They twitch until Aiden glares at them. Spurred by what they read in his gaze, one takes Cian’s right arm, the other his left, and they pin them to the table over the remnants of dinner. Cian is so out of it, I don’t know if he notices. Grunts of pain punchout of his mouth in staccato bursts, and his legs jerk fruitlessly against Aiden, who hovers above him with malicious glee.
“Leave, Catriona,” Aiden says, his voice deceptively void of emotion. “I don’t want you to see this.”
I’m shaking my head, but he can’t see me. When I speak, my voice comes out like I’ve walked days through a desert. “I’m not going anywhere.”
I don’t know if he can hear me because Aiden leans down and says to Cian, “I told you one day you’d regret honing me into a killer.”
Then Aiden plunges the knife into Cian’s chest, causing a visible recoil throughout the rapt audience. I have to clutch the chair beside me to keep my knees from buckling like wet paper. The scent of blood fills the air, droplets of it flying to land on every surface. The only sound is Cian’s choked gurgle, followed by the squelch of the knife hacking through muscle, then the dull thud of it hitting bone.
I don’t know how long it continues. Long enough that I can feel myself growing woozy from having to lock my knees to keep upright, but I don’t dare move.
At the crack of Aiden breaking open Cian’s rib cage, I give a full-body jerk, and the room goes white for a second before it comes back into focus.
When the sparks clear from my vision, I find Aiden standing in front of what used to be Cian’s body, his heart clutched in his hands.
“Cian. You have less than a minute to come to your fuckin’ senses before I rip out your heart with my bare hands for touching my wife.”
Based on the faces of his audience, they hadn’t believed he meant it.
He holds on to the heart for a long moment, and the silence is so all-encompassing, aside from the steadydrip, dripof bloodfalling from the table to the floor, that my ears ring. Aiden lets the organ fall from his fingers to plop onto the table. It rolls for a second, making an obnoxious wet sound, until it comes to a stop next to a saltshaker.
Chaos reigns around me. Men go for guns. A cacophony of gunfire erupts, buffeting my ears, but I can barely hear it over the screaming of my rage. Elizabeth and Devin are the first to leap to their feet and try to make it for the door. I jerk in their direction, crawling between bodies, unwilling to let them leave before I exact retribution. For more than a year, I’ve been desperate for answers, and the last person I thought would be involved is the one who took my mother away from me.
When they reach the door, Devin turns and sees me only a few feet behind. He lifts a gun from his side and aims.
But he jerks before he can squeeze the trigger, a hole appearing in the center of his forehead.
I twist around and find Aiden lowering his gun to pistol-whip another attacker. “Go,” he mouths. I know he’s trying to tell me to escape while it’s safe, but I can’t let Elizabeth get away. She has to pay for what she’s done. Mom deserves to finally know justice.
“Elizabeth! Get the fuck back here, you backstabbing bitch!”
Of course she doesn’t turn around, but it feels good to shout at her. I back away as she pulls out a gun and fires off bullets in my direction. Why hadn’t I thought to go for a gun? She’s going to kill me before I can catch up to her.
I trip over a body at the door of the dining room, falling to land on it and recoiling. Then I spot a gun in its hand and rip it free. Checking the safety, I make sure it’s flicked off, and then I peer through the doorway. A bullet drives into the doorframe beside me.
Ducking, I whip the gun around and fire off a shot in the dark. “You’re not going to get out of here. There’s no place torun. I’m going to find you, and they won’t be able to identify you when I’m done. Show your face, and I’ll show you mercy.”
I’m in the hallway now, but it’s dark. The lights are on, but the walls are a dark green with dark wood. She could be anywhere. There’s a sound, and I fire off another blind shot. I try to control myself, but fear and adrenaline are coursing through me.
“Fine! I’m coming out!” she shouts.
Whirling, I find her coming around a corner. Fast. Too fast. Her hands are raised, a gun in one of them. I lower mine, I don’t know, out of instinct? Hesitation to harm my sister. But her face twists with fury, and her arms drop. My shot catches her in the chest before she can squeeze off a round.
I don’t know how long I stand there, looking at her unnaturally still body, when Aiden finds me.
Rushing to me, he barely notices her at the foot of the stairs. “I thought I told you to get out of here.”
“I couldn’t help it,” I whimper. “She wouldn’t stop.”
A pained sound rips from his chest, and he yanks me to him. My arms go around his waist, despite the carnage covering him from chin to thigh. I shake against him until his hands coast over me, soothing me from the height of panic.
“I’m so fucking sorry, love. Let me look at you. Did she hurt you? Are you okay?”
I claw back the tears, but it’s a losing battle. “I’m fine. Are you okay? What the hell was that?”
The tension dissolves from his body, and he tightens his hold around me. “I’m alive.” The words sound as though they’re being scraped from his throat with a rusty spoon. “But I need to get you out of here. Most of them are dead or gone, but I don’t want to stick around. I want to torch this place, and you can’t be in here when I do. Niall is handling everyone else.”
“Why? What’s happened?”
