SWNOVELS Vicious Hearts: Chapter 11
“Wait, you found Una O’Conor?”
And then she found me, and walked right the fuck into my trap.
Through the chaos of both families arriving all at once into the spacious kitchen of the Upper East Side brownstone, I pull Castle aside and give him a quick nod. “It’s been handled. We’re fine.”
It’s not fine. I may have Una herself locked up in my basement kill room. But whoever is pulling her strings— the mastermind—is still out there.
But yes. For now, at least, I have her.
Castle whistles low, raking his finger over his sharp jaw. “Well, fuck. You’ve been busy.”
You have no idea, my friend.
“Dead?”
“Not yet.”
Even saying it brings a sour feeling to my gut.
Not yet.
Killing, I gather, affects most normal people. Heaps guilt upon them. Shame. Remorse. The feeling of being an outcast, having broken a cardinal rule of any functioning society, weighs heavy.
I’ve never been burdened by feeling any of that. Ever. It’s part of who I am. Yes, I’ve killed and felt inconvenienced. Or mildly annoyed. But never any of those other things.
Maybe being born an outcast made me this way. Different. Twisted. Broken.
But even still, even with my emotional detachment when it comes to taking a life, the idea of killing her…sits badly with me. It raises emotions I’m unused to.
Which is beyond fucking confusing, and a little infuriating. Especially since it should be the exact opposite. I should have less than zero qualms about cutting her throat after she tried to kill me—twice.
So why, for the first time in my life, do I suddenly have reservations when it comes to taking a life? Why does the idea of killing Una O’Conor sit so very poorly with me?
I swallow my thoughts away with the whiskey in my glass as Neve catches my eye through the crowd piling into the kitchen. She gives me a wave as she heads our way with Ares in tow.
“Care to fill me in on the details later?” Castle murmurs under his breath.
I nod, and my mask goes back on. The facade I hide behind, trying to look normal. To appear human. To keep from terrifying those around me by letting them see the monster I really am. Even Castle, who sees much more of my darkness than most, doesn’t know the true depth of it.
And that’s just how it has to be.
I smile as Neve crashes into me, giving me a bear hug before turning to hug Castle equally hard. I can’t help but smirk at the lethal shadow that crosses Ares’ face when his wife embraces my number two.
Despite the occasional rumors, of which I am very aware, no, there’s never been anything tawdry or untoward between either of my nieces and their—admittedly extremely handsome—bodyguard. I mean, Castle’s been their protector and even a bit of nanny since they were fourteen and twelve. He’s essentially a big brother to them.
But try telling that to the lethally overprotective man who married Neve. Even if he does know all that, there’s still no hiding the murderous glint in Ares’ eye whenever another man—family or not—even looks at his wife.
I have to say, I can appreciate it. In fact, that demonic possessiveness I saw in Ares—the way he was so fiercely protective and loyal to his family—is the main reason I ever agreed to allow my niece to marry the leader of one of our most bitter enemies.
Yes, from the way he yanks her back from Castle and wraps a possessive arm around her waist as he glares daggers at her one-time bodyguard, I’m more than sure I made the right call.
“God of War,” I murmur with a nod.
Ares shakes off the red mist and turns to grin at me. “Heard you have a lady friend, Cillian.”
I give Neve a look, raising a single brow.
“What, like I wasn’t going to tell him?”
“So,” Ares grins. “Was it that happy-go-lucky personality of yours she fell for, or is this more like a prisoner chained up in your attic kind of thing?”
“Ares!” Neve shoots him a sideways look, elbowing him in the side.
“Oh, c’mon,” he chuckles. “Cillian knows I’m jok—”
“It’s the sub-basement, actually.”
Ares’ brows knit, a slightly concerned look washing over his face before he shakes it away—or, at least, decides he doesn’t want to know if I’m joking or not.
After that, it’s just the usual chaos of a Drakos-Kildare family dinner. And with all the personalities and characters in these two families?
It’s a constant whirlwind.
But oddly enough, given my own brutal and shattered childhood experience with families, it’s something I’ve grown to love.
It doesn’t “fix” me. It doesn’t stop the roaring in my head the way violence and sadism do. But…it’s not nothing, either. And there’s something about all of these people together giving me at least a brief respite from the chaos in my head—without even realizing they’re doing it—that brings a smile to my face.
I mean, not a visible smile. But it’s the thought that counts, right?
Dimitra Drakos, hawkish little elf that she is, comes over and gives me her usual peck on the cheek, clinking her glass of ouzo to my whiskey. Kratos—Ares and Hades’ younger brother and recent amateur chef that he is—arrives, massive arms bulging as he carries in the enormous amount of barbacoa and pulled pork he’s prepared for dinner, which is apparently Latin-themed tonight.
Eilish pulls me aside, gushing about the business school class schedule she’s just hammered out with Columbia University, and how excited she is about some of the professors she’s going to be studying with. Hades even gets a word in while I’m pouring myself another large drink to see when I’ll be making another appearance at the underground fights we occasionally cross paths at.
And by the time we sit down to eat, the sheer magnitude of all this normal, family vibe actually has some of the darkness in me clearing, like fog.
Not all the way.
But still, I’ll take it. I can’t be out killing shitheads in the shadows all the time, now can I?
Here, I can look around at family—old and new—and lose myself in their humanity. They all make it look so easy to be “normal”.
And yet, as I look around this table of unlikely family—enemies that once not so long ago wanted to turn the streets red with each other’s blood—I’m…distracted.
By the captive chained away in my basement.
By Una.
By her soft and yet defiant lips. By the thoughts of her gasped moans and whimpered eagerness when I goaded her with punishment and pain.
That was no act, that night in Club Venom. That wasn’t just her trying to get to me. Or, maybe it was in the beginning, but there’s no faking the way her body eventually responded. There was no lie in the way her cheeks flushed, her nipples puckered to hard, aching points as her thighs clenched. There was no deception in the way she moaned so eagerly, or the way her skin prickled with need and excitement when she breathed out a humbly submissive “Yes, Sir.”
There’s no deceit in how fucking wet she got for me. So wet that as tiny and petite as she is, and as…large as I am, I was able to drive every damn inch of my thick cock deep into her in one thrust.
So wet that she literally came for me on that first, and only, thrust.
The memory of all of that has been taking up serious real estate in my head ever since that night. But right now, fueled by the knowledge that I have her bound as my prisoner, it’s even more fierce. It’s more powerful.
And it’s setting the blackness inside of me ablaze till it becomes an inferno.
“Cillian. Cillian.”
I blink, my brow clearing as I realize it’s not the first time Castle’s muttered my name close to my ear. I turn to see a grim look on his face.
“Dominic Farrell is outside.”
The unspoken rule with all of us is no business at family dinners. But I’m not blind to the concern on Castle’s face.
Tonight’s going to be an exception. And Dimitra can choke on a baklava if she wants to say something about it.
“Back yard,” I grunt before I set my napkin down and finish my drink. “And let’s be quiet about it.”