“I needed to make it right,” he said, looking down at his hands. “I didn’t know how the fuck I was going to do that when the guy approached me, but in seconds he offered me a way. And he turned me into the very thing I needed to be to answer for what they did.”
He didn’t stop there. “These lines.” He shifted his hair to show the black tattooed lines on his neck. “Each one represents a person that was there and played a part.”
“And you hurt them?”
He shook his head, staring directly at her. “No, I killed them. There was only one that made it out alive, and that’s because he and I came to an understanding. Once Jetmir was dead, I could finally sleep, at least for the most part.”
“Because you finally got revenge for Sarah?” she asked.
There was no judgment in her tone, or any bitterness in her gaze. It was like stating a fact she wanted confirmed, but, her answer wasn’t true, not entirely.
“Do you remember the man that was shot and killed in Hell’s Kitchen around the day we met—police blamed a gang war?”
“Vaguely. What about him?”
“He was one of the men that was there that day. I killed him. It was also the day I met you.”
Whatever she was about to say, she held it in as she looked to him, waiting.
“I won’t tell you that my reasons for pursuing you weren’t selfish. I wanted to use you to get off, to remind myself that I was still fucking alive. And you gave me that, everything I could have hoped for. But I didn’t realize that you had given me more until I left the first time.”
He faced her, wanting her to know just how true that statement was. He needed to explain that he had never stopped thinking about her over those six months, thoughts of her plaguing him constantly to the point that he had stopped feeling so fucking bogged down.
Niklaus had in fact felt alive again in the short three days they had spent together than in the entire two years before they had met.
“But you left again.”
“Because it wasn’t over. I wasn’t free of that burden yet. It felt wrong being with you when I had yet to prove that I even deserved you. Once I finished with Jetmir, it was the key. I proved that I wasn’t weak, that no matter who thought to hurt someone I cared about, I could find them and make them pay. I needed to know that if it ever came to it, I would be able to protect you the way I couldn’t protect her because you mean every fucking thing to me and I would lose it if something happened to you.”
There was a glimmer of something akin to hope in her eyes, and maybe it took seeing it to fully grasp the one thing he had yet to tell her. “I loved her, that’s not a secret, but it doesn’t change the way I feel about you.”
“Niklaus—”
“It doesn’t mean I love you any less,” he spoke over her before she could finish whatever thought had popped into her head. He wanted her to know this, to understand, so when he said it in the future, there would be no doubt in her mind that he meant them. “Because I do love you, Reagan, and now I know I can give you everything you need.”
And that was why he left.
Why he needed to get away and handle his own shit before he came back for her.
Now he was finally able.
This time, she came to him, her hands going up to cradle his face. “I love you, Niklaus. You know that.”
No, she had never hidden the way she felt about him, not even when she couldn’t be sure he felt the same.
Later that night, after Reagan had fallen asleep, Niklaus climbed back out of bed, grabbing his keys and slipping out the front door.
Chapter Twenty-Nine
“Do you really think that’s a good idea?” Niklaus asked as they made their way into the warehouse where the screams of whatever poor bastard who had shot at them echoed throughout the space—though nothing could be heard out on the street.
Mishca was texting, a common habit of his as he had hundreds of men he needed to keep track of. But even as he seemed to be focused on his task, he still heard Niklaus’ question. “What?”
“Sending him to do this shit,” Niklaus said with a nod of his head towards the heavy metal doors they were walking towards and the scene he knew would be waiting for them on the other side. “The Albanians really fucked him up.”
A little over a year-and-a-half ago, the truth had come out about Luka, and the role he’d played in Niklaus’ abduction and torture, and his role in the Organization—the Albanian Mob. Five years prior, he had walked away from it, and everything else, reinventing himself—even going as far as changing his name from Valon to Luka—though not entirely since he used the knowledge learned from a life with the Albanians to do his job.
But in a bid to save his sister and Luka’s new wife, Alex, Mishca had sent Luka back to his homeland, only so that he could get the Albanians—at least those he cared about—in the same place at one time.