Page 115 of Savage Reign

If she thought acting cute was going to calm me down, she’d need to think again.

“You are never leaving our sight ever again.”

She scowled at me. I was impressed. Shealmostlooked mean enough. “That is absolutely ridiculous. I can’t always be in your sight.”

I nodded, agreeing. “No, not always in my sight. But in one of our sights at all times.”

She crossed her arms over her chest. “Killian.”

I took in a deep breath.

“What is it? What’s got you so worried?” Maverick asked me.

I didn’t answer him. I didn’t fucking know why, but there was this heavy weight in my heart since that fucking call from Conor, and it hadn’t left me, even when we left the police station.

“You know this isn’t like how it was with Lilliana,” Silas said quietly.

I tensed as Mila frowned at me. “Who?”

Fucking hell, but I never wanted her to know about that bitch. If I could, I would have made it so that Mila would never hear that name. “I fucking know that,” I said.

“Do you?” Silas asked, moving so that he was blocking my view of Mila.

“I’m not going to fucking hurt her, so stop acting like it,” I said.

Silas’ face was set in harsh, serious lines. “Then get yourself under control. Do what you have to do to make it so because you’re letting the past fuck with your present and future again, and I’m not okay with that.”

I didn’t say anything. For once, my laid-back brother didn’t look or sound so laid-back anymore. He was telling me to kill Lilliana. Something I should have done years before.

A fucking loose end, indeed. And I had been so adamant about taking Mila out from the beginning because that was what she was for us. She still was. She could blab to Agent Jones and tell him we killed her father in revenge. That we had annihilated nearly the entire MC club and taken over the narcotics trade.

Hell, she could even tell the fucker that we were keeping her against her will.

That was all true.

But I trusted her.

And I realized, as I thought about it, how true that was. I trusted her, and I was letting my past mistakes affect my future with her.

I looked away from my brother’s concerned gaze. He was still blocking my view of her and, essentially, my view of Maverick. I didn’t need to look at my big brother to know his face wasset in an inscrutable expression or to know that beneath all that indifference was worry for me.

“I have to go,” I said softly.

Silas relaxed, his face set in understanding. He nodded and moved out of my way.

I didn’t dare look back at Mila. I knew one look at her, and I wouldn’t be able to leave the room.

I stoodin the dark in a sketchy neighborhood just near the border of Illinois and south Indiana.

It was past one o’clock in the morning.

She would just be getting home now after a night of dancing at the strip club.

Was it karma that helping Daniel Hayes destroy my family and take over our empire didn’t give her the result she wanted? That she had been nothing more than easy pussy and someone Hayes could manipulate to get what he wanted, and that he had discarded her as soon as her usefulness ran out?

He didn’t kill her. Was it a blessing that she ended up in the life she had now? Or would it have been mercy had he killed her?

I didn’t know, and for the first time, I didn’t care to know.

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