Blackness Within (37 page)

“Natasha!” he screams in a panicked voice.

I back away, using the wall to steady myself. I can see Roman and Ivan through the flames as I retreat. Tears stinging my eyes as I move. I’m leaving them to burn in this building. I want to push forward and grab Ivan through the raging flames, but I know I can’t get him.

Roman’s midnight gaze watches me until smoke and flames cut off our connection. The fury melts away and the last thing I see from him is hurt. A sob rips through my chest as I lose sight of them. I never should have come here. I just damned Ivan to death. What was I thinking?

I crawl on my hands and knees below the smoke until I reach the door shaking viciously from my brother and Sully’s desperate attempt to get to me. I grip the massive slide lock and shove it to the side as the rest of the ceiling drops free. My body’s ripped away from the scorching debris just in time.

I’m coughing and blubbering as my brother wraps me in his arms and sprints away from the orange and amber engulfed building. Fire trucks are lining the streets and beginning to wage a losing war. Flames shoot from every window as we move away, screams and wails bursting into the night air.

“Hospital,” Sully chokes out once we’re in the SUV that carried us here at my insistence.

I lay my head against Blake’s chest and weep as my tortured life burns to the ground. I watch the glowing façade spit and howl in dark. A fire-breathing dragon waging its final battle. When I can no longer see the inferno, I close my eyes and let the unbridled guilt seep over me.

I killed a baby.

The next hours and days are a blur. After a brief visit to the emergency room, Blake took me to his new apartment where I fell into bed and didn’t move for what felt like a lifetime. I only rose when my beloved dog crawled into bed with me.

I curled around Zeus and sobbed for hours until I fell asleep again. I slept like the dead. I was alive, yet I felt as though I was trapped in purgatory.

I haven’t eaten. I’m not drinking. I barely breathe. I simply exist.

“Grey,” his warm voice tickles my ear.

“Hmm?” I mutter, keeping my eyes closed.

“You gotta get up and eat somethin’,” he urges me as he pushes my surely matted hair away from my face.

I force my heavy lids open and find Sully perched on the edge of my bed. His chocolate eyes look tortured and weary as he peers down at me. A small sad smile forms on his lips as he caresses my cheek with the backs of his fingers.

“Please,” he whispers. “Please, Grey. I can’t lose you again. Blake can’t lose you again. We need you.”

“Why do you call me Grey?” I croak.

“I told you in the hospital after your accident. Don’t you remember?”

“I wasn’t in a hospital. I was with Roman after the crash,” I grumble, pushing up on an elbow.

“He stole you from the hospital. I was with you. Blake and Finn were there too. You had a concussion. They took you for a CT scan and you never came back. You have no memory of that?” he asks with a puzzled look on his chiseled face.

“I don’t remember much from then. It happens with concussions. I dreamt about you afterward though. You and Blake. You kept begging me to take your hand and calling me Grey. I never understood it,” I huff.

I sit upright and lean against the plain honey-hued wooden headboard of Blake’s guest bed. Zeus lays his head in my lap as Sully scoots closer.

“You told me I saved you. That the first time you had to kiss that motherfucker you imagined you were kissing me. You told me you saw my face before the crash and I was begging you to take my hand,” he explains softly, interlacing our fingers.

I close my eyes and try to remember. Nothing comes and I get frustrated that something so important is gone for me. I have bits and pieces, but not a full picture.

“I’ve got you now,” he assures me and places a tender kiss on my knuckles.

The warmth of his mouth heats my skin and travels all the way to my broken heart.

“I killed him,” I whimper.

“No, you didn’t,” Sully growls. “You tried to save him. That psychopath killed him.”

When we were in the hospital, I recounted what happened in our final minutes in the warehouse. Sully knows that I walked away from Ivan and Roman. He knows Ivan was Roman’s son and I left them to burn.

“Don’t let Vojtech steal anything else from you. He took everything from you for months. Don’t give him another second, Grey. Fight to get that power back. You fought to keep yourself alive when most people would have shriveled up and died. You carry no guilt in what happened to you. It’s my fuckin’ fault he got you in the first place. If I would’ve just pulled my head outta my ass for a second, none of this would’ve happened,” he says remorsefully.

“It’s not your fault, Sully. I chose to stay there with Roman.”

“You didn’t choose that. You were forced into it. He made the decision for you.”

“I could have let him kill me.”

“He
was
killing you.”

He’s right. Roman was leading me down the path of a slow painless death of my soul. I wasn’t living or surviving. I was simply a functioning being. I have the chance to thrive now. I have to heal first.

“Thank you for saving me. I truly appreciate everything you’ve done for me. If I told you before that you saved me, let me say it again. If it wasn’t for you, I wouldn’t have made it. It was your eyes, your comforting embrace that pulled me through in the beginning. I held on to you so tightly that I was able to keep my head just above the suffocating surface that Roman was dragging me beneath. Thank you for that, Sully. You saved my life,” I say genuinely before placing a soft kiss on his cheek.

When I pull back from him, the heat in his eyes makes my stomach clench with want.

“Can we be friends, Sully?” I ask and watch the desire fizzle from his gaze.

He sits up straight before clearing his throat and answers, “Of course.”

I can’t jump straight into something with Sully. He’s still the same man that ran me off. And I was just freed from a toxic relationship that will take time to purge from my soul. I have to be smart moving forward in my life. Being with Sully at this point is not the smart choice. He’s still trouble and I can never allow myself to fall victim to another man. Even if I crave those chocolate eyes as much as I do my next breath.
Because
I crave them.

O’Sullivan

After saying an uncomfortable goodbye to Natasha, I came home. Where I’m now sitting in a daze at the breakfast bar drinking whiskey at two in the afternoon. It’s going to be an awesome day.

“You look like fuckin’ shit. And that’s sayin’ something, ’cause you’ve been lookin’ rough for months,” Kav grunts as he flops onto a stool next to me after grabbing a glass.

I slide the bottle of twenty-five year-aged Macallan and see a smirk playing at his lips from my periphery.

“Not only are we getting shit-faced, but we’re doin’ it in style,” he compliments with a slap on my shoulders.

“It’s gonna be an awesome day,” I drone sarcastically.

“And an expensive one.” He throws back two fingers like a pro and pours us each another.

We throw those back and continue to in silence until half the bottle’s gone and I have a warm buzz working.

“You wanna tell me what we’re drainin’ this bottle for?”

“Got friend zoned today,” I huff while pouring more shots.

Kav looks at me with wide round blue-grey eyes for a long moment before tipping his head back and laughing.

“Dick,” I mumble over the edge of my tumbler before gulping down the amber liquid currently anesthetizing my emotions.

Kav wipes away his tears of joy at my failure and then climbs to his feet.

“This day fuckin’ rocks,” Kav announces.

“I’m glad to entertain you,” I snark with a slight slur.

“Dude, what the fuck did you expect her to do?” he asks as he retakes his stool with a fresh bottle of whiskey in his large mitt. “She’s held captive for months by some crazy motherfucker that makes her do all kinds of fucked up shit. You really think she’s just gonna jump on your junk and forget everything? Your dick is not a magic pogo stick.”

I snort, but I don’t respond so he keeps going.

“Now my dick on the other hand, is a magic wand. You want me to work a spell on your girl, say the word.”

“Have I told you you’re an asshole lately?”

“Not since this morning.”

“You’re an asshole, Kav.”

“Thanks, man,” he responds with his hand on his heart as though I’ve genuinely touched him.

“Kieran still pissed at you?”

“Yup,” I reply with a slurred
p
pop.

“I know you’re number one on Kid’s shit list. Your dad and your brothers aren’t your biggest fans and I think Cooper wants to go old school on your ass.”

“Don’t forget the Cooper brothers,” I continue the list with a sardonic chuff.

Needless to say, when everyone found out what happened the night of the fire, I became enemy number one. When everyone found out Cara was involved, shit got even more heightened. So the woman I’ve been pining for wants to be my friend and my family wants to beat my ass. It’s been a fun few days around here.

“Hey, I could kick your ass and just do you a favor,” Kav suggests seriously.

“You couldn’t kick my ass if you tried, pussy,” I scoff.

“Whatever.”

He knows it’s true. We’ve gone at it a few times over the decades. I always win. I’m faster than he is. Even shit-faced, I can best him and he knows it. I feel a cocky smile ghost across my face.

“Kieran can beat your ass,” he grumbles the truth. Kieran can kick anyone’s ass.

“I’m sure he’ll try that in the coming days.”

“You scared the shit outta him and everyone else, O’Sullivan. Some of us get it and the rest don’t know what the fuck to do. I say gettin’ drunk with you is better than plotting your untimely death.”

“Cheers,” I say through a half smile at my new reality.

We clink glasses and dive back into silence. I wish my brain would shut off. It won’t. I can’t sleep. I’m barely eating. I feel guilty. I feel worthless. I just don’t want to feel any more.

All I can see when I close my eyes is that fucking door. Natasha locked behind it and no way to get through. Cara ran out of bullets putting down the few men that came after us before the fire department showed up. She couldn’t shoot out the lock and Blake and I couldn’t budge the damn thing.

It’s Blake’s screams that haunt me the most. He was pleading for his sister to come back, knowing he’d probably just lost her forever. His grey eyes were destroyed and his voice was raw and jagged as he begged.

There was a commotion at the back of the building while Natasha was trapped inside. Butch was beating a man into mush with his fists. I couldn’t leave the door to stop him and when I realized what he was doing, I had no urge to stop his assault. He found the man that stole his life from him and was stealing his in return.

Cara approached Butch carefully when his swings began to slow and curled her fingers around his shoulder. He dropped his head to his chest for a few moments before climbing to his feet. When he turned his eyes to mine, I saw the relief he had been seeking.

He offered Cara a small smile but didn’t touch her in his blood-soaked state before he hefted the body over his shoulder and shoved it through a burning window. Then he jogged to my side.

“What’re you doin’ here?” he asked in heaved breaths

“Natasha’s inside,” I informed him as I kicked and punched the metal door.

His features blanched and he moved in to help me. That’s when the door unlocked and Blake ripped his sister from the crashing fire-engulfed building. The air whooshed from my lungs and we ran. I can’t describe what I felt in those moments, but it was so big it encapsulated every cell in my body with warmth.

We lost the baby. Roman’s baby that he tore from Natasha’s arms. I carry that guilt and misery. Vojtech’s death and the fire have been plastered on every news station from local to national. The DCA took over and began dismantling the remaining pieces of the Vojtech Bratva. They have a lot of work ahead of them to bring the entire organization down. But with Roman Vojtech gone, it makes the job easier.