Page 195 of Gilded Cage (Kovalyov Bratva 1)

I know the story. He told it to me once, about six months after we’d first met, but he had kept the details vague and I hadn’t pried.

He had been defending a girl he was involved with, but this is the first time I’ve heard him refer to her that way.

Mywoman, in that possessive tone that tells me she meant more to him than he had ever let on before.

“Fucker’s still alive to this day, you know,” Cillian says, turning to me.

“Yeah?”

“Still on a ventilator,” he tells me. “Still being fed through a tube. Way I see it, that’s a good thing. He’ll never be able to touch another woman without her permission again.”

“Did your old man know that?” I ask.

Cillian snorts. “‘Course he fucking did. He told me I should’ve just let him fuck Saoirse.”

“You’ve never told me her name before,” I say without looking at him.

He’s quiet for a second. “Yeah, well, I promised myself that I’d never say her fucking name again.”

I venture, “You loved her.”

He nods slowly. His eyes are unfocused like he’s seeing stuff that happened years ago, decades ago, instead of this crummy, empty motel pool. “There are days I think I still do.”

“What happened to her?”

Cillian shrugs. But I see how heavy his shoulders are, how tense they remain when they fall back down again.

“She didn’t want to deal with the fall out,” he replies. “I was the son of a small time don who turned a powerful politician’s son into a vegetable. There was too much politics for her to deal.”

“Politics?” I repeat. “It was personal.”

“Apparently not for her. After Da bailed me out and told me that I had to leave the country immediately, I went to see her before I went to the airport.”

My head jerks towards him. This part he’d definitely never told me about before.

I sit quietly, waiting for him to continue the story.

“When she opened the door and saw me standing there, she paled so much she looked like a fucking ghost,” Cillian says. “That should have been my first clue.”

“You went to say goodbye?”

“I went to ask her to come with me,” Cillian admits. “She looked right through me for a moment, and then she shook her head. That was it. She didn’t fucking say a word. Just shook her head. She’d told me she loved me the week before. I didn’t realize her love was fucking conditional. I didn’t realize her love was weak.”

I say nothing. I don’t think Cillian even knows I’m here anymore. He’s lost in his past.

“I turned and walked away from her. I wish I can say I didn’t look back,” Cillian sighs. “But I fucking did. She had wild red curls and the bluest eyes you ever saw. She stood at that doorway and watched me drive off.”

“Do you know what happened to her?” I ask.

“Lives in Dublin,” Cillian replies. “Married some fucker a few years after I left. Has a couple of red-headed brats now.”

“Cillian…?”

His eyes pull away from the still water of the pool and turn to me.

“We’ve known each other a fucking life time,” I say. “You’ve never told me the whole story. Not like that. Why now?”

He attempts a smile that falters slightly. “We’re in deep shit right now,” he says. “Guess I was reminiscing about the last time I felt this way. I figure if I don’t make it through this shitstorm, I want you to know my whole story.”

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