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1
CILLIAN
The smellof cigarettes wafted through the air as the sliding door opened behind me, letting it enter with a gust of wind into the main lobby of the hotel I now owned, mixing with the sweet scent of lemon grass and something I couldn’t quite put my finger on.
Guests walked from the front desk toward the three elevators set on the opposite side of the wide golden colored desk, where the agents assisted three men in suits, most probably checking them in. But my interest wasn’t piqued by the woman and two men chatting with guests, smiling and animatedly talking. No, as if they had a mind of their own, my eyes plastered onto the tall blond woman standing on the right side of the reception, carefully listening to the conversations happening around her, dressed in a sleek black suit that did nothing to hide her curves.
Her blond hair was pulled in a high ponytail, feline eyes narrowed at something one of the staff members said, and I wished I could cross this lobby and go straight to her. Her bare neck strained as her mouth pinched, and I wondered if she would have the same look on her face if I told her who I was and why I'd come here.
Two years and six suffocating months since my brother decided to hand over the Outfit to me. Two fucking years since I made the decision to get out of Croyford Bay, forsaking Santa Monica as well, and moved here, to Velvet City—close enough, but also far far away from my family, from Ophelia and Storm, from everything I couldn’t fucking have because I was a coward, hiding behind the vices that helped me sleep at night.
Running was easy. Running kept me sane, kept me sober long enough to move the entire operation here.
But I couldn’t run away from Tristan, from everything he'd done and everything I'd failed to do. He was my responsibility, my burden to carry, my target, and I couldn’t put this off any longer. I couldn’t look in the mirror and see the same despair, the same agony that appeared the moment Tristan went rogue.
Ophelia warned me that I shouldn’t be the one doing this, that revenge only led to despair, to more agony, to the crippling sense of failure, but I didn't listen to her. I didn’t listen to anyone when I packed my bags and disappeared from their lives, getting as far away as possible. Even my own twin couldn’t understand why I had to be the one to do this, to find justice for what Tristan did, but he didn’t understand.
Kieran couldn’t understand that it was my fault for what happened. It was my fault for letting Tristan slip through our fingers, and it took me too long to realize that our youngest brother wasn’t the same person he was a couple of years ago. He wasn’t the man I could count on, the man that vowed to never hurt us.
He was the monster hiding in the shadows, waiting for the day when his fucked up mind would give him a relief. Waiting for the day when he would destroy us all, because that was a promise he made as he held me at gunpoint in the middle of the snow covered street in our hometown, his crazed eyes filled with unshed tears because we both knew that it was the day that Tristan Nightingale stopped being someone I had to save. That day he became someone I needed to destroy if I wanted to save the rest of my family.
And no matter how much I wanted to cross the distance between me and the blond, no matter how much I wanted to bury my hands in her blond, silky hair, needing to hear her scream my name as my cock branded her as mine, I couldn’t. Because Tristan was here tonight, inmyhotel, inmyfucking city, taunting me, daring me to come out and play.
Instead of heading right, to where the front desk was located, I headed straight toward the elevators, keeping my head low, hoping no one would recognize me. The Grosvenor Hotel was the first thing I'd bought in this city filled with sinners and people that wanted to simply hide, to disappear. It was my sanctuary, my little piece of heaven where I could be whoever I wanted to be whenever I went to The Penthouse on the top floor, drowning myself in a bottle of vodka and whichever drugs I managed to bring with me at the time.
Tristan knew it. I was sure he knew a lot more than he let on, and I wasn’t going to let him stain this place with his fucked up games. I was a fool to think that he would let it go after we met the last time in Ventus City—after he pissed off Nico Romano, almost getting himself killed. I blamed myself for allowing him to slip away, because my bleeding heart still thought that underneath all that mess he carried so proudly on the surface of his skin, my brother still existed, waiting to be saved.
But the bodies he left behind as he entered my city told me otherwise—he didn’t want to be saved. He didn’t want to be redeemed, and if death was what he sought, then I would be the one to give it to him.
My shoes clicked on the marble floor as I came to a stop in front of the elevators, holding tightly onto the master key I'd gotten from one of my associates, waiting for the doors to open, to go to the fiftieth floor where I knew he had a meeting with one of my men. I was getting betrayed in my own kingdom, but that was about to end tonight.
Tonight I would show them all why they needed to fear Cillian Nightingale.
I chanced one more look toward the front desk, but the blond from earlier wasn’t looking at her staff anymore—her eyes were firmly plastered on me. The deep frown between her eyebrows was a clear indication that she had no idea who I was, and if the small step that she made in my direction told me anything, it was that if I didn’t get the fuck away from here, I would need to tell her who I was, and for whatever reason, I didn’t want her to look at me like I was a monster.
People in this city knew who I was. They maybe didn’t know what I looked like, but they remembered the day I took everything away from the Bratva, who previously held the reins in this area. I didn’t mind the whispers, the fear, the trembling in people’s bodies when they talked to me, but I didn’t want to see it in her. I didn’t want her eyes to fill with anxiety, and they would if I had to tell her who I was.
So as soon as the elevator doors opened, I slipped inside, hiding behind a group of guests that entered after me, quickly pressing the button for fiftieth floor after I pressed my master key to the black panel, my own anxiety only dropping down when the doors closed and we started ascending up, straight toward the mess I knew I would find.
* * *
I was too late.
Too fucking late to catch my brother. Too fucking late to stop the murder that happened here. And as I looked at the lifeless eyes of Gregory, the man who worked for me as an accountant, who'd stayed with the Outfit for the last ten years, I had no idea why Tristan had done this.
Were they working together?
Was Gregory the person who'd betrayed us? Or was there something else I hadn’t uncovered yet?
I knew the moment Maya killed Ava was the beginning of the end for our family, but I never quite realized how deep Tristan’s rage ran, or that he would stop at nothing to enact the revenge he was so hell bent on having.
For our sister who went crazy.
For him, because we didn’t stand by him, letting him destroy Ophelia and Storm.
That same trickling thought I couldn’t get rid of slid through the defenses I had in my mind, telling me that it was my fault my brother behaved like this. I went over everything so many times, and I was still as far away from the real reason why he did this as before.
No matter what I tried, no matter how hard I thought about the events that led to this mess, I couldn’t find the cause of all of this. He'd seemed fine when I brought Ophelia to Ventus City. He'd seemed fine when he helped us to take down Belladonna a.k.a Ava, and I had no idea if seeing Ava was the reason his mind finally shattered, or if it was her death that made him do all of this.
