Page 5 of Twisted Secrets
Oh my God, what did I just start?
Chapter Two
Cillian didn’t go straight home after leaving Jameson’s. He had too much pent-up energy—and anger. He shouldn’t have let things get so out of control with Olivia. All he’d meant to do when he kissed her was shock her into not arguing about the stupid tip anymore, and the next thing he knew, he was carrying her into an alley and…
Fuck.
She just wanted a onetime thing. He should be happy that she wasn’t expecting more—or trying to weasel her way into his life under the mistaken impression that his family’s power would rub off on her.
I shouldn’t have had sex with her. That was unbelievably stupid.It was something the old Cillian would have done and to hell with the consequences. The woman obviously wanted nothing to do with him, and that was just fine by him. He didn’t need another goddamn complication in his life when he was up to his neckand sinking fast.
He turned another corner—and stopped dead. It was the one place he’d gone out of his way to avoid, and it was a token of just how distracted he was that he’d found his way back here.
To the spot where Devlin died.
Cillian stared down at the concrete. It didn’t look different from any other sidewalk in Boston—a little scuffed up, a little dirty, but nothing special. There was something so fucking wrong with that. This was the very spot where his brother passed from this world into the next. Where he’d bled out while Cillian stood by, too drunk to be worth a damn. There wasn’t even a stain to mark it. He turned, surveying the street. Even at this relatively late hour, it was nowhere near deserted, and the headlights of each passing car only made the muscles along his spine tense further.
Any one of them could be the enemy.
He tried to take a deep breath, but there was no air. He tried to walk away, but his feet were rooted in place. He tried to reason through what was no doubt another fucking panic attack, but reason had no place here.
He kept seeing the events of that night, over and over again in slow motion. Walking behind Teague and Devlin, singing that stupid goddamn song at the top of his lungs. The SUV screeching to a stop in front of them. The doors opening. The second he realized the guy had a fucking gun in his hand. He’d stumbled back, sure that this was it. The end. His life didn’t flash before his eyes like everyone said. No, all he could think was,What a fucking waste. And then Aiden hauled his ass to the ground and it was over.
A few minutes later, Devlin was dead and Cillian’s entire world was turned upside down.
Jesus. He slammed back into the brickwall, the impact shocking the stalled breath from his lungs. He wheezed, the black spots dancing before his eyes slowly abating.Goddamn it. First time in a month, and it happens in the middle of the fucking sidewalk.
By some miracle, either no one had seen it happen or no one gave a fuck that it was happening. He didn’t care which it was. All that mattered was that he could pick himself up and head home without having to answer any uncomfortable questions.
Home. What a joke.
The town house on Chestnut hadn’t felt like home in a long time, and he didn’t see that changing anytime soon. Things had been heading in that direction for a long time, but it seemed like he’d only woken up to it in the last few months. His siblings were near-strangers these days. His parents? They’d never been close to begin with, but his father now had a wall between him and the rest of the family that no one could get through. And his mother…Well, he barely exchanged two words with her these days because she was so busy throwing herself into one project after the next. She was there, but she wasn’t present.
And now he was getting maudlin. Some days he could barely stand to live inside his own skin, and today was shaping up to be one of them. Cillian scrubbed a hand over his face. Jameson’s might be uncomfortable for him to spend time in, but at least it held one of the happier memories. It was there that he’d spent the last hours of Devlin’s life bullshitting and fucking around.
Now that he thought about it, it was probably the last time he’d spent actual time with his other brothers, too. Sure, they’d all been present for Teague’s wedding, but that hardly counted. They’d been avoidingeach other, and it didn’t take a genius to figure out why. The only one of them he saw with any regularity was Aiden, but as soon as the work was done, his oldest brother hightailed it off to God knew where. And Teague…Teague was fully occupied with his new wife. Cillian didn’t blame him for that, but there were days when he missed the bastard.
He focused on putting one foot in front of the other, each step creating some much-needed distance between him and the past. A fine sheen of sweat covered his skin, but there wasn’t a damn thing he could do about that right now. First, home. Second, a shower, as hot as he could stand it. Then…well, if the last nine months were any indication, then he’d spend most of the night lying on his back, staring at the ceiling. It was fucking pathetic.
The only time he’d actually slept through the night was when they had him drugged to the gills after he was shot. He reached up and touched the new scar. He might have slept, but the nightmares were worse while on meds than they were normally. Two nights of that was all he could take. After that, he chose to deal with the physical pain instead.
Enough.
The memory of what he and Olivia had done might be enough to get him through the night, though. She’d been so hot and free in his arms, and for the first time in longer than he cared to remember, he hadn’t been thinking about alliances or politics or death. He’d been so focused on making her go wild around his cock that there was no room for anything else.
It had been fucking glorious.
He walked through the front door of the town house, bracing himself for running into someonein his family.
Sure enough, as soon as he got to the top of the stairs, he was nearly run over by his baby sister, Keira. Baby? She was nineteen years old now.
“Keira.” Then he did a double take. “What the fuck is this?”
She wore shredded skinny jeans and a tank top that started its life as a T-shirt, nothing that would make him give her a second look…But the size of her pupilsdid. She was on something. He’d bet his favorite suit on it.
She lifted her chin. “I’m going out.”
“The hell you are.” He took in her bedhead that had to have taken her a hell of a long time to create, the dark eye shadow, and lipstick that on any other woman he would have called fuck-me red. Seeing it on his sister made him break out in hives. The reckless look on her face was even worse. “What are you on?”
