Page 27

27

EVIE

T he bath water’s gone lukewarm, but I haven’t moved. I just keep sinking deeper into it, like maybe if I lie still long enough, I’ll disappear. Just… vanish into the steam. No more lectures, no more staged tea talks about Elvin fucking Murphy and his "stable job" and his "respectable family". No more talk about duty, tradition, or what I owe my father.

I’m not sure what scares me more—telling them I’m pregnant, or letting Lochlan find out first.

My hand floats across my belly, barely a swell. It’s stupid, I know. Too early to feel anything. But it’s not about the size. It’s about the weight of it. The permanence. This isn’t a mistake I can hide behind the veil of a drunken night or bad judgment. This is life-changing.

And I love him. That’s the mess of it.

I don’t want to. I know I shouldn’t. But I do.

The knock at the door cuts through the silence, not loud, just firm. One knock. Then nothing.

I close my eyes. “It’s open,” I call out, voice sluggish. “I’m in the bath.”

Probably Mum again, come back to apologize. Or Da, finally wanting a word of his own. Maybe Jasper. I don’t know. I don’t care.

I pull the plug with my toes and reach for the towel, the sound of draining water swallowing the noise outside. But I hear it—movement. The creak of the hallway floorboard. Someone stepping lightly. No voice calling back.

I dry off fast, still talking over the sound of water like I’m not alone.

“I don’t want another lecture, alright? I’ve heard enough today. I’ll meet Elvin, I’ll smile politely, but I’m not promising anything. Not tonight.”

I slide into my robe, tugging the belt snug at my waist, still not listening to whoever is out there, and step out of the bathroom, steam trailing behind me. I freeze halfway through tying the robe at my waist.

Darren Connelly is standing near the window, his back partially turned like he’s been there long enough to get comfortable. The sight of him knocks the breath from my lungs, not with shock but with a kind of slow, crawling horror that settles beneath my skin before my brain catches up to it. The gun in his hand is pointed down, loose and casual, like it doesn’t need to be aimed yet. His coat is still buttoned. His shoes are dry. He didn’t just arrive—he’s been here.

My first instinct isn’t to scream or run or speak. I just stand there, cold seeping into my feet from the tile as every nerve in my body tries to lock down at once. There’s nowhere to go. No corner to retreat into. It's just the two of us and the ten feet of open floor between me and the bathroom, and the tiny room might as well be a cage.

“You left the door unlocked,” he says without turning around.

His voice is quiet, low enough that I barely catch it. I don’t answer. I don’t think I could even if I wanted to. My throat is too dry, and the fear has already done its work. It’s wedged itself deep into my spine, hollowing me out from the inside.

He turns to face me, finally, like we’re old friends meeting in the middle of a conversation. His eyes land on me, scan the towel in my hair, the thin robe, the bare feet, and I hate how small I feel under it. I hate that he sees me like this.

“I need to know when your father is meeting with Ronan O’Rourke,” he says. The words come smooth, practiced, like he’s said them before, maybe even to someone who didn’t get the chance to answer.

I shake my head, more out of instinct than defiance. “I don’t know.”

“Yes, you do.”

He says it plainly, and I know he believes it. I don’t try to argue. What would be the point? We both know I’ve seen things I wasn’t supposed to. Eavesdropped. Read names I wasn’t meant to recognize. He’s not here on a guess.

“I won’t tell you,” I say quietly. “Whatever you think I know, I’m not giving it to you.”

His mouth doesn’t move, but something shifts in his eyes. Not anger, not yet—just a kind of steel-hard certainty that tells me this conversation doesn’t end with a choice. Not really.

“I’m not going to be your pawn,” I add, and I hate that my voice quavers at the end.

“You already are,” he says. “You just haven’t figured out which side you’re playing for.”

My stomach twists. I thought I’d been scared before. I hadn’t even started.

He shifts a few steps to the side, and I realize he’s between me and the door. Not by accident. He’s placed himself there. I start to back up without thinking, the robe pulling tighter around me as I move until my hip bumps the edge of the counter.

He doesn’t raise the gun. He doesn’t have to.

“Don’t make this harder than it has to be,” he says. His voice is level, but there’s pressure behind it now. “Just tell me what I need to know.”

I shake my head. “I’m not giving you anything.”

Another step from him. Another step back from me. The last few feet of space in the room close in fast.

“I’ve been patient,” he says. “More than you probably deserve. But if you keep protecting them, you become part of the problem.”

“I’m not protecting anyone. I just—” My voice breaks. “You’ll get them killed.”

His expression doesn’t change. “That’s the whole point."

The second I say no again, his face tightens—not with surprise, not even with anger, but with decision. He closes the distance and grabs my arm, wrenching me forward with a force that knocks the breath from my lungs. I barely register the edge of the table hitting my hip before I’m slammed backward into the wall.

Pain flashes through my spine. The impact cracks something loose in my head and my vision blurs. Before I can recover, his hand fists in my hair and drags me upright, shoving me flat against the plaster.

“You’re wasting time,” he says, breath hot at my cheek. “Yours. Mine. Theirs.”

I claw at his forearm, but he jerks me closer until our bodies are flush and I can feel the press of the gun between us. My robe’s already half undone from the struggle, the belt twisted and pulling with every movement.

I try to scream, but he clamps a hand over my mouth, pressing just hard enough to cut the sound but not the breath. His weight is fully on me now, one knee driving between my thighs, pinning me in place. I can’t move. I can barely breathe. The pressure against my ribs makes it feel like the air is leaking out of my lungs one shallow gasp at a time.

I shake my head violently, thrashing, but he just leans in harder. His hand slides down the curve of my side, slow, measured, and when his fingers hook into the belt at my waist and tug it once, everything in me turns to ice.

“I can do this any way I want,” he murmurs, too calm. “We both know that.”

Tears sting my eyes, unbidden and furious. I don’t want to cry. I don’t want him to see what this is doing to me. But the fear is everywhere now. It’s in my hands, trembling. It’s in my legs, locked and useless. It’s in the way I stop struggling—just for a second—because some buried part of me wonders if it’ll hurt less that way.

His hand slides the knot open.

I flinch hard, a full-body jolt, panic overriding everything else. My voice comes back in a ragged, desperate rasp.

“Please don’t?—”

He presses the gun against my stomach.

“Then give me what I want.”

His knee shifts higher, his grip tightening in my hair, and I realize, with sickening clarity, that he’s not bluffing. He didn’t come here to scare me. He came here to break me.

He rips the robe open without hesitation, yanking until the fabric gives. The belt slips from my waist. My hands go straight to my chest, trying to hold the pieces together, but he grabs my wrists and forces them above my head, pinning me to the wall. My bare skin hits cold plaster. The shock of it tears a sound out of me—shame and panic and rage tangled in my throat.

I twist, kick, slam my knee upward, but he shifts his weight fast and traps my legs. His hips grind into mine. His breath is on my face. His hand shoves the robe off my shoulders completely.

He looks down at me like I’m nothing.

I scream, sharp and guttural, fighting like something cornered. My fingernails catch his cheek, and he hisses, grabbing a fistful of my hair and wrenching my head back hard enough that I see stars. My chest is heaving now, fully exposed. His hand moves lower.

That’s when the door bursts inward.

The sound is deafening, the wall turning to powder as the handle flies into it. Lochlan storms in with the force of a hurricane, and Darren doesn’t even have time to turn before he’s tackled off me, his back hitting the ground with a crack.

Lochlan’s on top of him in a blink, fists already swinging. The first hit snaps Darren’s head sideways. The second splits his eyebrow wide open. Blood splatters across the floor in a crimson puddle. Darren grunts, scrambles, tries to reach for the gun—but Lochlan kicks it across the room without breaking rhythm.

He doesn’t speak. He beats.

Each punch lands with a thud of knuckle against bone. One after another, merciless, rhythmless. Darren’s face collapses under the weight of it—lip shredded, teeth loose, nose flattened. He chokes, blood pooling in his mouth, but Lochlan keeps going. His breathing is ragged, teeth bared. His hands are covered in Darren’s blood, the skin across his knuckles already split and raw.

Darren claws at the floor, tries to roll away, and gets dragged back by his collar and slammed against the side of the table. It breaks under him. Wood splinters across the tile. He screams, arm bent wrong, face unrecognizable.

Lochlan lifts him again, slams him to the ground.

“I'll kill you,” he growls, voice deep, barely human. “I'll fucking kill you.”

Darren flails, throws an elbow, misses. He kicks off the floor and somehow, barely, slips free. He stumbles toward the door, slipping in his own blood, and disappears across the lawn.

Lochlan stands there, chest heaving, fists clenched at his sides.

And I collapse to the floor, shaking, robe hanging off my arms, exposed and broken and gasping for air.

He turns to me, face wild, eyes locked on mine, and for the first time, I know I’m safe. Because he came.

Lochlan’s already halfway to the door, chest still heaving, blood running down his hands and forearms. His jaw is clenched so hard I can see the muscles jumping under the skin, and there’s a look in his eyes that says he’s not finished. Not by a long shot.

“No, don’t,” I gasp, stumbling forward. I grab his wrist with both hands, nails digging into skin before I even realize how tight I’m holding. “Please. Don’t go after him.”

He tries to pull away, but I don’t let go. I slide in front of him, pressing my body against his, desperate, still half-naked, shaking so badly I can’t get the words out in order.

“I couldn’t… I didn’t know what to do, he said… he said if I didn’t help him he’d–he’d tell everyone about my father, about what he did, and then the union would fall, and he’d go to prison, and it would be my fault and I thought maybe if I stalled them long enough, I could find a way out, but then I saw Connelly and?—”

I choke on my own breath. My knees start to give, and he catches me by the arms, holding me upright.

“I didn’t mean for it to get this far,” I sob. “I thought I could fix it. I thought I could hide it.”

“Hide what?” His voice is low, rough, still barely human.

“Everything. The files, the copies, what I gave them. I didn’t even know how much they were using me. They said if I told anyone, they’d kill him. Or you. Or both. And then I found out I was pregnant and Mum—she’s making me marry Elvin, like that’ll erase everything, like I’m just supposed to start over and pretend none of this ever?—”

He grabs my face and kisses me.

Hard. Desperate. Like he’s trying to keep me from shattering into pieces. I melt into it, hands still fisted in his shirt, sobbing against his mouth. The kiss doesn’t ask. It takes. And I let it.

When he pulls back, his forehead rests against mine.

“You’re not marrying him,” he says quietly.

He pulls back, breath heavy against my mouth, forehead still resting against mine. His hands stay at my jaw, thumbs brushing the corners of my mouth like he’s trying to quiet the panic spilling out of me.

“I don’t want to,” I whisper, voice catching. “I just didn’t know if you—if you’d want this. Us. The baby.”

He goes still. Every part of him.

His eyes search mine, not frantically, but deeply, like he’s trying to confirm he heard what he thinks he did. He doesn’t speak, just stares at me. His jaw is tight, but not in anger—like he’s holding back something massive, something dangerous, something real.

“You’re pregnant,” he says finally, the words almost breathless.

I nod.

He lets out a sound—quiet, raw, half disbelieving. His hand drops to my stomach. Not cautiously. Deliberately. His fingers press gently against the skin just beneath the edge of my robe.

His throat works like he’s swallowing broken glass.

“That’s mine,” he says, barely above a whisper. “That’s my baby.”

I nod again, still crying, and something in his expression breaks open. The fear, the fury, the weight of everything I never said—all of it crashes behind his eyes.

“You should’ve told me,” he murmurs. “You should’ve told me the second you knew.”

“I was scared.”

He doesn’t ask of what. He already knows.

Then his grip shifts. He’s still holding me, but it’s different now—firmer, possessive, like he’s staking a claim. Not violently. Not out of pride. Out of need.

“I’m not letting them take you,” he says. “I don’t care what your mother says, or your father, or that smug little bastard they’re trying to tie you to. I will kill him if I have to. I’ll kill anyone who thinks they get a say in this.”

I start to cry harder.

“You’re not going anywhere,” he continues. “You’re mine now. You hear me?”

I manage a shaky nod. “I didn’t want to lose you.”

He presses his mouth to my hair. “You won’t.” His voice is low, steady, and terrifying in its certainty. “Not now. Not ever.”

Lochlan bends, hooking his fingers behind my thighs and lifting me into his arms. I wrap my legs around him as he uses a boot to shut the door, then he turns, heading toward my bed.

"I told you I don't share, and I meant it," he growls, dropping me to the bed. I let the robe fall open, no longer scared of being uncovered. For this man, I will do anything, even die.