“Are you okay?”
“Fuck!” I blurt, jolting at the sound of Eilish’s voice the second I walk in the door.
She gives me a sheepish look. “Sorry, didn’t mean to scare you. Did you see my texts?”
“No.”
She frowns. “Really?” Her eyes drop pointedly to my hand, which is holding my phone.
Heat creeps into my face.
“Sorry, I’ve had a lot on my mind. I didn’t even look at this thing the whole ride over.”
Because I was still shivering and aching in the best way possible from the frankly animalistic sex I had with Ares just before coming over here. One moment, I was getting out of the shower wrapped in a towel to brush my teeth. The next moment, he barged right in, ripped the towel off, bent me over the vanity, and told me to “watch myself get fucked like a bad girl.”
Yeah.
I’m literally still wet thinking about that. Which is why I spent the whole drive over here staring out the back seat window, completely ignoring my phone.
I smile weakly at my sister. “What’s up?”
Her lips twist. “I heard Mike Jennings went to the hospital.”
I swallow, try to keep my face neutral. “Oh?”
“Yeah, somebody beat the shit out of him.”
“Huh. Well, fuck him.”
“Oh, agreed. But I was just…” She lifts a brow. “You know. Wondering.”
“Wondering?”
“Was this… You know, you?”
I smile curiously at Eilish. “Did I accost Mike Jennings outside The Banshee and beat him to a bloody pulp? No, Eilish. Sorry. I’m not secretly Batman—”
“I never said it happened at The Banshee.”
Shit.
I don’t even try to backpedal. We’re too close for me to try, and it’s pretty clear Eilish already has an idea what happened.
“I—”
“Good,” she mutters quietly. “I’m glad Ares put him in the hospital. Should have happened five years ago. But, you’re okay?”
I smile wryly and nod. “Actually, yeah. It’s…”
“Closure?”
“Something like that, yeah.”
She grins. “Hey, Castle is taking me over to the Columbia campus for a tour. Wanna come with?”
Eilish is also currently at NYU, finishing her undergrad degree. But she’s just received pre-acceptance at the ultra-competitive Columbia School of Business for grad school. Because she’s a smartypants like that.
“Nah, you go ahead.”
“You sure? That kick-ass Pho place you like is right around the corner.”
I turn to Castle. “I’m sure. You two have fun. Cillian wanted to talk to me anyway.”
Castle nods, and then raises a brow.
“Should I be sending a thank you wine and cheese basket to your husband for what I think I should?”
I make a zipping motion across my lips. He smiles grimly.
“Gotcha. Fuck those little shit-stains.”
“So I hear Councilman Leery got tuned up pretty good the other day.”
“Really? Did he?”
Cillian grins. “In his own office, even. Fancy that.”
“Wow. Maybe he tripped?”
My uncle smirks.
“God of War, I presume?”
I lift a non-committal shoulder.
“Good,” he growls. “That’s something your father should have done five years ago.”
My brow furrows. “Wait. You…knew about that?”
“I did.”
My face burns as I look away.
“You’ve got nothing to be embarrassed or ashamed about, Neve,” he mutters. “Those little shits got what was coming to them—well, actually, in my humble opinion, they only got about one third of what should have been coming to them. But it’s a good start.”
He slips a cigarette between his lips and then glances at me.
“You mind?”
I shake my head before he lights it with a flick of his Zippo.
“Your father and I…disagreed on certain things here and there.”
“I know.”
Cillian smiles quietly at me.
He knows I know, intimately.
“What happened with Leery and Jennings…that’s something we were polar opposites on. But it fell under family business, not business business, which is why I allowed it to play out the way it did back then. But in hindsight I’ve always regretted not doing more at the time. I want you to know that.”
I smile at him, shaking my head. “It wasn’t on you to do anything. And you’ve done plenty for me,” I add with a small shiver.
Cillian nods, obviously knowing what I’m talking about. He eyes me thoughtfully as he slowly drags on his smoke.
“He doesn’t know, does he? Ares, I mean. About the full history with O’Conor.”
I shake my head.
“No,” I murmur. “Why, should he?”
Cillian shakes his head. “That’s not what I meant. It’s not about strategy or business. It’s for you to tell him or not.”
“It might help, given what’s going on. You know, some context?”
His brow furrows. “There’s plenty of other context to take Seamus and his threats seriously. I only asked out of curiosity, not to push you to do anything, Neve.” He frowns a little deeper. “I’ve already asked far too much of you anyway.”
I smile, shaking my head.
“It’s not like you banished me to the moon or locked me in prison, you know.”
“No, but I had my niece marry a man she’s considered an enemy of her family for most of her life, without her consent, and without even a say in the matter.”
“I’ll expect a lavish and outrageously expensive Christmas present to make up for it.”
He chuckles quietly. “How is the god of war, anyway?”
My mind instantly flashes back to my breath fogging the bathroom mirror, to my fingers clawing at the marble as Ares’ hands gripped my ass and tangled in my hair. To his body grinding into mine as his thick, gorgeous cock fucked me over the edge of my sanity until I came screaming his name.
“Fine,” I mumble. “He’s fine.”
He lifts a brow, but he doesn’t push it.
Probably a good thing.
There’s a quiet knock at the office door and Owen Foley opens it and sticks his head in. He beams at me as Cillian nods, beckoning him over. Owen takes a seat next to me and reaches over to pat my hand. Cillian clears his throat.
“I wanted to discuss the bloodthirsty elephant in the room, so to speak. And I thought Owen should sit in.”
I nod, smiling at the older man next to me.
“Look, bottom line, my dear,” Owen shrugs. “That prick in Colorado isn’t going anywhere. I don’t want you losing sleep over all the psycho shit he pulled on live TV the other day.”
I smile weakly. “Oh, I’m not worried.”
Hand on heart, I’m a little worried. Not jumping at my own shadows or checking the closets before bed worried. But that omnipresent, lingering dim cloud of worry. Like the same background noise worry you have about getting skin cancer, or being hit by a car.
Okay, maybe it’s more like somewhere in between.
“Good. Don’t be,” Owen scowls. “I’ve got a few…friends in the Justice Department, as well as the Federal Marshals. Seamus is in solitary under twenty-four-hour observation. He’s now officially the most heavily-guarded inmate in the country.”
Cillian nods. “I’m going to ask Ares to double up his security at the penthouse nonetheless.”
I frown. “Even with all that?”
“There’s never any harm in being overly cautious. This marriage makes both families stronger. But also angers our enemies, who might see it as a power grab.”
“Which it is.”
He grins at me, nodding. “Which it is. In addition, Owen’s people are going to be helping out with security on our end, and his contacts in Florence ADX will be keeping an extra sharp eye on that fucking maniac. I’m also calling in my own favors to make sure this obscene parole hearing gets denied.”
“I owe you an apology.”
Our meeting is over, and Owen’s just left. I glance up curiously at Cillian as he hands me a drink.
“For?”
His face darkens. “For fifteen years ago.”
“No,” I shake my head. “No, I owe you—”
“I should never have asked you to do what I did, Neve,” he mutters quietly. “I had no right. You were a fucking child.”
I swallow.
“It put the monster away, didn’t it?”
He nods.
“So I’m okay with it.”
I stare into the middle distance, taking a sip of my drink. “There’s nothing to apologize for. I owe you so much—”
“You don’t ever have to thank me.”
But I do.
Because I owe Cillian my life.
Ares is on the balcony when I get back to the penthouse, reading. I watch from inside for a moment, grinning when I realize what book he’s utterly engrossed in.
“Busted.”
He frowns, whipping his head around as I step out. I smirk as I nod my chin at the paperback copy of Fucked Sideways he quickly tries to hide.
“My, my. Guess there’s two Bastian Pierce fans in the house now.”
He rolls his eyes.
“Morbid curiosity. I might just watch the Netflix series instead.”
I make a face. “Oh God, please don’t. It redefines the phrase ‘based on’ in horrific ways.”
He chuckles. Then his brow furrows.
“What’s going on?”
“Nothing,” I shrug, looking away. “I was just over at the house with my uncle talking about…”
“Seamus?”
I shiver, nodding.
I feel Ares move behind me, and his hands land gently on my shoulders. My eyes close, and I take a shaky breath.
“I need to tell you something.”
I twist, turning to look at him.
“Does it pertain to why exactly that fucking animal called you out specifically on national TV?”
“Yes,” I murmur. “It does.”
“Want a drink?”
I shake my head, moving away to sit on the bench running along the railing of the patio.
“Neve, you don’t need to tell me anything you don’t—”
“I’m the one that put him in prison.”
I’m looking out over the Hudson, but I feel Ares go quiet and still behind me.
“No, Neve,” he finally growls quietly. “No. That psychopath put himself where he is. He’s a fucking monster. He’s exactly where he belongs.”
I shake my head, hugging myself as it all starts to bubble up inside of me, like a black tidal wave. I have to do this.
I want to do this.
“When my father made that deal with the FBI that my uncle mentioned the other day… When they sold him to the FBI in exchange for a blind eye towards Kildare business…”
I shiver.
“Neve—”
“Seamus found out. It was supposed to be a sealed agreement, but someone, somehow, leaked it to him. That was right before he broke out of the first place they’d stuck him. They caught him hours later and threw him into a supermax facility. But then he broke out of that one, too.”
And they didn’t catch him right away that time.
The black wave begins to crash over me. I squeeze my eyes shut, shivering as the terror I’ve pushed down for so many years starts to crack open the walls I’ve built around it.
“I was nine. Our nanny at the time had taken Eilish and me to a park near the house. We had security with us, but it wasn’t enough.”
I turn to see Ares looking at me with a cold, stricken, vengeful look on his face.
“Eilish was on the swings, and I was playing on the slide when Seamus came. He killed five guards, incapacitated two more, and…” my eyes drop. “And he took me.”
“Jesus,” Ares growls quietly.
Time to go, little bird…
“I don’t remember most of it…I guess I’ve blocked it out. But I was gone for two days. My dad…he always kind of saw himself as being ‘above’ the mob world and was always trying to get respected by the ‘normal’ rich people he rubbed elbows with. So he was trying to have me found through all the legal channels, with no success. But then my uncle flew in. And Cillian is, well, Cillian.”
My face darkens as I raise my eyes to Ares.
“Cillian tracked down anyone who’d ever been remotely associated with Seamus, and then tortured his way through them until he figured out where I was.”
Ares sinks to his knees in front of me, his eyes unblinking and fierce as they hold mine.
“I was out in western Pennsylvania. Seamus had an old hideout there—this hunting shack in the woods. That’s where he brought me.”
Tears prick at my eyes, but I angrily wipe them away.
“That whole crazy shit Cillian was saying about Seamus’ methods? How he’d ‘bleed the innocent’?”
“Motherfucker…” Ares snarls quietly.
“That part I do remember,” I choke.
I have gaps from the abduction itself, and the part where he drove me bound and gagged in the back of his van all the way to his hunting cabin. But the part where he tied me up…
“He tied me to a fucking cross,” I spit. “And he used a red sharpie to mark here, and here…”
Numbly, I touch first one wrist, then the other.
“And here…”
I drag a finger straight down my jugular vein.
“Neve…”
Ares’ hands take mine. I shiver, but cling to him tightly as my eyes drop.
“That’s how Cillian found me. Seamus was out getting fuck knows what, and my uncle came crashing through the door. He cut me down and called in the cavalry to wait for Seamus to get back. Except the deal with the FBI was too big to turn down. And their deal was specifically for Seamus alive. So my father allowed that to happen. Instead of sending in Kildare men to put Seamus down like the animal he was, the FBI showed up and grabbed him when he came back to the hunting shack to finish what he’d started.”
Ares growls quietly, shaking his head as his hands tighten on mine.
“You didn’t put him in prison, Neve,” he hisses. “You were a fucking kid—”
“I testified against him.”
The words choke out of me.
“At his closed-session trial. They had a lot on him. But it was all circumstantial, and much of it was hearsay. There were so many people who knew about his crimes, but they were all so terrified of him that nobody would actually talk. It got to a point where there was a possibility that all the murder charges might be dropped and he would just do time for kidnapping. In which case, he could have been out on good behavior in five years or less.”
“I should never have asked you to do what I did, Neve.”
I shiver as my eyes raise to Ares’.
“Cillian told me bluntly what was going on. My parents were furious, because of course they were trying to keep it all from me as much as they could. But…he was right. Cillian, I mean. He told me in no uncertain terms that Seamus would go free unless they could pin all those deaths on him. So…”
I swallow, taking a shaky breath as my gaze pierces my husband’s.
“So I lied. I got on that witness stand, and I lied. I told them all that Seamus had bragged to me about his killings while he had me captive. Cillian had rehearsed me on a lot of the case details, and I regurgitated it all on the witness stand.”
Ares’ face darkens with rage.
“Motherfucker,” he rasps. “You were a kid, Neve,” he snaps. “Your uncle had no fucking right to put you in that—”
“I’d do it again,” I hiss, my voice cold. “I’d do it again, and again, and again. Ask me a million times, and I’d do the exact same thing every time.” My lips draw to a line. “I don’t feel bad about lying. Not about that. My lies put a monster in the hole he belongs in.”
The only problem is, he knows it.
“And that’s why he mentioned me specifically. Because he knows what I did. He knows he’d have walked if it hadn’t been for me.”
I gasp as Ares suddenly pulls me into him, engulfing me in his powerful arms. I tense for a moment. But then, slowly, I realize how hard I’ve been holding back the shivers and the tears. And it’s not until I’m wrapped in his embrace that I realize I can let go.
That I’m safe with him.
That I don’t have to hide any of my demons and my darkness from him.
The hot tears come thick and fast as I press my face to his chest. Ares just keeps me like that, stroking my hair as he holds me tight.
“I will never let anything happen to you,” he growls quietly into my ear. “Ever.”
I shudder into him, sniffling back tears.
“This is more than you and your family signed up for, Ares. This was all a business move, and the smartest play now is for your family to sever ties with mine, and sever them quickly before there’s any fallout that lands on—”
“You’re my wife.”
I stiffen, shivering as I pull away from his chest. My eyes raise to his, my brow furrowing at the intense, fierce look in his eyes.
“What?”
“I won’t ever let anything happen to you, Neve,” he murmurs, his hand rising to cup my face. “Because you’re my fucking wife. Not for business. And not just temporarily.”
I tremble as he pulls me close.
“For life.”
I gasp as his lips slam fiercely and brutally to mine, melting me and sucking the air from my lungs.
“And nothing is ever going to change that.”
