His side-eyes me. “I haven’t. I’ve just been…”
“Jealous? Twisted? Vindictive?”
He smiles, looking down in the beer bottle like it’ll give him all the answers. “That and others, yeah.”
“You’ve made my life a living hell,” I bite out, draining my beer. Killian offers me his and at this point, I don’t question it. I’m confused and my arm is fucking killing. I just want to be home—I want to talk to Collins. “You’ve never let me have one day of peace since being here. Constantly threatening to tell the clan who I am. You’vealwayshated me.”
“How do you think it’s been for me, Hayes?” He startles me, using my name. “Maeve doesn’t trust easily. Butyou? She let you in. You got to see sides of her that I spentyearstrying to see.” Those black eyes flash, rage and envy shining back at me. “You got a place I wanted. For years. So maybe I wasn’t nice to you. But let’s face it—I could have been a lot worse.”
It wasn’t hate—not entirely. Killian hates what I represent, what he couldn’t be. No, he’s jealous that Maeve relied on me, bled with me on the streets, and not with him.
Begrudgingly, I get it. A little bit. After all, the man is obsessed with Maeve and to see someone where he wants to be, has twisted the deranged ghoul into something nasty. I just happened to be the proverbial punching bag.
“So what? Now we’refriends?”
Killian raises an eyebrow. “Do you want to be?”
Do I want to be friends with a psychotic killer? “God,no. This is so weird.”
He smirks. “Thank fuck.” He puffs from the butt of the cigarette, smoke drifting from his nose, a dragon in the night. “What did he do?” He jerks his head toward the fire.
Maybe it’s the booze, or the need to finally unload. Maybe because there’s always been a part that saw Killian as someone I wanted on my side instead of my enemy. Because he’s a force in this world, his name scares even the De Luca Capo.
I sigh, pinching my brow, shoulders dropping.Why the hell not?
“He helped Ferguson teach Collins how to dissect bodies.” When I look up, Killian’s mind is trying to decipher my meaning. I don’t love how intelligent the killer is. “They used live bodies, reaper. Made her cut up humans, patch them up and do it all over again. He used her during his interviews.”
The emotions close off, eyes hard and unrelenting. “Oh.”
My mouth frowns. “Oh? You look at these girls like they’re your fucking family and all you can say isoh?”
Killian sips from his beer, shrugging. “I already knew about that.”
Rearing back, I glare, calculating how quickly I can move to shove the reaper’s head in the fire. “You knew?”
“Maeve too.” He nods. Looking at me, the asshole smiles. “You don’t honestly think Maeve didn’t, do you?” He tsks. “Maybe you don’t know her as well as I thought.”
I hate him.“And she did nothing to stop it?”
He gulps from the bottle, eyes firmly on the fire. “By the time she found out, the lessons had stopped. And it’s not as if Collins confided in her so she could stop it.” Kicking his feet out, Killian flicks ash away. “No, Maeve found out when she eavesdropped on a conversation.”
I still have the urge to strangle him. “Whatconversation?”
The reaper sucks from the butt, holding the smoke in his lungs a moment too long to be healthy. “About a year before Ferguson died, he had an interesting guest at the manor late one night. I had just come back from a mission and was ordered to attend.”
He flicks ash away again. “I told Maeve as soon as I got there. Because she needed to be aware.”
Finishing the beer, I toss the bottle into the flames. Within seconds, the glass shatters, disrupting the soothing sound of the night. “And? Who was it?”
“Roman Senior,” he says, inhaling another drag. “Your dad. Apparently, Ferguson was planning all along to give Collins to your father as another wife.” He shrugs, cracking his knuckles. “Maeve listened outside the door as they planned to bring the girl in, after her residency. Senior was so impressed with the lessons Ferguson gave her.” Finally, those bleak, black eyes look up at me. “He was so fuckinghappywith how good she was. Ferguson served her on a silver platter and she had no idea.”
For years, Collins survived that house, with her father, enduring torture of the worst kind because she thought it meant safety. She thought if she played by Ferguson’s rules, she’d be free. To be a doctor, to help people.
When really, he was training her to be the next Bruno bitch and sentenced to a life of imprisonment. He broke her like a well-trained horse and she never knew.
My father is a horrible man.He’d kill her.
“And where were you?”
