32. Sabrina

32

SAbrINA

OH NO, YOU FUCKING DON’T.

I t took no less than three turns of good luck—the luck of the Irish? I’m married to one now, it seems—and a whole lot of effort to get out here, and there’s no fucking way I’m letting Kian walk away from me now. What started as grief and shock this afternoon has turned fully into rage, and without stopping to think, I duck between the ropes, my shoes slipping on the bloody mats as I tear after Kian.

“Ma’am! Ma’am, miss, you can’t—” A thick Irish voice comes over the speakers, presumably talking to me, but I ignore it. I don’t care where anyone thinks I should or should not be going. I’m following Kian wherever that door that he just burst through leads me.

It leads me into a tiled hallway, a short one that has two other doors near the end. He goes left, so I do too, following him through the red-painted door before he can do anything like lock himself inside, and I slam it behind me, flinging my back against it so he can’t try to shove me out.

It takes me a second to realize that I’m in a locker room. A small one, with one wall of lockers and two benches, and what looks like a shower stall at the far end. Kian is standing in the middle of the room, staring at me as if I’ve grown another head .

“How in the bloody hell did you get here?” he demands.

“We’ll get to that,” I tell him, almost mockingly, mimicking what he said to me earlier. “But if you thought I was going to sit around and wait for you to come back to keep me locked in your mansion, after what you said to me earlier, you’re not as smart as I thought you were.”

“Why wouldn’t you just fucking run?” Kian is still staring at me as if he doesn’t know what to make of me.

“I don’t have my things,” I hiss at him through my teeth. “Because my fucking liar of a husband has them! I don’t have a debit card, my phone, or identification. I don’t have anything I would need to get out of here. I can’t even fucking call Caldwell, which I’m sure is why you took my phone, since you know he’d bloody well have something to say about it!” I mock Kian’s accent as I say the last, and his eyes narrow, rage tightening his face.

“How the fuck did you pay the bloody cover charge without a card or cash?”

“I told them I was your wife!” I shout it, feeling angry tears burn behind my eyelids, and I refuse to let them fall. I don’t have a chance, because Kian is on me in a flash, his hands gripping my wrists and hoisting them above my head as his body angles me against the lockers.

“Aye,” he growls, pinning my wrists to the metal as his sweating, bloodied body crowds in on mine. “Aye, you’re my wife, Sabrina. But it’s of no consequence. It’s not a real marriage, remember? Just one for your protection .”

“You’re doing a pretty poor fucking job of it,” I spit back at him. “Less than a week in, and I’ve already been kidnapped and held hostage.”

Kian smirks. “Are you going to keep running that pretty mouth, princess? Or should I remind you what else it’s good for?”

“Don’t even fucking think about it,” I hiss. “I’m not going to suck your cock again, Kian. I’m not going to let you fuck me or take it in the ass or anything else you want to do to me. Not after?—”

“Mm.” He rocks into me, grinding his hips against mine, and I can feel how hard he is through the silky fabric of his shorts. “Maybe I’m not done ruining you. Maybe I’m not finished getting my revenge.” He reaches up with his free hand, grabbing my chin and holding my face still, forcing me to look directly at him. “Maybe I want another taste.”

For one brief, hot second, when his mouth crushes against mine, it all slips away. The feeling of his kiss, the taste of him, has become so familiar that for a moment, I sink into him, wanting that, wanting the pleasure, everything he’s offered me before. I feel myself melt for one blissful, hot second, and then I stiffen, jerking my head to the side as I try to tear my mouth away from his.

Kian breaks the kiss, laughing. “You still want it, princess. All of that, and you folded as soon as I kissed you. You filthy little?—”

“Say it, and I’ll slap the shit out of you the minute you let go of me,” I warn. “You’ll have to, eventually. And maybe it won’t hurt, but I bet it’ll hurt a little more after that fight you just finished.”

“He barely touched me.” Kian’s hips are still pressed against mine, the eager ridge of his hard cock throbbing against my thigh. “You know, I own this place, princess. I can do whatever I want to you in here, and no one will come in. If they do, they’ll leave. Or maybe I’ll let them stay, so they can see what my whore of a wife likes in bed.” His hand curves around my face, knotting in my hair as he looks at me, his breathing sharp and fast. “How do you want it, Sabrina? Like this, up against the lockers? Bent over that bench? You know how much I want a good fuck after I fight?—”

My heart is beating hard in my chest, every instinct in me warning me of danger. Of the fact that I can’t best this man physically, not even if I tried.

But whatever he said to me in that room earlier, I believe there’s some part of him that’s not all in on it. I saw the hesitation. I’ve seen the strange moments he’s had before, the things that didn’t add up that I excused away. And I don’t think he’s really the type of man to force me. Not if I truly don’t want it.

“I’m not going to fuck you,” I whisper. “Not in here. Not ever again, Kian. Let go of me. ”

“Or what?” he taunts. “I told you, princess, this is my revenge. You don’t tell me what to do. You don’t say anything except harder, and oh god, yes, Kian , and yes, sir . Do you understand me? You are mine !”

He snarls out the last word, and I flinch back, but I hold his gaze.

“I’m telling you no,” I say softly. “And if you make me, right now—if you force me to fuck you, you’re no better than those men that hurt your sister. You’ll be just like them. Is that what you want, Kian? To become the same thing you’re trying to get vengeance over?”

I see the moment that the words cut through. He lets go of me abruptly, stepping back, and I sag against the lockers, my heart in my throat. “How the fuck did you know where to find me, anyway?” he growls, his voice raw and angry, and I swallow hard.

“Your sister.”

He lunges towards me again, stopping just short of grabbing me, but he’s caging me in once again. “You’re lying,” he hisses. “Ailin doesn’t speak any longer. I told you that, but you must not have been listening, princess. Too busy worrying about your own skin. She hasn’t since?—”

“Since she was brought back. I was listening,” I snap back. “She wrote it down. She said she was sure if you just got back, and you were in a bad mood, this was where you’d be.”

Kian sucks in a sharp breath, and I can see him struggling for patience. “And how the fuck did you get to talk to my sister?”

I wrench away from him, backing up to get some space. As furious as I am with him, as hurt and betrayed, as much as I wonder now if I’m starting to hate him as much as I was starting to fall in love with him, being so close to him has an effect. His body, his scent, the muscular looming weight of him, the blood and sweat—I can feel desire prickling over my skin, distracting me, and I back up further, glaring at him.

“She found me. She wrote down that she heard us shouting. She came up to see who the woman was that he brought home. She was curious about me. About why I was there.”

For the first time, I see something approaching fear in his eyes. “Did you tell her? ”

“No. I wouldn’t do that. Not for your sake, but hers.”

He visibly relaxes, although I can still see the anger on his face. “How the fuck did you get out of the house? I have guards everywhere, specifically told to keep you in —” He pauses. “Ailin. Of course. She’s always been a genius at sneaking out. Drove our parents bloody nuts when we were young.”

I nod. “She showed me where the cameras wouldn’t see me. Sweet-talked one of the drivers into bringing me here. Promised we were just having a spat, and you’d be happy to see me.”

Kian’s jaw is still clenched, but I can see him softening as I talk about his sister. He loves her, I realize. Truly loves her. It doesn’t excuse the horrible things he’s done to me, the lies and betrayal—it doesn’t excuse everything he still planned to do, but I can see that this rage, this need for vengeance that has driven him to do something unthinkable spread from a wound caused by a deep love for his sister. An infection that took hold, driving him mad.

I don’t think he was always like this. I think, maybe, that the man he was before all of this happened to Ailin would be horrified to know what he’s done.

“So you came here to see me—why?” He crosses his arms over his bare chest, and I try not to notice the way the muscles flex and ripple as he does. “To convince me to let you go? To shout at me? To tell me what a horrible shite I am for what I’ve done?”

“I think the first is pointless,” I say quietly. “To the second two—yes, and yes. But also, to get answers.”

Kian’s eyes gleam with fresh anger, as I give him something to latch onto. “You’ll get no answers from me, princess, not until I decide?—”

“Ailin wrote down that my father was involved in this. In me nearly being sold. Is that true?”

I say it so baldly that I think it catches Kian off guard. He goes very still for a moment, and then he nods, a quick jerk of his head.

“Yes.”

That one word feels as if it goes through me like a shot. I feel momentarily dizzy, and I grab onto one of the lockers, steadying myself. It feels incomprehensible. My father loves me. He always has. I believed, with everything in me, that the only reason he hadn’t come after me was either because the FBI had told him not to, or because he couldn’t find me. He was a good father. I knew he cared about me, loved me—or at least I thought I did.

But—I remember other things, too. When I was nineteen, a powerful man from the New York Bratva came to visit—twenty years older than me. I still remember the way he looked at me, the way it felt as if his eyes were crawling over my skin. I remember that, over dinner, my father told me that there was a possibility we would be engaged. That it would expand his territory into Manhattan. That it was good business.

I was even willing to consider it, until the man followed me after dinner, when I went to freshen up. He pinned me in a hallway, his hand finding its way under my skirt. Only one of my father’s men, sent to look for me when my father suspected something, stopped the man from taking more than just a quick feel from me.

My father was wise enough to know what might have happened that night, and he sent someone to stop it. But it didn’t stop him from trying to arrange a marriage with that man. No matter how I begged, no matter how many times I told him I couldn’t bear it, that I knew my duty but desperately wanted it to be anyone but him, my father told me it was business. That if the man agreed, I would be his wife.

The deal fell through. But it wasn’t my father’s doing. It was that other man, who found a woman even younger, who he wanted more.

I believe that my father loved me. But I also believe that there are reasons he might look past that love. That even what he felt for me would always, always be overruled if it was good business.

Kian shrugs. “You don’t believe me. It doesn’t matter to me if?—”

“I didn’t say that,” I interrupt him. The dizzy feeling has faded, and now I just want to know the truth. I want to know if what I believed all my life wasn’t as true as I thought it was—just like so many other things now, it seems .

Kian frowns. “Then what?”

I tilt my chin up, taking a step towards him as I hold his gaze, ready to fight him on this if need be.

“I want proof.”