My cheeks heat because a part of me wishes Bull would show me that sort of dedication.
“Where do we go from here?” he asks, tightening his grip.
Sighing, I pray for my soul for what I’m about to say. “I won’t stop you. You do what you have to.”
His steady breaths reveal he’s weighing over what I just declared. “And you’re okay with having that on your conscience?”
“My conscience was stained long ago,” I reveal, thinking of what I did to Christopher. If I didn’t follow my heart, things would have turned out so differently. At the time, I thought my love was unbreakable, but how naïve I was.
“I need to stay away from you,” Bull confesses, cupping my throat and running his thumb over my racing pulse.
“I know,” I reply, hating how this must end. Just because I won’t stand in the way of his justice doesn’t mean I can stand by and happily watch him hunt down two men—no matter how badly they deserve it.
“I never expected to feel…”
“Feel what?” I whisper, licking my lips.
He inhales, releasing his hand over my heart. “Feel…anything,” he clarifies sincerely, which touches me in ways it shouldn’t. “Thank you.”
“For what?” I question, my skin coming to life as he continues to stroke my neck.
“For seeing something in me that I never will.” And this is our closure. Bull is putting an end to something that could have been something wonderful. But it never will be because of what he has to do.
“Who are the other men?” I press. I don’t know why it matters. It just does. Maybe this is what I need for my own closure.
Bull slides his fingers behind the nape of my neck and draws me toward him. Our lips are inches apart. “Like me, we all go by aliases. Tonight, I killed Kong,” he reveals, while my heart constricts and the world tilts, sending me off balance. “Tomorrow, I kill Scrooge and…” But his words all morph into a spiral of destruction because it can’t be.
The walls begin closing in on me, and my skin is suddenly alight. I can’t breathe. There has to be some mistake.
But there isn’t, and Bull confirms this when he brings this entire shitshow full circle. “Jaws,” he concludes, while I gasp, desperate for air.
“Tiger?”
I attempt to pull from his hold, but he grasps me tightly. In a way, I’m thankful because the room begins to spin violently, and nausea rises. But I quash it down. I have one more question. One question which is the reason I felt so connected to Bull this entire time. I just didn’t know it…until now. “That’s th-three,” I whisper, begging there is some mistake. “Who was the fourth?”
Bull arches a brow, but I slap my hand over his, squeezing his fingers. “Who was the other m-man you killed? The man you went to prison for?”
Everything comes down to this. Please, god, let there be some mistake. Please, don’t let it be him. But deep down, I always knew he would never leave me. He would never leave us by choice. His choices were taken away from him. And now, I know why…
“His name was Lachlan…Hero was his nickname,” Bull confesses, cementing the fact the universe is a cruel, sadistic bitch who was just biding her time, waiting for me to pay my dues.
A single tear trickles down my cheek. What have I done? I’ve slept with the enemy, the man who destroyed my life…and I liked it…a lot.
“Tiger? What’s wrong? Talk to me.” But I can’t. It’s too late for talking. The damage has already been done.
Or so I thought, as it seems this is merely the beginning…of the end.
Bull looks over my head, his eyes sparking with fire. “You,” he manages to grit out between clenched teeth.
I don’t need to turn around to know who stands behind me. But this is my punishment for all that I’ve done.
Bull loosens his hold on me, and I slowly look over my shoulder, stitching together the lies. Before me stands the man who left, left because I betrayed him.
Before me stands my brother…Christopher…or, as most know him…Jaws.
Bull
It’s too much, too fast, and I need a moment, one fucking moment, because standing just a few feet away from me is the man who ruined my life. He looks a lot different from when I saw him last. Gone are the gangster threads. He’s now decked in an expensive suit and gold. He always reeked of power, but now, he is on top of the fucking food chain.
I can’t do anything but stare him down, envisioning the ways I’m going to kill him…and kill him slowly.
But my murderous thoughts come to a screeching halt when Tiger sways, reaching for the top of a chair to stop herself from falling on her ass.
What the fuck is going on?
“I missed you,” the motherfucker sweetly says. He sure as shit isn’t speaking to me, which means…he knows Tiger. But how? “I’m glad you like the earrings I bought you.”
Her fingers flutter to her ears in surprise.
I launch forward, ready to rip out his spleen and ask questions later, but Tiger snares my bicep, stopping me. Inhaling, I peer down at her vise-like grip. She has three seconds to let me go. But when I look into her heartbroken eyes, I realize I’m going to need a lot longer than three seconds.
“Don’t,” she whispers, shaking her head.
I don’t understand what’s going on. She soon brings me up to speed.
“He’s my…m-my…”
“Brother,” the asshole fills in the blanks with a grin.
Although I’ve heard them both loud and clear, it’s like they’ve spoken to me in another language. This motherfucker, the man who took everything away from me, is her own flesh and blood? Surely, life isn’t this cruel?
But I shouldn’t have expected anything less.
“He’s your brother?” I ask her, unable to accept this as truth. When she doesn’t reply, I grip her wrist. “Answer me!”
Lowering her chin, she slowly nods, hiding behind her hair.
My heart does something I’ve only felt once before—it was when Damian died in my arms. It breaks. Breaks because, once again, someone I care for is taken away from me.
“Your brother? Your motherfucking brother!” I cry, suddenly needing to put as much distance between us as possible. I recoil from her hold because it’s burning me alive.
She rubs her arms, tiny shivers wracking her. She appears to have shut down. I want to console her, but I can’t. How can I?
“Tiger, goddammit! Talk to me!”
“Please,” she whimpers, shaking her head, unable to look at me. I’m scaring her, which is what I’ve always wanted. I don’t want that now, but it’s too late. Too fucking late.
“Lillian, go to my office,” Jaws softly says, reaching into his pocket and producing a set of keys. I watch with wide eyes as he slowly walks toward her and unwraps her arms from around herself before placing the keys into her palm.
“It’s upstairs. Tell security to take you.”
A ferocious possessiveness comes over me. I want her to tell him to go to hell. To fight like the strong woman I know that she is. But she doesn’t. She sniffs with a nod, and on autopilot, she walks out the door.