Page 126 of Princes of Carnage

The room goes completely silent as Killian finishes speaking, as if someone flipped a switch and turned the volume off. My chest burns, and I realize I’ve stopped breathing. I definitely didn’t expect him to lay it all out like that—although it’s so fucking like him to put it that way. Short and to the point, leaving no room for misinterpretation.

Atlas and Nico seem stunned for several long moments, both of them gaping at Killian as they process this information. But Killian’s harshly handsome face never changes. He stands there, arms folded, unbothered.

“This was before the alliance?” Nico asks, even though he clearly already knows the answer. “You were stalking her and following her back when she was still considered our enemy?”

“Yes,” Killian says simply.

“How the fuck did this not come up before now?” Atlas demands.

“She didn’t know who I was,” Killian explains. “I wore a mask during our encounters at the club, and I followed her in secret. She never saw my face.”

I drag in a ragged breath, my heart racing as I watch this play out in front of me. Nico and Atlas are still staring at Killian like they can’t fucking believe what they just heard, and there’s a noticeable change in the dynamic between the four of us. I can feel a sort of tension gathering in the air, but I don’t know what it means.

Is Nico going to be mad that Killian fucked me before he did? That he took it upon himself to stalk me and get involved with me without Nico’s input? Is Atlas going to be jealous? After all, he held himself back from doing anything with me because I’m technically his best friend’s wife. But Killian had already fucked me before that was ever an issue.

Nico’s gaze finally slides back to me. His mismatched eyes glitter like jewels, hard and bright, and I swallow, flipping my sketchbook closed and setting it aside.

“Is that true?” he asks. “You didn’t know it was him?”

Fuck it.

“Yes, it’s true.” I lift my chin, nodding once. “I had no idea. I never saw his face at the club. He always wore a mask, just like I did, and the rooms he fucked me in were all dark. When you and I negotiated the alliance between our gangs and then got married, and even after you all moved into the house, he never talked to me. So until recently, I didn’t know anything.”

Nico’s eyes narrow. “And you didn’t want to kill him for lying to you?”

“I did,” I admit. “I actually… stabbed him.”

A flash of surprise cuts across Nico’s face, and he shares a look with Atlas over my shoulder. The two of them are probably trying to do the math on when that happened, and I wonder if Nico remembers the way Killian winced as he opened the fridge the next day but played it off as a strained muscle.

I know I’m probably playing with fire, admitting that I pulled a knife on their best friend. Our alliance started off as tenuous and breakable as the thread of a spider’s web, and although things have shifted between all of us recently, I’m not sure how much forgiveness I’ll get for that.

Not that I’m sorry I did it. I may be coming closer to forgiving him after what he did to the Bullets, but I needed to let that anger out, and he goddamn well deserved it.

And honestly, I think he kind of liked it.

“It was the night Silas attacked both of our gangs and left his ‘trophies’ behind,” I say, my stomach twisting as I remember the cut up faces of my crew members. “I had just learned that Killian had been stalking me, on top of everything else, and was really fucking pissed off about it. About him lying and hiding shit from me, refusing to talk near me so that I’d never put the pieces together. But now…”

I trail off, not even sure how to finish that sentence.

It wasn’t that long ago that I found out, but it feels like so much has changed in that time. Enough that I have no idea where things stand now.

Nico is still looking at me, his eyes simmering, his expression enigmatic. I can’t tell if he’s angry or hurt or what, and I’m even less sure of what I want him to feel. Do I want him to be possessive and furious? Or do I want him to react the same way he did when he found out what happened between me and Atlas at Eros?

That thought makes my heart pound even faster, and I stay silent, my gaze locked with Nico’s.

“So,” he finally says, drawing out the word. “Every man in this room has fucked you, mia cara. Is that right?”

Somehow, that wasn’t what I was expecting to hear, and my pulse jumps as heat floods through me.

All three of them have their eyes on me now, and the tension that was rising before shifts into something else—something that makes the air feel thicker and has goosebumps crawling across my skin.

But Nico is right. As of the other night, all three of them have fucked me.

I lick my lips and nod.

His mismatched eyes are keen and perceptive as he watches me, and it feels almost like he can see right through me.

“You’re not the only one Killian kept that secret from,” he says, his voice low. “For him to keep it from me and Atlas for so long, it must have been important to him. It must’ve truly meant something to him.”

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