with open arms.
“And then?”
“We get her the help she needs—doctors, psychologists, psychiatrists, whatever helps—but she cannot and will not be released back into society until this foolish vendetta of hers is put to rest. Don’t go against me on that.”
I let out a heavy sigh, a wave of tension flowing out with it.
“I won’t. I know she needs this.”
I planted a grateful kiss on his lips. He grunted deep from within his chest, the easy agreement so at odds with the strain digging grooves into his face and darkening the bags under his eyes.
There was no sign of another one of his emotional disconnection episodes, but none of this could have been easy on him either.
“How are you feeling?” I ran my fingers through the bristles of his beard. They were longer than usual.
“I should be asking that question.”
“But I did first. So tell me, Cillian, how are you feeling?”
His steady focus magnetized mine. Those deep-sea blues reeled me in like an anchor to its winch.
“Thankful you’re in my arms. Relieved to feel you breathing against me.”
“That’s not what I meant. Not in here. Up here.” I slipped my hand off his heart and tapped his forehead. “Be vulnerable with me, like I am with you. Tell me honestly, how are you holding up with all this?”
He caught my finger and nibbled on the tip with light grazes of his teeth. “I’m only ever vulnerable with you, mo leannán.”
“Then talk to me. Don’t keep me in the dark about your demons. I see them anyway.” I grazed his cheek with mine and whispered in his ear, “I know you’re feeling more about this than you’re showing. It’s okay to let go too. No one but me has to know you’re not infallible.”
His breath hitched, and his hand cupped the back of my head. He closed the distance between us until the warmth of his forehead seeped into mine. “Just let me keep holding you. It helps. Knowing you’re here makes it all worthwhile.”
I scratched my nails along his short beard. “Then maybe we should talk about how I’m going to stay here beyond my visa.”
“Ah, I see how it is. Using me for my connections, are you?”
The corners of my mouth ticked up as I tipped my chin until only a hair’s breadth separated us. “Always. I’m a businesswoman, after all.”
“My dodgy little fairy.”
“My heartless husband dearest.”
The kiss was like coming home after a long voyage. A bit tentative, as if we were rediscovering each other, and a whole lot of desperation to beat away the dread of the last couple of days. It was everything I needed and all I ever wanted. Him and me forever.
A knock cut through the slow build of sexual tension we were in no condition to act on. A moment later, Erel trudged into the room. A slight slump rounded his usually straight back, and his face was downcast with a weariness I’d never seen on him. Even in the hardest times, nothing beat him down.
“I need to speak with you,” he said in French, fixating on the two of us coiled together before looking away. “Alone.”
Every sense of calm I’d found in Cillian’s arms evaporated.
“No,” I answered in English. “Together or not at all.”
I had a feeling where this conversation was headed, and just because I was good at dealing with problems on my own didn’t mean I wanted to, especially right now.
“Will you help me up?” I asked Cillian.
The mattress crinkled as Cillian shuffled around for the remote. The bed whirred to life and folded up at an incline. He helped me shift up it, and with a pained huff, I hugged my knees to relieve the pressure on my back, my head sinking into the pillow in exhaustion.
“It’s…” Erel restarted in English. He cleared his throat. “It’s about Maeve.”
My inner pot of emotions bubbled out of my control and sputtered in a series of pops up my throat.
“Do you blame me?” I asked him.
“No. I can’t…”
“I didn’t want to shoot her. You have to know I would never…”
Erel gritted his teeth as the skin around his eye sockets flushed red. “I know. You did what you had to do. This is not…”
His face screwed up, and my shame surged and slipped out below the lid keeping my emotions contained.
“I’m sorry.”
“No. It’s not—” Erel cut off suddenly and took in a deep breath, looking a mix of forlorn and frazzled. “I’m leaving. Back to France. I cannot stay here anymore. There is no point.”
“What about Maeve? She needs you.”
“No. She doesn’t.” He shook his head. For a man who always took charge of situations, he looked at a loss. “She would not want me with her. I don’t think she ever really did.”
“You’re hurting.”
“No,” he muttered.
“It’s normal after she kept this from us—”
“No.”
“But she needs us now more than ever.”
“No!” he snapped, and I flinched with surprise, then winced at the sharp, breath-stealing pinch spasming in my back.
“Watch how you speak to her, Thyssen.” At any other time, I’d smile at Cillian’s menacing arrogance toward Endgame’s finest assassin when he’d been half dead only a few hours ago, but not right now.
With a couple of deep inhales, Erel sucked back in every one of his emotions until nothing but a blank sheet remained.
“Maeve told me the truth about us as she bled out. She thought she was dying. She thought you were both dying, so she didn’t hold back.
There never was an us. There was only ever you and her.
I was only a means for her to have more access to you.
Nothing more. For two years, she used me, and I—” Red sploshed across his face around his pained, watery gaze.
“She made her choice. It was not me, and I will not wait around to realize it never will be.”
“Don’t go, please.”
With a shake of his head, he strode for the door but stopped halfway out.
“When you see her, tell her I loved her. Tell her…I forgive her.”
“Tell her yourself.”
A weary scoff followed him out of the room, and the door clicked softly shut behind him.
“Who does he think he is?” I slapped the bedding. “If he really loved her, he’d want to say goodbye properly.”
“Síbhean.” Cillian traced a finger along the edges of my hospital gown. “Love, look at me.”
“What?” I lashed out, recoiling from the gentleness he offered. Why was it suddenly so stifling in the room?
Cillian pinched my chin, his gaze still tender, but his firm touch didn’t allow me to pull away.
“Do you remember what your brother told you yesterday?”
My brother? Yesterday? Oh, right, our reunion in Colombia. That already felt like weeks ago.
“He told you Erel meant to move to Boston. He was ready to leave everything behind because he loved her. You have to consider that it killed a part of him when she said she never felt the same. Imagine if it were us. Would you stay?”
I jerked my chin free because, damn him, I hated how right he was about this.
The newly stitched stab wound in my back flared scorching hot as punishment for the harsh movement, and I clenched my teeth through the pain.
Cillian immobilized me against his body, holding me tight.
As the pain dissipated, a wave of exhaustion rushed over me.
“For better or worse, Maeve latched onto you and no one else. I, for one, can’t find a reason to regret that when it saved you.”
I wobbled my head up and down loosely and burrowed my nose into his neck. “Promise me we’ll take care of her.”
“I swear.” His voice rumbled through me. “Just focus on healing now.”
“Then we’ll go home?” I sucked the smell of him into my lungs, clinging to the contentment it provided.
“You mean my penthouse?”
“Unless you’re planning to move to Lyon.
” I felt his wince in the tightening of his shoulders more than I heard it, and I tittered midway through a yawn.
“I didn’t think so. That’s fine. I can manage my businesses anywhere.
But…and this better be very clear, mari chéri.
” Head heavy with a need for sleep, I shoved a finger against his chest. “No more micromanaging what I do and where I go. I’ll take guards without protest, but sometimes I need my own space. ”
His arms tightened around me, and he huffed forcefully. “Trying to get away from me, wife?”
“Never.” I snuggled further into him as my eyelids drooped. “But I am curious what you can come up with for us to do together now that we’ve almost crossed everything off my list.”
“How about we write a new one together?”
I nodded slowly. “As long as you’re not in as much of a hurry to complete this one too.”
With the tight press of him surrounding me, combined with his scent, his warmth, and the even rise and fall of his chest, I yawned again and let the fatigue slowly carry me off.
“We have all the time in the world now,” he said.
Then the light press of his lips against mine sent me under to the promise of forever.