“How did my mother meet Cian?”
“I don’t know. But if you want to meet your family, they might have answers for you. Cian isn’t the nicest guy. Just keep that in mind, Liv. I don’t know how he’ll respond to having another daughter. From what Aiden and Sonny have told me, Cian used to lock Ella in her room and wouldn’t let her have friends.”
“I see,” she muttered. “Well, we should go upstairs. You need a bath and some rest.”
We rode the elevator to the top floor. I had a computer lab, a gaming room, a living room, and at the end of the hall, my bedroom. I rarely slept upstairs. It took too much effort to drag my ass up here from the Battle Cave. Most nights, I slept on the couch or in the spare bedroom down there.
Olivia pushed open the double doors and glanced around the room as if stepping into a foreign territory. No one ever came up here. She’d only been in my bedroom a handful of times over the years. Like the rest of the house, it looked sterile, clinical. White walls, navy blue bed sheets and accent pillows. Pretty standard bachelor pad stuff.
Of course, I had half a dozen monitors, laptops, and a massive flat-screen television hung over a fireplace. I could never have too many gadgets.
Olivia took my hand and dragged me into the ensuite bathroom. She kneeled at the Jacuzzi tub and turned on the water, running her hands under the faucet.
Once she found the correct temperature, she stood up and gripped the hem of my T-shirt. “Raise your arms.”
I did as she asked and let her strip off my clothing. Keeping her eyes on me, she unbuttoned my pants and slid down the zipper. There wasn’t anything sexual about this. She put her hand on my marred chest and gasped at the sight of the bandages.
“Drake,” she whispered. “How did you survive this?”
“A miracle, I guess? I figured if the beatings didn’t kill me, the high carbon dioxide levels would.”
I was a man of math and science, not faith. But someone had been watching over me in that cave. Science dictated I should have eventually passed out from the gases and suffocated. It was a miracle. There was no other explanation for why I was still alive.
“I prayed for you.” She ran the pads of her fingers over my abs. “Every single day.”
“Someone heard your prayers, I guess.”
“Just not all of them.” She sucked in a sharp breath. “Otherwise, Tate would be here, too.”
“Liv—”
“Don’t say you’re sorry. No more apologies, Drake.”
“But I owe you one.”
“You didn’t kill him.”
“No, but my tech did. If I hadn’t made Tate the head of my security?—”
“Stop it, Drake. Do you have any idea how much my brother loved you? He believed in you so much that the entire time he was in the Marine Corps, he couldn’t wait to get out because that meant working side-by-side with you.”
“But I failed him. I saved my friends from danger. I helped rescue their wives. Yet, with my brother, I couldn’t do anything to prevent it from happening. They forced me to sit there and watch as they tortured Tate.”
Olivia hooked an arm around me, careful not to touch my bruises. However, that was hard to do considering my broken ribs. Whenever I breathed, it felt like my bones were shaking loose and ready to collapse my lungs.
I tried not to flinch as Olivia hugged me. She didn’t need to see how much it hurt just to hold her, when being here with her was the only thing getting me through Tate’s death.
“I’m glad you made it,” Olivia said, a smile on her beautiful face. “I need you, Drake.”
“We need each other.”
She pushed my pants down to my ankles, and I kicked off my shoes along with my jeans. Olivia bent over the tub to turn off the water. I moved behind her, gripping her hips.
“One day, I’m going to marry you, Liv. You’re going to have my babies. And we’re going to live the way Tate wanted us to.”
She spun around to face me, eyes wide. “What did my brother say to you? You have an eidetic memory. Tell me. I know you remember every word he said.”
I fought the terrible flashbacks of the cave and did my best to focus on the present. “Tate said,If you get out of here and I don’t, I need you to promise me three things. One, you will take care of Liv and make sure nothing bad ever happens to her. Two, I want you to tell her the truth. She should know that I’m the reason you’re not together. And three, you better fucking marry her, Drake. My sister has been in love with you since the day we moved into your house. She deserves to be happy. I feel like a dick for keeping you guys apart for so long when it’s been so obvious how you feel about each other.”
