Killian POV I storm up the stairs and towards my bedroom. I lock the door behind me, and I slam my hand against the wall several times. My knuckles start bleeding, and a shooting pain moves up my hand toward my arm. I let out a loud noise in frustration, and I hear a knock. “Fuck off,” I shout as I sit on the edge of the bed with my head between my hands. I feel the tears falling down my face. With the back of my hand, I rub them off and walk into the bathroom to have a shower and wash off the blood that is covering my clothes and my body. I close my eyes under the hot water, and all I see are the bruises on her arms. Is the rest of her body like that? I make up my mind. I walk out of the shower when I am done, and I grab my phone. I press Theo’s number, and he answers straight away. “Take her to the spare room next to mine, have the doctor examine her, head to toe, everything, and when I say everything, I mean everything, rape test the lot, and then she can have a shower and get d

Killian POV “What have you done to her?”, I ask Tobias as I hold him by his throat. His eyes are barely open from the beating I gave him, his breathing is shallow. His feet away from the floor as I lift him. He is not even showing fear. Tobias starts laughing between coughs and my entire body reacts to the bastard doing that. He thinks it’s funny to destroy someone else’s woman, fuck to destroy a woman, it doesn’t matter who she belongs to. I can’t even begin to imagine what she is going through. The fucker. “She will never be the same, I made sure of that”, he says and I slam my fist against his nose, it starts pouring blood as Elliot stands next to me with his arms crossed in front of his chest. Tobias coughs some blood and then looks at me. “I made sure she will always remember me, she will never enjoy your company, I will always be the one she thinks about when you have sex with her, she fought hard, she fought for you, but not hard enough, she even tried to kill herself but it

Killian POV “Everything is ready,” Elliot says as he opens the office door. Dad looks up at him and smiles. Today is the first day he will be coming out of hiding, and we have a meeting with some of the other mafia leaders in New York, and we are claiming back our territory and our businesses. We left it without proper management for a long time. Theo and Elliot obviously have been dealing with this, but they are not me. Dad agreed to leave me in charge. He will run the operations in the background, whenever I need some help or time off. Mum has become my chief of security and detail. She really knows what she’s doing. She’s even been teaching the guys some stuff. Some of my men don’t know about me, or my dad is alive, and today, everything has changed. I am taking over with Ashley by my side. I am claiming her in front of all the leaders, and we will be assuming Tobias’s death. I don’t run from my responsibilities or what I do. Ashley is already settled in my New York penthouse.

Ashley POV “I said fucking no one,” he replies, walking away from me. I see him walking through a set of double doors. I know better than to stay behind, so I follow him. He is in his office with his head between his hands. “Theo, what is going on?” I ask as I walk to him. He raises his head, looking me in the eyes. I have never seen him like this. Theo is the coolest person I have ever met. I have never seen him lose his shit like that. I don’t know how he is at work, but in his personal life, he is carefree and bubbly. He is funny and gentle. I have never seen him so destroyed in my life. Theo passes a hand through his beard, and his eyes meet mine. I don’t know what to say or what to do. He looks so sad… He stands up, filling up his glass with an amber content from the small bar in the room's corner. He empties his glass straight away, and I raise both my eyebrows, looking at him as I sit on the chair on the other side of his desk. “She is the bane of my existence,” he says, a

Ashley POV “So, I had an important meeting today, and it didn’t go very well,” Killian says, and my entire body reacts to that sentence. I look at him as if trying to understand what the fuck is going on. Why is he telling me this? We agreed we wouldn’t talk about his “work” and that he would keep me out of it as much as possible. Is he okay? Why didn’t it go okay? Why is he telling me this? All the questions keep popping into my head. Killian places both his hands on my face, cradling it and looking me in the eye. Slowly he places his lips against mine, king me deeply, sending all the questions to the back of my mind and fogging it instantly. He is good. “I am okay, but there are some things I need to discuss with you, and I don’t think you are going to like it,” Kill tells me, and I nod my head. I guess I will need a drink for this. I have taken on drinking as a coping mechanism for not knowing what is happening and to drown my concerns about Killian. I am not an alcoholic. I am f