All Chapters of SIR: Chapter 151 - Chapter 160

My father delivers the news the way he delivers all news he knows I won’t like, which is calmly, over breakfast, while my mother does the thing where she’s very interested in her orange juice.“This year’s birthday will be a family dinner,” he says in the tone that is not a discussion opener. “Given recent events, a large gathering is too much of a security risk.”I put my fork down. I pick it up again. I put it down. “It’s my eighteenth birthday,” I say.“Yes.”“My eighteenth.”“I heard you the first time, Lucia.”“Dad.” I say his name with every ounce of reasonable, measured maturity I have ever possessed, which is being assembled from scratch in real time. “I have been planning this since I was fifteen. The dress is bought. The venue deposit is paid. The invitations went out three weeks ago.”“We’ll cover the deposit,” he says, and turns a page of his newspaper.“It’s not about the deposit!”“Language,” he says mildly, to the newspaper.“I didn’t say anything.”“You were about to.”

The world comes back in pieces. My head throbs like someone is hammering nails into my skull from the inside. Metal groans around me and the sharp smell of burnt rubber and gasoline fills my nose. I blink hard, trying to make sense of the upside-down angle of the streetlights filtering through the cracked windshield. The car is on its side but I am still strapped in, my body hanging awkwardly against the seatbelt with one leg pinned beneath something heavy.Eli’s voice cuts through the haze. “Lucia. Lucia, stay with me. Open your eyes.”I turn my head toward the sound and find him half inside the driver’s side, which is now above us, his face tight with focus as he works at the crumpled metal near my legs. Blood trickles from a cut on his forehead, but he doesn’t seem to notice or care. His hands move fast, prying at the dashboard that has shifted inward and trapped my left leg.“Eli,” I manage in a dry voice. “What happened?”“Another car slammed into us. We need to get you out q

Elias's POV Eli drives the way he thinks, which is fast and without wasted movement. He texted Marcus, arranged the afternoon off, and drove across the city in the grey morning light with the conversation he was about to have already assembled in his head. He parks outside his mother’s building and sits in the car for exactly four seconds before he gets out. He takes the stairs. The lift is too slow and he needs the climb right now, needs something to do with the energy that is moving through him because if he arrives at that door without burning any of it off, he is going to end up in a prison cell. He already knows Carver is here. He knew it before he started the drive because Carver has been treating his mother’s kitchen like an annex of his own operation for the last month since he found out about David Reid and Eli has been allowing it because it kept his mother feeling connected to something larger than her own four walls, and that, he is realizing now, was a calcul

“Show me what the Reid family money bought you.” Elias says with a wink. I get in position. I am a professional. I am in complete control of all of my faculties and the fact that he is standing across from me without a shirt in excellent lighting is entirely irrelevant to the task at hand, which is hitting him, which I am going to do. We go again. He is faster without the shirt, or maybe I am slower, or maybe I am fractionally less focused than I was two minutes ago. Every time I get close, the sight of his bare chest and the way his muscles ripple when he moves makes my focus falter and he uses it to his advantage, closing the distance between us. I swing for his jaw, but he deflects the hit and twists me around in one swift motion. “Distracted for some reason?” he asks, his breath warm against my cheek. “Shut up,” I mutter, pushing off him and readying for another hit. He catches my wrist midair and pulls, spinning me so my back is against his chest, one arm across the front of

The world outside of this singular, suffocating point of contact ceases to exist. There is no roar of the crowd, no smell of stale beer, and no metallic tang of blood in the air. There is only the crushing pressure of Eli’s mouth against mine and the frantic, heavy thud of his heart echoing against my own chest. His hands are massive and hot, anchoring me to him as if he expects the floor to vanish beneath us at any second. It is a messy, desperate thing, fueled by the adrenaline of the ring and the sheer terror of almost losing him to a man twice his size. I can taste the copper of the blood on his lip, but I don’t pull away. I lean into it, my fingers tangling in the hair at the nape of his neck, pulling him closer until there isn’t a single inch of air left between our bodies. ​When he finally breaks the kiss, he rests his forehead against mine and we’re both breathing hard. “Damn,” I whisper breathlessly. “I just might consider sneaking out of the house more often.” ​Eli let