Page 82 of Vicious Hearts

“You can fight this all you want, Una. But as much fun as this back and forth is, I’m out of fucking time. This marriage is happening.”

The marriage. As if I could forget.

I turn and lift my head to look at him. I feel so small and vulnerable in this enormous tub with him towering over me. And yet, there’s something weirdly comforting about it, too.

A feeling of protection, unlike anything I’ve felt in more than fifteen years.

Maybe ever.

“There’s food out there when you’re done. Eat it.”

Then, with that final tyrannical and yet bizarrely nurturing decree, he’s gone, leaving me to my jasmine-scented bubbles and black-tinged thoughts.

18

UNA

It takesme longer than I’d like to admit to get out of the bath. I just sit there, hugging my knees to my chest, trying to shake off that…feelinghe leaves lingering over me after every meeting.

Physical or otherwise.

Because the problem is, as domineering and tyrannical as Cillian may be…I don’thate it.

Actually, I kind oflike it. Because I’m broken like that.

There’s an unflinching, unapologetic power in the man who’s just told me—not asked, told—that I’m going to be marrying him. A coldness, and something unhinged you can see in his eyes that should by all rights terrify me. Not just because of what that makes him. But because of who that makes himlike.

My father.

I shiver, sinking deeper into the warm, sudsy water.

Except, for all the similarities you could draw between them—their murderous tendencies, their fondness for violence, and their dark power—there is something fundamentally different between them. And after sitting there in the gradually cooling tub for ten, maybe even fifteen minutes, it finally hits me.

Cruelty.

My father was drenched in it. He breathed it. He reveled in it and lived for it. But for all of Cillian’s fury, danger, and unflinching viciousness, he’s nevercruel. At least, not that I’ve seen.

My father wielded the threat of violence and his own darkness like a club.

Cillian uses it like a tool. Or maybe armor. I’m not sure.

Possibly both.

“What do you think?”

I glance across the room, where Bones has taken up a new residence on top of an admittedlywaynicer toilet.

No response. Classic Bones.

Well, whatever it is, and whateverheis—Cillian, that is—I’d better make peace with it. Because this insane marriage idea is real and very much happening—that much is crystal clear in those deep green eyes of his.

Real, andforever.

I swallow, shivering as I pull myself out of the tub and away from that thought. I towel off, but when my eyes find my reflection in the mirror, I frown as my gaze drops to my thighs and the little white lines there. But specifically, to the freshest, still-healing cut.

I obviously don’t have my little metal box, like back at my apartment. But yesterday, when I was feeling especially low and like I needed to vent the painsomehow, therewashave a safety-pin holding a tag to one of the new pairs of leggings Cillian left in my room.

I’m not proud of the fresh line down my inner thigh, courtesy of that saftey-pin. But it did drag me back into the world of the living. Sort of.

---