Page 88 of Wicked Mafia Beast
The last image before darkness swallows me whole is my beast on his knees in the ruins of his garden. Roses crushed around him. Blood on his hands. His arm outstretched toward me, fingers reaching for a hand I can't reach back.
Dread fills my chest and my pulse pounds in my ears.
Please don't die. Please don't die. Please don't die.
The darkness takes me and my last conscious thought is that I never told him I love him.
I never said the words.
And now I might never get the chance.
Seventeen
Onyx
The hood comes off and my uncle is smiling at me. That tight, practiced smile he wears when he's about to ruin someone's life and wants them to know he's enjoying it. Behind him, my father stands against the wall with his shoulders caved in and his hands shaking at his sides, looking every bit the broken man he's always been too proud to admit he is.
Great. A family reunion. Just what I needed with a bullet graze throbbing above my left ear and zip ties cutting grooves into my wrists.
The warehouse is freezing. Industrial steel rafters overhead, fluorescent lights buzzing, that flat white glow that washes the color out of everything. The chair they've got me bolted to is metal and cold against my bare arms. My head pounds in slow, nauseating waves and dried blood crusts along my hairline, pulling at my skin every time I move my jaw. The air reeks of rust, diesel, and the salt-rot stench of the Chicago River somewhere close.
Four armed men stationed near the two exits I can clock from this angle. Loading dock on my left with a rusted pulley chain. Side door on my right, cracked open. Journalist brain won't shut off, even now. Maybe especially now.
But underneath the cataloging and the measuring and the adrenaline keeping my vision sharp, one image plays on repeat behind my eyes and I can't make it stop.
Kon on his knees in crushed roses. Blood pooling beneath him on the gravel. His hand reaching for me while his body gave out.
Two bullets. I watched two bullets hit him.
My nails dig into my palms behind the chair. He's alive. He has to be alive. The man survived four years of barbed wire and trafficking and a childhood that would have destroyed anyone else. He did not survive all of that to bleed out on a rooftop because Brennan got lucky with a gun.
He's alive.
I need that to be true more than I need oxygen right now.
Seamus circles my chair, hands clasped behind his back, silver hair perfect, charcoal suit pressed and spotless. He dressed for this. Pocket square and everything. My uncle kidnaps people the way other men attend charity galas.
"Hello, Onyx." He stops in front of me and adjusts his cufflinks. "You've caused me an extraordinary amount of trouble."
I spit blood on the warehouse floor. It lands an inch from his polished shoe and watching his jaw clench is the best thing that's happened to me all night.
"Good."
"Your mother had that same defiance." He tilts his head, examining me the way he'd examine a stain on his shirt. "That stubborn refusal to accept how things work. It didn't serve her well in the end."
The mention of my mother sends fury roaring through my chest so hot it burns away the head wound and the cold and the dread.
"Don't talk about my mother." My voice is shredded from screaming Kon's name on that rooftop. "You don't get to say her name. Not after what you did to her."
"What I did?" Seamus raises an eyebrow, all wounded innocence, and the act is so polished I want to claw it off his face. "I protected this family. Every decision I've made for forty years has been to protect the Malone name."
"You destroyed her. You isolated her, controlled her medication, threatened to hurt me if she talked." My jaw shakes but my voice holds. "I've read the therapist's notes. Every single one. She didn't die of a broken heart. You broke her on purpose and my father stood there and watched."
The mask slips. Just for a second. The real Seamus surfaces, cold and reptilian, before the performance slides back.
"Catherine was a liability. Liabilities get managed."
"She was a person. She was my mother." Tears press behind my eyes and I shove them back. He feeds on tears. I refuse to give him anything.
