Page 53 of Vicious Hearts

“So,” Ares grins. “Was it that happy-go-lucky personality of yours she fell for, or is this more like a prisoner chained up in your attic kind of thing?”

“Ares!” Neve shoots him a sideways look, elbowing him in the side.

“Oh, c’mon,” he chuckles. “Cillian knows I’m jok—”

“It’s the sub-basement, actually.”

Ares’ brows knit, a slightly concerned look washing over his face before he shakes it away—or, at least, decides he doesn’t want toknowif I’m joking or not.

After that, it’s just the usual chaos of a Drakos-Kildare family dinner. And with all the personalities and characters inthesetwo families?

It’s a constant whirlwind.

But oddly enough, given my own brutal and shattered childhood experience with families, it’s something I’ve grown to love.

It doesn’t “fix” me. It doesn’t stop the roaring in my head the way violence and sadism do. But…it’s notnothing, either. And there’s something about all of these people together giving me at least a brief respite from the chaos in my head—without even realizing they’re doing it—that brings a smile to my face.

I mean, not a visible smile. But it’s the thought that counts, right?

Dimitra Drakos, hawkish little elf that she is, comes over and gives me her usual peck on the cheek, clinking her glass of ouzo to my whiskey. Kratos—Ares and Hades’ younger brother and recent amateur chef that he is—arrives, massive arms bulging as he carries in the enormous amount of barbacoa and pulled pork he’s prepared for dinner, which is apparently Latin-themed tonight.

Eilish pulls me aside, gushing about the business school class schedule she’s just hammered out with Columbia University, and how excited she is about some of the professors she’s going to be studying with. Hades even gets a word in while I’m pouring myself another large drink to see when I’ll be making another appearance at the underground fights we occasionally cross paths at.

And by the time we sit down to eat, the sheer magnitude of all this normal, family vibe actually has some of the darkness in me clearing, like fog.

Not all the way.

But still, I’ll take it. I can’t be out killing shitheads in the shadowsallthe time, now can I?

Here, I can look around at family—old and new—and lose myself in their humanity. They all make it look so easy to be “normal”.

And yet, as I look around this table of unlikely family—enemies that once not so long ago wanted to turn the streets red with each other’s blood—I’m…distracted.

By the captive chained away in my basement.

ByUna.

By her soft and yet defiant lips. By the thoughts of her gasped moans and whimpered eagerness when I goaded her with punishment and pain.

That was no act, that night in Club Venom. That wasn’t just her trying to get to me. Or, maybe it was in the beginning, but there’s no faking the way her body eventually responded. There was no lie in the way her cheeks flushed, her nipples puckered to hard, aching points as her thighs clenched. There was no deception in the way she moaned so eagerly, or the way her skin prickled with need and excitement when she breathed out a humbly submissive “Yes, Sir.”

There’s no deceit in how fuckingwetshe got for me. So wet that as tiny and petite as she is, and as…largeas I am, I was able to drive every damn inch of my thick cock deep into her in one thrust.

So wet that she literally came for me on that first, and only, thrust.

The memory of all of that has been taking up serious real estate in my head ever since that night. But right now, fueled by the knowledge that I have her bound as my prisoner, it’s even more fierce. It’s more powerful.

And it’s setting the blackness inside of me ablaze till it becomes an inferno.

“Cillian. Cillian.”

I blink, my brow clearing as I realize it’s not the first time Castle’s muttered my name close to my ear. I turn to see a grim look on his face.

“Dominic Farrell is outside.”

The unspoken rule with all of us is no business at family dinners. But I’m not blind to the concern on Castle’s face.

Tonight’s going to be an exception. And Dimitra can choke on a baklava if she wants to say something about it.

---