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If the Bratva is going to kill Damien, I can join him, I thought. Like Kellen had done for Darby. I could put an end to all of this suffering and just …
A sudden burst of blue light exploded from the bedroom, illuminating the hallway and causing me to scream and shield my eyes. It was gone in a flash, followed by the sound of glass breaking.
I ran into the room, hoping to see that Damien had found his way home while I was in the woods, but the room was just as dark and quiet as the rest of the house.
“Damien?”
No response.
“Hello?”
Tiptoeing into the space, I crossed the room to light a candle on the bookshelf and heard glass crunch under my feet when I got there. I froze on the spot, waiting, listening, and when I heard nothing but the sound of blood rushing in my own ears, I struck a match.
I was too impatient to light a candle before I glanced down at the mess on the wooden floor. Using the light from the match, I bent down to find a framed photograph shattered at my feet. I managed to set it back on the shelf before the flame began to burn my fingers.
Lighting another, I investigated the photo more closely, and what I saw would have stopped my heart … if I’d still had one.
A man who looked a lot like Damien, but with longer, wavier hair, stared through me with haunting gray eyes and his arm around the shoulders of a smaller, middle-aged woman. She looked a bit like him—pale skin, light eyes, dark, wavy hair—but unlike him, the woman was smiling. She didn’t want to be though. I could see it in the tightness of her features. There was a sadness that betrayed her attempt to be pleasant that struck me as horribly familiar.
“Ow!”
Shaking the match violently, I quickly lit another.
Sweeping the flame over the rest of the photo, I noticed that the two were standing outside of a bakery, and Kellen was wearing a white button-down shirt and a pair of black trousers …
That looked exactly like the ones Kate had given Damien to wear.
“Shite!”
Lighting one of the last matches in the pack, I studied the woman’s face more closely until I was absolutely sure. She had fewer wrinkles than the woman I’d met in Wexford, and her hair was dark instead of white, but the way she carried herself, the way she smiled through her sadness, was unmistakable. She held Kellen like she was already grieving him—and I’d seen that grief firsthand, every time Kate looked at Damien.
Cracking the frame in half on the edge of the shelf, I pulled the photo out and tucked it into the inside pocket of Kellen’s black jacket.
Then, for the first time all day, I smiled.
“Thank you,” I whispered through the lump in my throat.
And that time, I knew Saoirse heard me.
CHAPTER 42
DAMIEN
Ihadn’t thought anything could hurt worse than the betrayal and heartbreak I’d seen in Clo’s eyes the moment she’d realized what I’d done.
But the physical pain I awoke to was a close second.
I kept my eyes closed in case my captors were in the room with me and reached out with my other senses to try to figure out where the hell I was, or how much time had passed since I’d been beaten unconscious at the train station.
I could tell that I was on my back … in a bed … with my wrists and ankles bound by some kind of padded cuffs.
The temperature was neutral. The room was deathly quiet, as if the walls were soundproofed. And the light illuminating my swollen eyelids felt too white, like a doctor’s office or a …
My hunch was confirmed the second I cracked one eyelid open.
Hospital.
Slamming that eye closed again, I directed my senses inward next. Was anything broken? Missing? I felt along the insides of my teeth with my tongue. All there. Toes? Wiggled. Fingers? Accounted for. It hurt to breathe, which I knew from years of getting the shite kicked out of me in the Kletka probably meant that I had a few cracked ribs, and my head and nose were fucking pounding. I racked my brain for any memories from the train station after I’d surrendered, but all I remembered was being shoved to my knees before the butt of a machine gun came down between my eyes.
