Page 61 of Betrothed in Fury
The fear that gripped me when I heard he’d been stabbed, and the extreme anxiety I felt on my way over, have dissipated, leaving only distant echoes in my mind.
I start to my feet when Killian tugs at my hand. He grips it, not looking at me, just holding me. “Thank you,” he whispers.
It’s not the way I’m used to him speaking. There’s something quiet, calm about it. It’s…nice.
“No worries.” I pull my hand free, head over to the sink, and wash my hands as he sits in silence, his gaze far off.
I think about the time I spent cleaning myself out earlier. Guess that was all for nothing. I can’t help but chuckle.
“What’s that about?” he asks.
“Oh, nothing,” I say, since he sure as hell doesn’t need to know about that.
As I turn to him, his gaze locks on mine for the first time since I came over.
“It’s not nothing,” he insists, his voice full of suspicion, as if some psychic impulse in him picked up on the truth. But no, that’s impossible.
“It’s just not the way I thought tonight would play out.”
He studies my face, and now I’m the one trying to avoid eye contact.
“Anyway, I guess I should go now.”
“No,” he says. “Clearly, there’s a target on our backs, and that means there’s one on the Wildes too. You’re staying here tonight. I won’t take no for an answer.”
“I’ve already learned that.” And I would object, but he has a point, and I don’t have a death wish.
His phone buzzes on the bathroom vanity, shaking him from his state, and he answers, “Yes? Keep the guys at Hayward through tonight, and get security on Rory and Malaki. I’ll follow up tomorrow morning about what we’ll do after.”
“Yes, sir,” I hear one of his guys reply.
His concern for my family warms my heart, reminds me that despite the tension between us, he is a man I can trust to do right by me and my brothers.
“Good. Thank you,” he says. “Oh, and, Martyr, any word on who’s responsible?”
“Not yet.”
“I want to know who’s behind this, and I want them in one piece. They’re mine.”
This man is as capable of brutal cruelty as I am, something that should elicit fear or at least repulsion, but instead, I find myself excited.
He hangs up before taking a breath, leaning back on the toilet seat. “I’m gonna tear their fucking throats out with my bare hands.”
I don’t doubt he means that literally.
“If Old Terror were here, he’d beat my ass for this slipup, especially when I should have known better.”
I know the story. You can’t be in Fury’s underworld without having heard how his allies betrayed and ambushed him. It’s not surprising that the attack today would remind Killian of that.
“When I heard the gunshots, it took me back to that night, when the Folcrums sieged that warehouse. Bullets flying everywhere. Blood-soaked bodies and concrete.”
Flashes come back to me of the bloody bodies at Hayward. The blood…so much fucking blood.
“I was twenty,” Killian goes on, “my brothers and sister still in their teens, and we had to arm up and protect ourselves, losing three of our brothers, my sister and mother, and, of course, Old Terror. It was like Rage and I were trying to survive Armageddon, watching as we lost the ones we loved.”
The Killian I’ve always known never showed this softer side. In fact, if you asked most of the guys in the underworld if he even cared that his family died, they wouldn’t believe someone as sadistic as him could have a heart, yet that reputation is the very thing that’s made him appear fearless, made his enemies too fearful to attack.
Until today.
