SWNOVELS Vicious Hearts: Chapter 25
She’s silent on the drive home, her face stony as her blue eyes lance through the window into the night.
At some point, my hand slides from the shifter over to her lap, my fingers lacing through hers. She doesn’t turn my way, but she squeezes my hand tightly, like she’s afraid she might float away if she wasn’t tethered like this.
I want to tell her that she’s not going anywhere. That I’ve got her, and I won’t let her go. I want to scream into the night so fucking loud that whoever that was on the phone hears me and weeps in fear.
Because when I find them, I will redefine the words pain and suffering for what they did to her today.
He’s alive. My father is alive.
I don’t know who that fucker was on the phone. But it sure as hell wasn’t Seamus O’Conor. My foot presses down on the gas, sending the car lurching forward over the Verrazzano Bridge.
Ghosts aren’t real. But even if they are?
This one will learn to fear me.
Back in Brooklyn, at the penthouse, I lead a still dazed looking Neve over to the couch and make her sit. I pour a couple of drinks and slip a glass into Una’s clenched fingers. She shivers, looking up at me with wide, terrified eyes as she takes a sip.
“You don’t believe me.”
It’s not that I don’t believe that she thinks she heard her father. It’s just that that’s fucking categorically impossible.
“Una—”
Her eyes narrow. “I heard what I heard, Cillian.”
“I know you heard what your mind is telling you—”
“Stop,” she hisses quietly. “Don’t do that.”
I pause, taking a drink.
“This wasn’t ‘my emotional state playing with my mind’, okay? This wasn’t someone imitating him, and I’m not fucking crazy.”
“I know you’re not.”
“It was him, okay?! I fucking heard it!”
“Your father is dead, Una,” I growl. “I saw his corpse with my own eyes. Fuck, I walked over it, twice. Ares put a hole through his heart.”
Her jaw clenches as I shake my head.
“Believe me, I of all people know death, and that man is dead.”
“He’s not.”
“Una—”
She stands, whirling and suddenly throwing the glass in her hand as hard as she can at the wall, shattering it.
“Then who the fuck was I talking to?!”
Tears roll down her cheeks as she starts to shake, hugging herself and looking left and right like she’s ready to explode.
“Who!? Because I’m not fucking crazy, okay?! I’m not fucking—”
She collapses when I grab her in my arms and yank her against my chest. Una sobs into me, shaking and sucking in air as her small hands grip my shirt fiercely.
“What do you need,” I growl into her hair.
“I need to feel something other than the sensation of running without ever fucking stopping for once in my life,” she chokes. She lifts her head, her eyes big and so full of pain and need as they look into mine. “I need to feel something that isn’t sadness. Please.”
My hand lifts, cupping her face possessively. Something dark and voracious flickers, sparks, and catches between us like wildfire.
Like a force of fucking nature.
A compulsion.
The crackle of a storm cloud right before it thunders.
“Please,” she chokes. “Please, let me feel—”
She whimpers, moaning as my mouth captures hers. As my lips bruise hers so hard as to make her feel it always.
“Please,” she whispers into my mouth as I scoop her into my arms and storm down the hall to my bedroom. “Make it hurt.”