Page 39 of Ricochet
Maybe it wasn’t such a good idea leaving her with me? But then again, it wasn’t such a good idea leaving her with any of us. Cillian wanted to kill her as soon as he saw her. Tristan almost punched the wall when they brought her in. When I free this world from her, maybe the gaping hole inside my chest would finally disappear.
“Does it hurt, princess?” She opened her eyes, that fucking smile on her face again. Even with blood on her teeth and bruising on her neck, she still looked better than any other female I had ever met.
Our little Antichrist.
“I am not a princess, you moron,” she sneered. Her knee connected with my groin, the sharp pain rendering me speechless. “I am a motherfucking queen.”
I crouched in front of her, trying to break through the pain. Her fist connected with my nose; once, twice, three times.
“I don’t enjoy pain. I. Am. Pain.” Her foot hit the side of my face, sending me to the floor. “You want to break me, Kieran? You’ll have to catch me first.”
I tried to lift myself up, to reach for her, but my head snapped to the side when her leg connected with the other side of my face.
God fucking dammit.
She ran toward the front door, and this time, I wasn’t fast enough to stop her. The cold December air filtered through the foyer as her petite figure disappeared through the door, leaving me on the floor.
“Cillian!” I boomed, hoping he would hear me. I would never hear the end of this. She was escaping thanks to me and my distracted thoughts. She was so pliant, so quiet and I wanted to feel her body against mine, then boom! Fucking idiot.
“Cillian!” I belted again, annoyed with the lack of response. I got myself up, wincing at the pain emanating from my head. A girl managed to knock me on my ass. Not that she hadn’t done it in the past, but this was different. I thought I had control over her, when really she was just waiting for an opening.
Footsteps echoed behind me as I started toward the door.
“What the hell happened?” Tristan asked as I turned to see both of my brothers running toward me. “Is that blood on your face?”
“I don’t have time to explain. She’s running away.”
“What the fuck, Kieran?” Cillian snapped. “I knew it was a bad idea leaving her with you. She was always your weak spot.”
“Fuck off, Brother. I don’t recall you being very successful in subduing her earlier either.”
The scowl on his face would’ve been funny if it wasn’t for the current situation. The snow crunched beneath our boots, making it harder to run. At least I knew she wouldn’t be able to get too far away with this weather. A snowstorm was coming, and the temperature started dropping below zero as the night advanced. If she managed to pass through all of our guards, I was pretty sure we would be finding her body in a couple of days.
Whose fucking idea was it again to spend the winter here? We could’ve gone to our beach house, but no, we apparently wanted to have our nuts frozen. I couldn’t see her anywhere, and if we lost her now —well, if I lost her now —I was sure there would be hell to pay for kidnapping her. Ophelia was a vengeful bitch, and here I thought we would be able to scare her from the get-go.
“Call the gate, Tristan,” I instructed. “I want her caught.” I could barely see the roundabout and the fountain from the amount of snow that fell in the short period of time, and my ass wasn’t appreciating the fact that I ran out only in my t-shirt.
“You couldn’t have waited until we took our jackets, could you?” Cillian grumbled next to me, his teeth chattering from the cold.
“Oh, I’m sorry, Kill. Next time I’ll make sure to ask her to wait for five minutes before she runs away, so that my brothers can catch up with us and get their motherfucking jackets on.” I loved my twin brother, but sometimes… God, sometimes I wanted to smash his head on the wall. “Now, can you two actually move your asses? Tristan,” I glanced at him, “I still don’t see you calling the fucking guards. What are you waiting for? An official invitation to do it?”
“Jesus fuck, are you on your period today or something?”Real comedians. “I already alerted them. Alejandro is at the gate with the rest of the guys. She isn’t going anywhere.”
“I swear to God, Tristan, I’ll cut your tongue off and feed it to the dog.”
“But we don’t have a dog,” he snickered. “Besides, your psychotic asses would miss my lovely comments.”
He probably fell on his head as a baby. There was no other explanation for the idiocy that sometimes came out of his mouth.
“Takes one to know one, Tris.” Cillian said.
“Can you both just shut up?” The driveway was completely empty, not one single guard around, and I started believing that he actually did what I asked from him. “I can’t hear my own thoughts from all the jabbering going on.”
“Hey, you aske—”
A female scream sliced through the air, all three of us stopping immediately. A sinister smile spread across Cillian’s face and I could almost hear his thoughts. Every time I looked at my brother, only one word came to my mind.
Chaos.
