Kian’s Guest Bedroom
I’ve been veering between panic, fear, and anger for the past hour. An hour of desperately trying to break the chain on the handcuffs. An hour of tugging and twisting until the skin on my wrist is raw and bloody. An hour of wondering if the man who took me will come in, see that I’m trying to escape, and punish me for it.
Kian O’Sullivan is everything my nightmares predicted. Just as cruel. Just as sneering. But in other ways, he’s different. More… fully formed. Not just a cartoon villain, a caricature drawn from the mind of a five-year-old.
He’s a man with a penthouse apartment high above the city.
He’s a man with carpeted floors and beautiful paintings.
He’s a man with deep blue eyes and a jawline that makes me want to forgive every sin he’s ever committed against me.
Of course, guess which set of thoughts is invading me at my weakest moments?
At my strongest, I remember to think of what I will do to make him pay for what he’s done to my family. He robbed me of my father, of the comfortable world that I would have inhabited. If it weren’t for him, I’d have spent my life living in an apartment just like this one.
My fast-moving thoughts pause for a second. Is that what I want? Is that what I miss?
I don’t know if I even want the answers to those questions. His poisonous accusations have already penetrated too deep into my subconsciousness. With every breath I take, I hear Kian’s words again.
“Your father was a rapist. He was a human trafficker. He was the lowest of the low. A man without a fucking soul.”
When Drago spoke of our father, he spoke only of the powerful don he was. I don’t know which version of the truth is real. At this point, I’m not sure if I want to find out.
There’s a nagging voice in the back of my head that wonders about the man who had a hand in raising my brother. Drago’s not exactly the poster boy for the product of good parenting. I, on the other hand, was too young and too female to be of much concern to the men in my life.
But Drago was being groomed to follow in Papa’s footsteps. What does it mean that Drago is the way he is, then?
I close my eyes, trying to stop the onslaught of doubts from derailing my anger. After all, anger is all I have now. The driving force behind my determination to get free. And getting free is the only thing left that matters. I’m not safe around men like this.
My father, my brother, my ex-husband, Kian O’Sullivan… They’re all the same.
The only way I can live is if I’m free from all of them. And the only way to be free is to leave behind this life once and for all.
I yank hard against my cuffs and I feel another layer of skin come off. I wince against the biting pain, but I don’t stop.
That is, until I hear footsteps approaching the door. It opens. Kian walks in.
He’s changed outfits. Now, in place of the sweaty, bloodstained clothes he was wearing before, he’s in fitted beige pants and a tight, dark t-shirt that brings out the blue in his eyes and the chocolate of his hair.
I notice a few threads of grey at his temples and in his beard. Between that and the hardened wrinkles in the corners of his eyes, he must be in his early forties at least. But the muscle in his torso and the gleam in his eyes make him look twenty years younger.
“Here you go,” he says, holding out a bottle of water to me.
I idly consider throwing it right back in his smug face. But it’s a plastic bottle, which means at worst it’ll just spill on his floor a little. Won’t even be heavy enough to cause a bruise. Besides, I’m parched.
I grab it and drain half the bottle in seconds. When I lower it back down, Kian’s still staring at me, his thoughts hidden behind veiled eyes that are both weary and watchful. “Do you need anything?” he asks.
“You mean apart from my freedom?”
He smirks. “That’s not on the menu, I’m afraid.”
“What are you planning?”
“I’m planning on finding your brother,” he tells me honestly. “He’s done enough for long enough. Time for that to come to an end.”
I shake my head in sad dismay. “All these years… has he made any kind of impact?”
Kian’s smirk deepens. There’s a dark bent to it that makes the hair at the back of my neck stand on end. “Not the kind he hoped he would,” he says. “He’s only ever been an inconvenience. Just a petty little gadfly. Which is why I’ve let him live. But I’ve reached my limit. I’m done being benevolent.”