Page 6 of Romancing the Reaper

It’s getting harder to keep the panic and fear at bay.

“...what are you going to do with me?” I ask finally. I swallow hard and attempt to keep my voice from shaking. I’m failing.

I can feel the nervous sweat trickling between my shoulder blades. My mouth is dry. How long was I out? At least all my dress is still on. I don’t feel sore anywhere other than my shoulders and my head, so I don’t think that he’s done anything to me… not yet at least.

I always knew that Cristiano had enemies but this is a whole new level of danger that I never expected to be involved in. He’s always been very careful about keeping me removed from all those aspects of his job and the life he leads.

“Do you remember who I am now?” Kieran says. His voice is now thick with an Irish brogue that he had been hiding from me earlier.

I don’t bother answering him. He pushes off of the doorframe and starts to move closer to me with slow, confident and measured steps. He stops a foot away from me and squats down, his elbows resting on his knees as he looks up at me. Oddly, there doesn’t seem to be any malice on his face. I can’t read him.

“You’re somebody whose ass my brother is going to kick.” I seethe through clenched teeth when he doesn’t continue speaking. “You’ll be begging for death when he finds you.”

“Maybe.” Kieran smirks. His calm confidence is deeply unsettling. “Or maybe he’ll get here too late to save you. Or he’ll be so angry and desperate to get his beloved sister back that he will walk right into my trap.”

“Cristiano is too smart to fall for any of your tricks.”

“Cristiano should have been smart enough not to kill my father. Such things tend to make a man… reckless.” Kieran says with an icy expression. “I don’t think you have a proper understanding of just how much damage your brother has wrought in my life, him and his little wife both. They must pay for their sins.”

“My brother wouldn’t harmanyonewithout just cause!” I say firmly.

Kieran laughs in my face. “Is that what you think? You don’t know your brother half as well as you think you do.” He places his hands on my knees and pushes himself up. Fury slowly seeps into his expression. It is a slow, icy sort of rage that trickles into his words unlike the explosive male anger that I have seen so many times in my life in far less intimidating men.

“He tookeverythingfrom me. Everything, Ada. He took my father’s life, he ripped apart my family, and destroyed the legacy that I was supposed to inherit.”

Goosebumps ripple over my skin at the fury in his voice.

I believe him.

Even though I don’t want to think about the implications. I can sense the pain underlying his words, and the twisted sense of honor that has fueled him… but I don’t want to be involved.

“It is my duty and my responsibility to repay him in kind. I’m sure that you understand.”

“Or... you just could let me go and settle it over a game of cards like normal people?” I try, but I know that it’s no good. It’s a poor attempt at breaking the tension that is building inside of me. Perhaps if I’m condescending and annoying enough, he will get irritated and slip up. Of course, it’s too much to hope that he will just let me go or that there’s any way out of this situation that will work in my favor.

“I’m sorry that you are on the wrong side of this, Ada. But he took everything from me. I’m going to do the same to him. I will remove everything that he loves, systematically, forever.”

With that, Kieran heads to the door.

My heart thuds painfully in my chest. Panic starts to heat my ears as my anxiety spikes. I pull against my bonds in a last-ditch desperate attempt to keep from being locked away inside of this room all alone. I don’t want to spend what could be my last days on earth rotting away in this dingy little room.

“Don’t! Please! I don’t want to die! You can’t leave me in here! Please!” I plead desperately. I will kick myself later for allowing myself to be so pathetic as to beg my captor for anything at all.

Kieran holds onto the door handle, watching me. My frantic gaze catches his just in time to see something soften in his expression. Almost like sympathy, but with a vicious twist.

“I don’t intend to kill you, Ada,” he says after a long moment, his voice steady and cold. “I intend to marry you.”

CHAPTER FIVE

Kieran

The look on Ada’s face isn’t one that I’m going to be able to forget anytime soon.

Shock and horror I was expecting, even the dread seemed to make sense, but there was something else there, something almost desperate hiding underneath the rest. I shouldn’t want to test those emotions as badly as I do.

I can’t help but wonder where her limits might truly lie.

I have the luxury of time on my side, and part of me wants to go back up there to see just what other emotions I might coax across her pretty little face while I’ve got her wholly and utterly at my mercy. She’s the siren luring all my darkest cravings, and I’m her cruel mariner.

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