While she seemed to have no qualms about turning her back on me and
our family, I couldn’t knowingly hurt her, even when my heart felt as if it had turned to dust in my chest.
“Come with me now, and I’ll forgive you,” I told her.
The sobbing abruptly stopped, and Ciana turned her tearstained face to me in surprise. “Wh-what did you say?”
“If you come with me now, I will forgive you,” I repeated, trying to entice her away from Bain. Anything to get her as far from that motherfucker as possible. He might genuinely feel some kind of affection for her now, but it wouldn’t last. No one with O’Brion blood running through their veins could. If it weren’t for Mom and Nova, I may never have felt it either. But I’d been lucky. I’d been given two people who had taught me how to love. Bain had been raised by people who knew nothing of that kind of emotion, and it would slowly wilt Ciana’s soul if she stayed with him. “We don’t even have to tell anyone about your relationship with Bain. You know Zia would lose her mind if she found out you hooked up with him.”
Hope filled her brown eyes for all of five seconds before she took a stumbling step back, and she lowered her lashes with a sad shake of her head. “I-I can’t go with you, Ryan. I belong h-here.”
“Ciana, if you don’t come with me, I’ll never forgive you,” I threatened, unsure if I meant it or not. I wasn’t sure if I could forgive her even if she did come with me, but I had to at least try. “Your deceit has cost me the one thing in the world I can’t live without. If you had been loyal to me, to Nova, she would still be here. That’s on you. All you had to do was speak up, damn it!”
Huge tears spilled over her lashes. “I know. And that makes what I have to do now even more important. You are the person in the world I love the most, Ryan.” A wounded, snarling sound came from behind her, but neither of us looked in Bain’s direction. Our gazes were locked, both of us willing the other to understand. “You’re my best friend, my twin by choice. I won’t have your death on my conscience too.”
Before I could make sense of her words, she jerked away from Bain and ran back into the house. Bain shot me a weird look, but I was still trying to figure out what my cousin had meant by that last part.
The man holding the hatbox stepped in front of me and shoved it against my chest.
“Take your gift and leave,” Bain commanded. “Ciana has made her wishes known. Convince your people to leave and return home. Choose to stay and attempt to take her from me, and not a single one of you will see another sunrise.” He thrust his hands into his pants pockets, seeming bored once again, as if we were simply discussing the weather. “It’s up to you. I honestly don’t care what you decide at this point. Just know that I will not allow you or anyone else to take that girl from me.”
“Whatever you’re holding over her head to keep her here, it won’t always work. If you knew Ciana as I know her, you would have already realized that.” I took the box that was still being shoved against me. An odd, stomach-turning smell was coming from inside. How I hadn’t noticed it until right then, I wasn’t sure, but now that I had, it felt as if it were being burned into my sinus cavity and would never leave it. Figuring there was a dead animal in the box, I glared up at the man. “Ciana will find a way to leave you, and when she does, we will be waiting for her. All she has to do is say the word, and her family will be here, ready to fight for her. Every last one of us would willingly die for her.”
Bain clenched his jaw, that bored facade he’d had going on fading before my eyes, replaced by a look that told me loud and clear why everyone who’d ever come face-to-face with this bastard had been terrified of him. I was anything but fearful of him, however. If he wanted a fight, I was ready and willing to throw hands anywhere, anytime. Right then and there, preferably. No matter who was the victor, I would be satisfied. Either he would kill me, or I would kill him. The former would put me out of my misery. Take me away from the hollowness of having to exist without Nova and put me one step closer to reuniting with her. The latter would allow me to free Ciana from him and his tyranny.
“As would I.” He lifted one arm, waving it at the house where Ciana had disappeared. “She and those babies are my life now. I don’t care if you don’t believe me. I don’t need your faith in my affection for her or them. The only one I have to prove myself to is Ciana.”
“She might love you, but she will never trust you. And for Ciana, once you’ve lost her trust, you’ve lost her too.” I turned away from him, walking back to the car I’d arrived in, calling over my shoulder. “It’s only a matter of time before she comes to her senses. Once she does, you should probably sleep with one eye open.”
I climbed into the back seat without looking back. The guards took their places on either side of me, and the driver pulled away from the house. The smell coming from the box didn’t seem to bother the other men, and I tried to ignore it, but my curiosity was getting the better of me. My fingers clenched around the sides of the box, fighting not to open the lid.
I figured it was a dead raccoon from the weight of the box. The smell was that of something dead and decaying, but I refused to open it and react in front of Bain’s men.
At the gate, I stepped out of the car and through the door of the gate. Mom, Pop, Zio, and Dante were already standing outside their vehicles. Seeing me, Mom ran over, her eyes eating up the sight of me, visually checking me for wounds.
“Where is she?” Zio demanded as he came toward me. “Why didn’t you bring her back?”
I met his blue gaze steadily. “She refused to come with me.”
“What?” he shouted, running his fingers through his hair. “Why would she stay with that bastard?”
“He’s the father of her babies.”
“Fuck,” Pop and Dante muttered under their breath as Zio’s eyes nearly bulged out of his head.
“No,” he denied, his tone thick with rage…and loss. “She wouldn’t let that motherfucker touch her. She wouldn’t turn her back on her family like that.” He grabbed my arms, his eyes almost pleading with me. “She would never betray us, especially not you.” When I remained silent, he released me. Eyes closed, he hung his head in defeat. “No,” he denied in an emotionally choked voice. “I don’t believe it.”
“What is that god-awful smell?” Mom muttered, her gaze lowering to the box I still held in my hands. “What is this?”
I placed it on the ground between us. “Bain said it was a gift for me. He called it an olive branch.” I straightened without opening the lid, disgusted without even having seen the contents. “From the smell of it, I figure it is a dead raccoon and him giving me one more fuck-you.”
Mom crouched down beside it and cautiously lifted one side of the lid. The way her eyes narrowed had us all taking a step back in case whatever was inside wasn’t dead. Straightening, she lifted the lid completely, and we all got a good look at the contents.
“Holy fuck,” I muttered as I gazed down at the box…
And saw Sheena O’Brion’s severed head, her eyes staring sightlessly back at me, a bullet hole right between her eyes.
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