Page 71 of Manacled Hearts

“Evelyn! Evelyn, please!”

With a painful jolt in my soul, I’m wrenched back to reality. My hand flies to my chest when the shock of the agony growing there hits me. I’m heaving, hard, and aches burst all over my body. Turning my palm over, I find indentations from my fingernails. They pierced the skin well enough that blood trickles out. I hiss when it hits me that the pain in my other hand comes from the doorknob I’ve been squeezing so tight, it imprinted on my palm.

“That’s it, come back, Evelyn. You’re okay.”

That voice… that touch… the odd softness.

As if only now I realize he’s here, my gaze shoots up, and I’m met with piercing, bright-blue eyes the color of the sunlit sky on the coolest of summer days. His soft touch stroking against my cheek is warm, comforting. For a moment, one cruel moment, I lose myself in that blue, flying through the atmosphere he always pulls me in. And this time, he allows me to.

The ache in my muscles melts away, my lungs find a focus, a calmer rhythm within the chaos, and Vassallo is no longer in my line of sight. Finnigan is.

“Good. That’s it. You’re here, safe, with me.” He clears his throat. “With us.”

My gaze drifts away and, holy mother, mortification hits me like a ton of bricks.

“I am so sorry, I didn’t realize you were all in here. I thought this was—I don’t—I’m sorry. I’m going to—”

“Evelyn,” Finnigan interrupts my erratic speech, as he drops his hand from my cheek.

Without his touch, I’m exposed. Like the contact shielded me from the outside world.

“You didn’t know we were here,” Maddox says, and I realize he’s standing right next to Finnigan.

Was he always there? All the eyes in the room are aimed at me, each in various states of either concern or curiosity.

“Are you okay?” Finnigan asks.

“Yes. Sorry, I was just coming to…” Shout at you, I want to say, but it feels inappropriate now. I thought he was going to be alone, I think. I don’t know. I was so angry, I didn’t think straight.

“Seriously, don’t worry. I think we can all agree the timing was… perfect.”

Maddox turns away. “Did you know that Vassallo is Bartiste? That he’s the one O’Rourke, Holt, and Boseman worked with?”

“No.” Carter.

His tone is sharper than I’ve ever heard him. Not that Carter tends to speak too much. I rarely ever see the man, to be fair, but now he sounds downright annoyed.

“So, this meeting was to tell us that Roberto Bartiste is back, but you had no clue—”

“No,” Carter interrupts Maddox, the bluntness chilling.

“Evelyn, I know this is tough, but we need to talk about what happened when you were taken. Knowing who Vassallo is changes everything.” Maddox turns to me.

I open my mouth to speak, but I’m lost for words.

“No!” Finnigan answers for me. “Look at her, she’s shaking like a leaf after seeing that bastard’s face on the screen. We can’t put her through that!”

“There may not be any other choice.” Carter argues the logic. “It’s been eight years, and we all thought he was dead. Not only he fucking isn’t, but he’s been trying to get back into Queenscove right under our noses.”

“You think I don’t fucking know that?!” The bite in Finnigan’s voice pales against the emotions bleeding through the cracks in what I’m starting to believe is a carefully constructed mask.

Because what I see now on his cruelly beautiful face is the same thing I saw the moment I came out of that container months ago—anguish. He’s broken…

Just like I am.

Only now I realize that the eyes in this room are no longer aimed at me, but at him. And they hold a hesitant, all knowing expression that makes no sense to me. I can also tell it’s making Finnigan uncomfortable. Why? Who is Vassallo? Or, what did they call him, Bartiste? Who is he to them? Who is he to Finnigan?

His brother’s expression is the worst of them all. It may be that he hasn’t been part of this world for a while from what I can tell, but he doesn’t mask his feelings like the others. Or at all. His eyes are strained with sadness and something that looks a lot like shame.

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