Page 152 of Vicious Hearts

Una smiles and then stretches lazily. “Are you just getting to bed?”

“There was something I had to take care of. Go back to sleep.”

She grins as her eyes close again. “What time is it?” She twists in my arms to glance at the clock on her bedside table.

She goes still.

I wait, letting the seconds tick by before she slowly turns in my arms. Her face is white, her lips quivering as her eyes search mine.

“Cillian…”

“It’s done,” I murmur.

She holds my gaze for another quarter second, before suddenly she’s wrapping herself around me, hugging me tightly as she cries into my chest.

“You didn’t have to.”

“But I always will.”

Her lips crush to mine as my arms circle her tightly.

Yes. Ialwayswill.

35

UNA

Psychopath.

I feel almost dirty Googling it on my phone, as if even reading the definition, for the reasons I am, is a breach of trust or a betrayal of some kind.

But I have to know. I have to know what he truly is. I mean the word has been bandied about alongside his name countless times—that was clear even before I did some digging into him in preparation for setting foot in Club Venom. He was described once as “the sort of man who wants to watch the world burn because he enjoys the smell of the smoke.”

But that would make Cillian more an agent of chaos or anarchy. And he’s not. He’smeticulouslyprecise. Neat. Ordered. I think it might be less that he’d watch the world burn just to smell the smoke, and more “he’d watch the world burn because it wronged him.”

Or me.

I shiver, replaying the calm look in his eyes that night he came home so late with that fake Super Bowl ring that I’ve since thrown away. How he watched so nonchalantly, saying nothing three days later when the news circuit was going wild about the recently-discovered truth about the predator who’d run a foster house in Denver for so long. About the confession tape he’d made, on his knees, while covered in blood.

About how his remains had been found in his burned-out house inthirty-sixdifferent pieces that detectives are saying were cut surgically.

During the whole newscast, Cillian just quietly drank his coffee, not blinking once.

Part of that scares me. But not enough to run. Maybe because I don’t fully understand what being him really means. Which is why I’m looking it up now.

Psychopath: a person affected by chronic mental disorder with abnormal or violent social behavior.

I swallow.

Another site gives the definition as: “a person with a psychopathic personality, which manifests as amoral and antisocial behavior, extreme egocentricity, and failure to learn from experience. Lack of ability to love, or establish meaningful personal relationships.”

Hmm. That’s…sortof him. But sort of not. Amoral? Maybe. But everything I’ve seen suggests it’s less “amoral” and more just that he has hisown setof morals and codes. Antisocial? I smirk. At times, sure. But that’s also me, too.

Extreme egocentricity? Well, again, he has his moments there. But “failure to learn from experience” doesn’t sound accurate. If anything, Cillianimmediatelylearns from a situation and tailors his actions accordingly, with almost machine-like precision.

It’s the last part that has mereallyfrowning, though.

“Lack of ability to love or establish meaningful personal relationships.”

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