Page 26

TWENTY-FIVE

DARLIN’

NICOLETTE

P anic flares up inside of me. I don’t even think about screaming. It’s all about getting away from him, and if that means crawling, I’ll fucking crawl .

And that’s when he rises up, then steps down hard on top of my right hand.

I gasp, and he warns, “Don’t scream, Nicolette. This is just between me and you. Don’t you scream.”

It’s been three years since I’ve heard that tone from him. Quiet and threatening, but with enough pleasantness to it that he can gaslight me into thinking I misunderstood how he meant it… when I hear Kieran’s soft voice drift down to me, I’m sixteen again, he’s sliding into my bed, running his hand down my sleep pants, telling me to be quiet, that I don’t want to wake our parents up, that it’s just between me and you …

I freeze. There’s nothing else I can do. I’m on the ground, he’s standing over me, and twenty-seven-year-old Nic disappears.

Kieran smiles. “That’s my girl.”

I whimper, scraping my palm against the gravel as I try to pull my hand out from beneath his boot.

Ignoring me, he reaches inside of his long coat, pulling out something that he keeps concealed against his palm. His duster fans out behind him and he drops to one knee. His hand goes for my throat, and I don’t know what he has in his hand, but he jabs me with it at the same time as he hooks his hand under my pit, helping me off the ground.

The whole exchange took maybe two, three minutes.

Whatever Kieran jabbed me with? It works even faster.

My eyes start drooping as he drops my arm over his shoulder. His hand shoots around my waist, supporting me as he half-drags, half-carries me toward a car parked nearby. I never even saw it there, and when I do see that he has two doors open for an easy exit and entrance, I tremble.

“Shh. Don’t worry. I got you.” He gooses my side before pulling his arm back, pushing against me so that I have no choice but to topple down onto the passenger-side seat. “I’m bringing you home.”

The last thing I remember is flopping over. I have no control of my body at that point as I fall onto the driver’s seat while Kieran chuckles darkly to himself as he slams the door closed behind me.

By the time he walks around his car and slips in through the other side, I’m already out.

My cheek is tender, my head throbbing, and my whole damn body feels like it weighs a thousand pounds when I wake up.

The ground beneath me is chilly and hard . My lower back and hip are stiff, too, but it’s my upper body that warns me that something’s wrong. Though it’s been years since I’ve had a hangover, this is exactly what I remember it being like.

What the?—

That smirk. That goddamn smirk as he stepped on my hand before hoisting me up, moving me around like his own personal doll.

How could I have forgotten that smirk ?

My eyes spring open and, as though I could sense it while coming to, there it is.

Kieran is sitting on top of some kind of wrapped pallet. The room I’m in is gloomy enough that it doesn’t bother my eyes, though I can make out his silhouette against the wall opposite of where I’m sprawled on a cement floor.

His jacket is gone. Wearing nothing but a black t-shirt that shows off the trail of his leaves, black jeans, and black boots, it’s hard to pick out details from this angle… but I see the smirk and know that, whatever happened since he grabbed me, I’m not going to like it.

“Impressive,” he says, pushing off the pallet before standing up on his feet. “The drug I shot you up with was supposed to keep someone of your height and weight out for at least another hour.”

“You… you drugged me?” That would explain the woozy feeling. I’m outraged enough that he would do something like that to me that I snap past my growing fear. “With what ?”

“Doesn’t matter. I got a guy who hooked me up. Not as decent as that geek Devil’s got working for him, but it does the job. It kept you quiet while I moved you.”

“Moved me? Moved me where?”

“If I wanted you to know that, darlin’, I wouldn’t have bothered with drugging you. But don’t worry. You were only out for about a half an hour. I’m glad. I was getting bored, waiting for you to wake up.”

My heart is racing. Panic knocks aside some of the fatigue that came along with whatever he gave me, and as I pull myself up to a sitting position, I look around.

There’s not much to see. Besides the two lamps on opposite sides of the small space, all I see is a set of stairs, countless pallets of what’s obviously stacked cash, and Kieran.

Oh, no. Oh, no, no, no.

Dragonfly turf. There’s no way I’m not on the East End. The cash gives it away—since the Libellula Family is famed for their counterfeiting operation—but the fact that Kieran felt comfortable enough to abduct me from the West Side and lay me out down her tells me he’s on his home territory.

I’m pretty sure I’m underground. The cold has seeped in past the cinderblock wall, and the grey cement floor screams ‘basement’ to me. There aren’t any windows so I can’t see, and I can’t deny that that’s not on purpose.

“How did you… why ?”

“Oh, Nicolette… I know you know why.”

I do. I don’t want to admit it, but I do.

“Kieran—”

“Do you know how much trouble you’ve caused me?” he asks conversationally. Then, as though he just had a sudden thought, he asks, “How is your mom? Still recuperating?”

I’m not feeling so great, but I’m not so out of it I don’t hear alarm bells clanging against my skull. “What? She’s fine. Why? Why did you ask me that?”

“Just checking.” Kieran shrugs. “I mean, I didn’t want to kill her. I already lost one mom when I was young. Dad was only with your mom for a couple of years, but I thought of her as mine, too. I didn’t want her to have to die to get you back to Springfield, but a little car accident? I didn’t think that was so bad.”

Wha— no . “You’re the one who hit her car? She said it was a hit and run!”

“Well, obviously. I wasn’t going to stick around and get caught. You think I’m new here or something?” He snorts under his breath. “Fucking Haines did.”

My stomach jolts. “What do you know about Haines?”

“That he’s a fucking idiot who didn’t know how to follow simple orders. He’s lucky someone else took him out before I got the chance to.” He pauses, a knowing look on his handsome face. “I’m assuming it was McIntyre.”

“I— I don’t know what you’re talking about.”

“Of course not. He probably didn’t want to scare you off with what being in the life’s really like. Not me, darlin’. I want you to know my dark side. You can only love me if you love all of me. Just like I love all of you.”

He’s insane. This… this is insane .

“You don’t love me!”

“If I didn’t love you, I wouldn’t have cared when that idiot informant came nosing around the East End, selling info about the pretty blonde that just started up at the Devil’s Playground. Fuckin’ Fink. He should’ve taken the money I offered him and shut up, but he wanted more.” There’s that laugh of his that haunts my dreams. “Just because I offered good money for anyone who could tell me anything about Nicolette Williams, didn’t mean he could try to extort me, you know? I had to shoot him. Even a goody-goody like you would agree with that.”

Okay. I’m fuzzy and I hurt and I have no idea what he’s talking about. Did… did someone hear my name at the club and realize that Kieran had a price on my head? That’s what it sounds like to me, but Fink? What’s a Fink? Well, who, since he’s dead… and Kieran’s right. If he sold me out, he deserves to be dead.

Still, I’m so lost. I’m in so much pain, too, I’m fucking terrified , and he’s. Still. Talking.

“And then, after I hired Haines to follow up on Garrett Fink’s intel, the fucker tried to double-cross me. I gave him that ten grand to bring you to me. What does he do? Blows it against Rolls fucking Royce. So no Nicolette. No cash. I’m telling you, darlin’, this would have been so much easier if you just returned to me like you were supposed to.”

I shake my head. It only exacerbates the throbbing headache I can’t deny, but I have to. He needs to know.

I would never willingly return to him.

He sighs, ignoring my ill-disguised panic.

“And then, just this last week alone… I had to park outside Sinners’ territory and wait for you to crawl out of their rathole. And all because you thought that pretty boy could keep you from me. But he can’t, darlin’. Not when you’re mine .”

Holy shit .

I swear, there is such a difference in the way that Royce claims me and when Kieran does. Royce… his possessiveness warms me to the bone. But Kieran? My skin crawls, and not just because he admitted that he hurt my mom.

That he killed the guy who told him I was back in Springfield, working at the Playground.

That he hired Miles Haines to basically kidnap me.

That he knows all about Royce and me, and he’s spent the last week stalking me outside of his place…

It’s in the way that, after all of his easy admissions, his hand drops to his crotch, eyes shining bright with lust and hate and murder as he looks down at me.

I get the lust; he’s looked at me like that since I was fourteen with no boobs, no ass, and he saw easy prey. The hate, too. For walking away from him, from abandoning him these last three years, for fucking anyone else… oh, he hates me. Any love he might have convinced me he once felt is long gone.

And that’s why, when he peers through the shadows down here, there’s no denying the murder in his eyes, either…

That’s who Kieran Alfieri is. He’s been coddled by the Libellula crime family since he was twenty-two. They took him in ten years ago when he proved himself to them, looked the other way when he kept me as his property when I didn’t want to be with him, and gave him the outlet to be the murderous psycho he’s always been.

And, lucky me, he decided when I was a kid that I belonged to him.