Page 88 of Vicious Hearts

“Then that’s settled. Tomorrow.”

I want so badly to rebel against that authoritarian, commanding tone of his. And yet I also want to submit to it.

Like I just did.

And I have no fucking idea how I’m ever going to begin reconciling that polarity.

Seriously. What thehellhave I gotten myself into?

19

UNA

It’s fine.It’s fine.

I tell myself it’s fine all night.

I even manage to hang onto at least a piece of that feeling the next day on the drive over from Cillian’s Brooklyn penthouse to the Kildare family home on the Upper East Side, convincing myself that I’m making this intowaybigger a deal than it’s really going to be.

But the false confidence and forced bravado evaporate as we step up to the front door of the brownstone. My pulse begins to thunder in my ears, thudding rapidly under my skin. Sweat slicks the small of my back.

What the fuck was I thinking?

It’s not even the part where I’m going to bemarrying Cillian. It’s the fact that I’m about to come face-to-face with the rest of them.

His family, whom my father tried to—and almost did—kill.

The same people I had tacked up on my freakingwallat Apostle’s demands, laid out like a fucking hit-list.

Marrying the confirmed psychopath and professed sadist standing next to me as a devil’s deal is one thing. Facing someone like his niece Neve, whom my father once—no,twice—tied to a fucking crucifix, is another story altogether.

And suddenly I’m not sure I can do this, six months or no six months.

“You’re not your father.”

I flinch, snapping back to reality and finding myself standing right in front of the big front door. My eyes dart to the man standing next to me in his customary black suit and black shirt, currently no tie.

“What?”

Cillian’s eyes flicker as he turns to pierce them down into mine. “You’re not your father. Nobody ever is.”

He rings the doorbell and then goes ahead and unlocks the door himself anyway and strides in, with me trailing behind him.

Yeah, well, do THEY know that?

The second we step inside, I see a pretty girl with blonde hair and big green eyes not so dissimilar to Cillian’s.

Eilish, Cillian’s niece and Neve’s younger sister. Twenty-one, incredibly smart, and about to start classes at Columbia Business School.

And I hate that I know who she is because of a hit list thumb tacked to my wall.

I think I hate it worse thatsheprobably knows that, too.

And even if somehow shedoesn’tknow that part, which I doubt, she still knows who I am: the daughter of the monster who tried to, and almost did, destroy her family.

I’m not just an outsider. I’m a threat. The enemy.

Guilty by genetic association.

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