Page 187 of Savage Hearts

Lilliana laughed, that same laugh she had shared with me just yesterday before I dropped her off at her house.

“And my reward?” she asked, her voice sultry.

“Oh, you’ll definitely get your reward. Wouldn’t have made it past the fucking gates without your codes.”

I looked down at my lap, unable to meet my brothers’ eyes.

Fuck me.

Lilliana had the codes for the house because I gave them to her.

And she teamed up with Hayes for the fucking slaughter of our empire.

I had done this.

We were exiled from the city because I was thinking with my fucking dick—no fuck that, I was thinking with my heart. I thought I was in love. Fuck, maybe I was. I didn’t know anymore. Lilliana had been like a fucking dream. She was three years older than me. At just eighteen, she was beautiful in an unattainable sort of way, and I was completely captivated. I thought she could be the one good thing in my life.

I thought wrong.

Never again. I would never let another woman get to me.

I let go of Silas’ hand, afraid I might hurt him with the rage that was burning in my veins.

This was all my fucking fault.

Lilliana’s laughter disappeared as she walked out of the mansion with Hayes, the sound haunting me, echoing in my mind, with no fucking way to erase it.

29

MILA

I wokeup in an unfamiliar bedroom by myself.

Pushing myself up to a sitting position, I winced when a small sting blossomed somewhere in the middle of my back. Getting out of bed, I moved to the bathroom, glancing around the room on my way.

I wasn’t in Silas’ room.

This wasn’t Maverick’s room either, which meant I was probably in Killian’s. Since I had fallen asleep in his arms last night, I felt it was a safe assumption.

It was everything I would have expected from him.

Clean, neat, and nearly barren.

The bathroom wasn’t much better.

I pulled my shirt up and turned around, looking at my back in the mirror. I grimaced. White gauze covered my back, but knowing what was hidden underneath made the sting much more prominent.

I struggled a bit to peel it off, only because my back was still sore, but once I did, I wished I hadn’t, because the sight of it wasn’t any better.

A small vertical line from the wound where he had stitched me took residence in the middle, near my spine.

It would be impossible for me to reach back there to try to pry the tracker out. And I knew that was deliberate.

I still couldn’t fucking believethey—because Killian hadn’t acted on his own—had inserted a tracker in me like a fucking dog.

I was careless in my desperate plan to escape, and they’d somehow caught on. So now they were doing everything to ensure I couldn’t leave.

What a fucking farce my freedom had been.

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