His eyes fluttered from the grey double doors in front of him, to his sister. He took a steadying breath, rolling his head around on his shoulders to stretch out his tensed muscles. Jumping up and down a few times to get his blood pumping, Mark nodded at his sister.
Throwing the door open, Mark ran out of the double doors and towards the main boxing ring. As polite clapping and whistling erupted through the crowd due to her brother’s arrival, Grace stepped out after him and watched as her brother climbed his way onto the ring. He slammed each of his feet onto the springboard underneath him, letting the resounding, hollow noise of his footsteps match up with the heavy bass that played around him. The audience erupted into louder cries.
Grace’s eyes swam over the guests, her eyebrows shooting up into her forehead as she watched the well-to-do businessmen around her demand violence. She’d always assumed these types of men were above this type of lifestyle, but as she looked through the crowd of expensive suits and luxury watches, it became startingly clear to her that she’d underestimated the average man’s craving for bloodshed. The longer she looked at these men, the more violent the churning in her stomach became—it wasn’t just any blood these men wanted to see shed tonight, but her own brother’s.
Turning to retreat back into the locker room—now desperate for the horrid smell she’d practically gagged on moments before—Grace came face-to-face with a large bodyguard, a man she swore she recognized from another one of her father’s business ventures. The moment of almost-recognition passed when he wordlessly ushered her down towards the ring—the fight was going to start soon, she realized with a grave certainty.
Grace spun back towards the audience she’d been determined to abandon only moments before, deciding to do her best to ignore them. She stepped through the aisle quickly, keeping a steady pace as she wove around the various coaches and rag boys that paced around the ring, looking up at the men they’d spent so much time training and preparing for tonight. Grace prayed she’d slip by her father without being noticed or, with any luck, she’d manage to sneak by the ring without running into anyone she recognized.
As Grace stepped around the corner of the ring, her eyes fell on a front row of seats, all occupied by a striking family of dark, raven-haired men with piercing blue eyes. Each of them wore black suits, buttoned up over the top of a light blue dress shirt that intensified the color of their eyes. The Kelly family, Grace bit down on her tongue until a coppery taste flooded her mouth, her eyes focusing on the youngest son—Kilian.
Despite the uncanny resemblance to the other men in his family, Kilian’s face had a pinch to it that rubbed Grace the wrong way. Even now, from his front-row seat at a boxing event she was almost certain he didn’t have to pay for, his face was pulled into a thinly-veiled sneer as he looked around the room. There was something about him that she didn’t pick up on from his brothers or even his father, a strength and charismatic feeling that she got in her very core when she looked at him. And it was impossible to shake.
Grace continued walking to the far side of the gym, managing to dodge the attention of the Kelly men by ducking behind a group of oblivious men who couldn’t find their seats. Just before she reached the set of doors that led outside, Grace felt the urge to look behind her, half-expecting to see Kilian staring after her—or, to her ultimate horror, the entire group of Kelly men. Grace felt a muscle flex when she noticed that Kilian had risen from his seat. To her relief, he was facing the other direction and had yet to take notice of her. His eyes swept over the crowd, pinching together the sides of his jacket as he made his way towards the door that Grace had walked out of with Mark earlier.
Her eyes narrowed as he slid through the double doors with a quick look over his shoulder, making sure that no one had followed him out of the gym. A loud announcer’s voice came booming over the auditorium speakers, capturing the attention of the audience as the lights went out. Grace looked up at the ring, watching as Mark hyped the crowd up by throwing his large arms into the air. To Grace’s surprise, the businessmen around her roared triumphantly at her brother, waving their hands—some of them, stuffed with dollar bills. Wrapping her hand around the door handle, Grace threw her shoulder into it gently to get it to peel away from the doorframe.
Sneaking out into the hallway, she made sure to shut the door behind her to keep the gym dark. She didn’t want to miss Mark’s fight and despite the growing sense of guilt inside of her that had now tripled since this morning, Grace pushed herself on. There was something strange about Kilian’s behavior and even if no one else saw it, she needed to see it for herself.
Grace turned down the hallway that she and Mark had used earlier, the same one that she knew Kilian was on. She kept her footsteps lighter now, shifting her eyes between each of the open doorways to make sure she saw Kilian before he saw her.
After making it most of the way down the hall without running into him, Grace turned to the closed door of her father’s office with a dark finality—he was in there. She stepped to the closed door, holding her ear up to the wood to listen for him before continuing with her search—holding her breath, Grace could hear soft shuffling noises. A deeper sound, a guttural cough, proved that her hunch was right.
She pulled back from the door, reaching out for the handle and tossing it aside. Standing on the other side of the desk, rifling through the drawers of her father’s mahogany workspace, Kilian stood with a bored expression. He looked up at her as if she’d caught him doing the same thing a dozen times before—as if this were the most casual thing in the world. There was something about his nonchalant behavior that ticked Grace off, that ignited the bile inside of her throat to turn into the dangerous breath of a dragon.
“You want to explain what the hell you think you’re doing?” Grace spat, her eyes flickering from Kilian’s smooth, unbothered face, to the papers he was spilling out over the top of the desk. Invoices from vendors, an updated list of suppliers, a handwritten note about which types of exercise equipment to purchase in the upcoming months—everything a cop would expect to find while searching a newly-renovated gym.
“Nothing,” Kilian answered in a cool tone, holding up his badge as if it were a pass to do whatever he wanted. He dropped the badge in the next second, letting it fall against the front of his button-up shirt, hanging from a silver beaded chain. As soon as the badge fell against his chest, Kilian continued digging through the other desk drawers, pulling out various papers and items to inspect them further. He crouched, pulling open the lower drawers.
Frustratingly enough, the top of his black hair was visible over the top of the desk and Grace couldn’t help but imagine how good it’d feel to rip a portion of his styled hair from his scalp.
Swirling the idea in her mouth as if it were a particularly enjoyable piece of hard candy, Grace scoffed. She crossed her arms in front of herself as she watched Kilian rifle through her father’s belongings, knowing that she needed to be careful in her interactions with him. A mixture of anger and disbelief mixed on her face, causing her mouth to pinch into an angry bunch of pink.
“I’m sure it’ll thrill you to hear me admit that I don’t know the first thing about police work,” she started, stepping closer to place her fingertips on small bits of free space left on her father’s desk. “But I’m pretty sure you need a warrant before you go looking around.”
His eyes met hers; they were lined with annoyance. He stood up fully on the other side of the desk, his body extending closer to the ceiling than she thought was possible. Even though he didn’t speak to her, Grace could tell from the way he towered over her and kept his face rigid, that he was trying to intimidate her into letting him stay.
Ignoring the hammering sensation in her chest, Grace stared back at Kilian for another moment. She kept her arms crossed in front of her, trying to communicate through her body that, like him, she was intent on holding her ground. She wasn’t going to budge with her family on the line. Part of her wondered if he was betting on her to act this way, but she couldn’t help herself. She knew she was within her rights to demand that he have the proper paperwork to conduct this kind of investigation. “You need to leave, Kilian Kelly.”
His eyebrows twitched up at the mention of his full name, a satisfied smirk spreading across his features as he took in the sight of Grace, red-cheeked and stewing with anger. He stepped around her, the smile on his face never faltering, and walked towards the door. For a moment, as Grace’s eyes tracked him, she thought he was retreating from the space and that his smile had been less out of amusement and bordering on sheepish. Regardless of her anger, Kilian grabbed a hold of the wooden door and shut it, letting the hardware click into place in the doorway. “I’m not going anywhere,” he said confidently, turning to look her in the eye once more. “Grace Walsh,” he added for dramatic effect.
Grace knew he was trying to rattle her, but she ignored his antagonistic ways, moving in front of him to block his way back to the desk. To Grace’s surprise, Kilian stepped towards a cabinet in the other part of the room—a cabinet she’d only ever seen her father access. “What are you doing?” Grace demanded as Kilian’s fingers worked the large, silver dial. There was no possible way that Kilian knew the code—it was a family secret that neither Mark nor she had been trusted with and yet, with each precise spin of the lock, Grace could hear a pleasant clicking noise.
Soon, there was a larger, more definite click that told her Kilian had managed to get the safe open. Stepping closer, Grace was unable to control her curiosity and became more focused on seeing into the safe around Kilian than removing him completely. Before she could get a better look at the contents of the safe, she watched in disbelief as Kilian pulled out an envelope, thick around the middle where the tabs connected.
Kilian held the envelope to his chest, looking down the white paper as if it would reveal its contents with a simple look. Watching as his fingers moved to pull the envelope open, Grace’s hand shot out to snatch it from his hands. As if sensing her move before she made it, Kilian lifted the envelope in the air to keep it just beyond her reach. Jumping up to reach for her father’s envelope, Grace gave the man in front of her an irritated glare. Infuriatingly enough, Kilian’s face wasn’t even lined with concern in that moment, but something more along the lines of satisfaction, as if he was playing a low-stakes game of keep-away with a small child or a pet.
Seeing that amusement on his face unleashed the anger that had been stewing within Grace the whole day long—anger that she had felt at her brother for putting himself in harm’s way, at her father for encouraging it, and at the businessmen in the gym for funding it—she angled all of that towards Kilian in the moment and sent a sharp, knuckle-led punch into his gut. Her hand narrowly missed the hard surface of his police badge as it stared up at her, reminding her of the consequences of assaulting an officer with a mocking glimmer. Kilian’s face laced together with dull pain, his legs stiffening as he doubled over. Even in his pain, he kept the envelope away from her, tucking it into the center of his body.
Groaning, Kilian’s free hand blocked the next hit that Grace prepared for him, tossing her hand with a flippant hand gesture. Throwing her weight at him in the next second, Grace landed on top of the man and clawed at his hand, trying to pry the white paper from his clutches. One of his legs lifted to rest against her side, tossing her off of him and sending her spinning onto the floor. Before Grace knew what was happening, she looked up into Kilian’s eyes as he, with one of his palms, pinned both of her wrists against the hardwood flooring of her father’s study. Grace began kicking her feet wildly, trying to buck him off of her body to gain the upper hand.
Kilian let out a laugh as he tried to catch his breath. “You’re lucky,” he said, shaking his head down at her as he readjusted her wrists in his hand. “If you weren’t a girl, this would’ve been a bad day to be you,” he leaned in, trying his best to threaten her, but there was a softness behind his eyes that told her he was bluffing. “I wouldn’t have held back at all,” he shook his head, lifting his eyes from hers to envision the violence he would’ve rained down upon her in an alternate universe.
Grace pulled against his hands, trying her best to send her elbows into both of his shoulders, but was embarrassed to see that his arms hadn’t budged at all. In fact, he hardly looked tired from restraining her. Irritated by the weight of his body on top of hers, Grace hoped that her disgust for him translated in her eyes. In that moment, she hoped her eyes burned him. “You have no right to steal my father’s things, you petty little thief!” she spat at him, her anger renewed by speaking about it.
Kilian’s eyes searched her own for a moment, but ultimately, his face pulled back into his trademark sneer that she’d come to loathe. “It’s not stealing if it wasn’t his,” he said, tightening his hold on her wrists until she could feel a lack of blood in each of them. A prickling that started at the tips of her fingers and then down the sides of her pinky fingers. “This,” he held the envelope up in front of her to taunt her, “belonged to my family. I’m taking it back.”
Grace threw herself forward, into Kilian’s body, to knock him off of her. He pulled back from her as she did so, placing his knees on top of her feet to hold her in place. “My father isn’t a thief!”
