Killian
Lights flicker on one by one, highlighting the darkness that creeps over the city and scatters shadows across the floor of my apartment. I shove my hands into the pockets of my sweatpants and begin pacing, head down, heart sinking lower.
Another day has been crossed off the calendar, another day closer to losing Katarina. I haven’t seen her for a few days and I can’t imagine what it might be like to never see her again. We have two and a half weeks left. Soon we’ll be counting the days.
I’ve been expecting her to message me, and wonder if I was overconfident sending another package to Duke’s office.
I’d assumed he’d pass it on to his fiancée now they’ve reached their little understanding, but maybe her understanding is different from Duke’s.
Or something bad has happened that hasn’t reached my ears. Yet.
I don’t just want to hear from her. I need to. I won’t sleep if I don’t.
Pausing at my desk, I drop into a chair and tap the keyboard to bring my laptop to life. I’ve been casting an eye over our accounts and I’ve been pleasantly surprised at how much my family’s legitimate activities have grown in the last few years. I did that.
There’s more we could do, and normally I can lose myself in the plans I want to bring to life, ones where there are less risks to balance the rewards.
But nothing about my present circumstances are normal and I draw a blank.
The future doesn’t interest me if Katarina isn’t in it.
I’ve fallen hard for that woman and I’m basically fucked. How did I let that happen?
I startle when my phone rings and fumble to answer it. I can hear the tap-tap of Katarina’s stilettos echoing through her apartment. She’s been pacing too.
“You got my little gift then?” I ask, sitting back in my chair. I rub my chest to ease the ever-present band of anxiety around my chest.
“What’s it for, Killian?”
“I didn’t realize you were that unfamiliar with the world of adult toys, but sure, I’m happy to talk you through it,” I say with an extra dose of devilment I know will piss her off more than she already sounds.
“It’s called an egg vibrator and when you slip it into your ever-so-sweet pussy, you can leave it there.
If you’d like to go and lie down on your bed, I’ll talk you through it. ”
“Like how you control it remotely?”
I’m grinning as I open the app on my phone. It had cost a small fortune to have the device adapted so I didn’t have to rely on Bluetooth to connect. I can see she’s switched it on.
“Are you wearing it now, Kitty? Or are you still recovering from me fucking you twice-over?”
When I activate the vibrator, there’s a sharp hiss on the other end of the line.
“Tell me it feels good.”
I increase the frequency and I swear we must have some freakish bond because a sudden jolt of pleasure brings my cock to attention.
“Switch it off, Killian.” Her barked command loses its authority when emotion catches in her throat. There’s no power at all in her words when she adds, “Please, just tell me. If this is your way of saying goodbye, get it over with.”
My stomach hollows and I quickly deactivate the vibrator.
This long goodbye is killing us both. “I’m not going anywhere, lovely,” I say, slumping into an armchair, “but if you want to take your new toy with you when you leave, it’d be a novel way of keeping in touch.
I could send you messages in morse code. ”
“Or you could just let me move on,” she whispers. “When we sever ties, it has to be clinical. You know that.”
“I do.” But I’m not sure I’ll ever accept it.
Her footsteps stop. “Your family comes first,” she reminds me. “And it’s time you rejoined them.”
“I don’t think so.”
“You have other business to attend.”
“Do I now?” Nothing and no one is more important than the precious little time I have left with Katarina.
“I have information, and if your father isn’t aware of it yet, he soon will be,” she says. “Diego Valera has been spotted in Boston. And wherever he is, his father and brothers won’t be far.”
I lean forward in my chair. Could our four-year hunt for the severed branch of the Valera family tree be drawing to a close? “You tracked them down?”
“Call it a leaving gift. Here…” Long fingernails tap her screen and a second later my phone vibrates with a message. “That’s everything I have on Diego’s activities.”
I take a moment to absorb the information she’s sent. They’ve been active in Boston for months. “Your sestra hasn’t located their base yet?” I ask, knowing she’ll be Katarina’s source.
“Not yet, but she’ll keep looking.”
“Thank you.” It makes my gift to her look embarrassingly puerile in comparison. This information means more to my family than she could possibly imagine.
In the silence that follows, I’m already making plans. Surveillance, phone calls, mustering our best men, relocating our resources. I should also talk to our allies to help tighten the net around our nemesis, but first I need to speak to Dad. Justice is within our grasp.
“When will you leave?”
Katarina’s question hits me like a bucket of ice-cold water. This mission will take weeks, or possibly months depending on how deeply underground Ignacio has burrowed. Very deep I should imagine given how long he’s gone undetected.
This isn’t going to be wrapped up in two weeks. And Katarina can’t put off her planned departure any longer. The risks are too great for her and Duke’s family too, now I know the duress he’s under.
“Malachy can do the legwork,” I tell Katarina, quickly revising my plans.
He can take one of the twins while my other brothers keep things ticking over in Las Vegas.
Lorcan would have been my first choice to partner Malachy, but I don’t want him anywhere near the men who held him captive. Not without me.
“Aren’t you forgetting something?” asks Katarina.
“Yeah, I know,” I say, already wondering how the fuck I’m going to sell my plan to Dad. “I’m the one who’s closest, but you underestimate my powers of persuasion.” Which my family have become immune to, but it’s still worth a try.
“And your explanation for staying in Chicago would be…?” She leaves me to finish that thought.
Shit.
Ignacio is supposed to be my excuse for being here. Or so Katarina believes.
“Your search is over,” she says glumly. “Job done. There’s no valid reason for you to stay.”
“I have every reason.”
“Not one you can tell your father.”
With an elbow on my knee, I rest my weary brow on my hand.
If I’m going to convince my dad to let me stay in Chicago, first I’m going to have to come clean to Katarina or else my suspicious little Bratva princess will go digging for her own answers.
It’s better if it comes from me, if only marginally.
There’s a wee chance she might appreciate my honesty. Here’s hoping.
“I think you’d better sit down, lovely.”
Katarina’s quiet for a moment. “He knows about us.” She’s too sharp for her own good. I might just love her for it, but that doesn’t get me out of the shit.
I throw a heartfelt apology into one single word. “Yeah.”
There’s more silence I should fill, but I don’t dare.
“Malachy snitched on you after our first mission,” Katarina concludes. “And instead of punishing you, your father saw it as an opportunity to spy on me.”
“I only let him think that’s what I was going to do because I wanted to see you again. I was desperate to see you again, Kitty,” I emphasize. “You know I’m crazy about you.”
“And what does John get out of this little arrangement other than letting his snake of a son corrupt his enemy’s niece?”
“Worship, not corrupt,” I correct her.
“It’s corruption in my uncle’s eyes. If your dad…” She pauses long enough to put more pieces of the puzzle together. “Is he going to tell my uncle what we’ve been doing? Have you been collecting evidence? Am I going to find videos online of me sitting on your cock, Killian?”
“Jesus, Katarina!” I jump out of my seat and jab a finger into thin air. “Do you not know me by now? I’m not like your brother, or any of the creeps Vasili likes to do business with! There are no hidden cameras.”
“But you still used me as a pawn.”
“Dad wanted me to break you and Duke up before you could get married and I’ve been playing along so I have the excuse to be here. That’s all.”
“Does John know what I’m planning to do?”
“No. And I’ve never kept something this significant from him before, but it’s one risk I wasn’t prepared to take.
He thinks I’m here seducing you away from Duke.
” My voice rises to get my point across when I add, “And before you even suggest it, there was no playacting when it came to us. Everything I gave you came from the heart. It was real.”
The silence is deafening and then…
“Was real,” she repeats and it might just be the saddest words I’ve ever heard. I used the past tense.
“I didn’t mean…”
Katarina inhales deeply before she delivers the sucker punch.
“We’re done, Killian. It’s too risky. There are too many people who know too much, and the closer we are to the wedding, the more likely it is that we’ll be found out.
What happens then?” she asks. “When all hell breaks loose, who’ll be fighting for me?
I’ll tell you who. No one. Not even you.
” Her laugh is bitter. “I might be capable of starting a war or two, but I’m not the princess men die for. ”
I gravitate back to the window and the city scape. The problem with light pollution is you don’t see the darkness that’s already closing in around you. “I’d die for you.”
“You’re forgetting I’m a Barkov. If your dad heard you saying that, you’d be dead in his eyes anyway.
Could you live with that? I know how much you love him.
And your brothers. They need you. Lorcan especially, and even that dickwad Malachy.
You’re so lucky to have your family and I won’t take that from you. ”
Words get stuck in my throat. I don’t know how to answer her.
“I don’t want to see you again,” she says, hammering the point home like a stake through my heart. There’s a storm raging in my soul as she delivers her final blow. “I’m going to start afresh somewhere new. I’ll find someone else. And so will you.”
“No, Katarina, we won’t,” I say with a clarity so sharp it cuts through the noise in my head.
An eerie calm descends. “I belong to you and you belong to me. You’re mine.
Every inch of your body. Every thought in your head.
Every beat of your heart that’s thumping in your chest because you know it’s true. ”
“Don’t–”
“That pussy belongs to me too,” I interrupt. I open the app on my phone. “I’ll know when you’re wearing the vibrator. And when you are, you’ll know when I’m thinking of you.”