She still had hope. Hope that life would eventually be kind to her, and that there was goodness in the world.”
Emotion tugged at the back of my eyelids because I knew—I knew—the next part of Hadrian’s story would gut me.
“She wanted to see me fight one night, and I let her. We took her down to one of the matches and of course I won—and while Ramsey was collecting our winnings, the lads who bet on their friend and lost, cornered Finola.”
He boldly met my gaze, and the anguish I saw in his eyes was nearly my undoing. But if he could tell it, then I would be strong enough to hear it.
Hadrian took a deep, shuddering breath. “They cornered her and dragged her outside and raped her in the alley behind the ring—and then they slit her throat. Ramsey and I found her, eyes open, glazed over in shock.”
He paused for a long while and then took a deep breath and went on, “She used to carry around an old copy of The Last Unicorn. The book was lying on the ground in the alley, the spine split, and the pages torn out. She had silvery blonde hair. Almost white. Did I tell you that?”
I shook my head, stifling a sob that threatened to spill from me.
“Her hair was stained red from her own blood. The cream-colored pages of her book were splattered with mud and looked yellow in the dim streetlight.”
He bowed his head and stared at his knees. “It’s been twenty years, and I can still see her frozen in that moment. So clear. It never fades, Sterling. It just lives—” He pressed a fist to his heart. “I loved her. Her loss was…”
I had no words to offer him. No comfort to give. I could not ease the pain of his memory, of his first love’s tragic death.
What would’ve happened if Finola had lived? Would she be here with him now? Would they have a family? Would they have made something beautiful together after coming from such brutal pasts?
Would Hadrian be the man he is now if he hadn’t gone through such trauma?
“We found towels from the fight room to wrap Finola in and got her back to the warehouse without being seen. Even though we’d spent some time together, I didn’t know who Ramsey truly was—the power of his last name. He made a call and a few hours later, we were in a car headed to Dornoch. We laid Finola to rest in his family’s cemetery, and Ramsey introduced me to his father. He told us to go do what needed doing, and then Ramsey and I returned to Edinburgh and hunted every one of those fuckers down like rabid dogs,” he said, his voice threaded with steel. “We spent four days finding them, and by the fourth night we had slit all their throats like they had done to Finola and left each of them on the doorsteps of their homes for their families to find. We pinned notes to their chests that said ‘Rapist’, so there would be no question about why they’d been killed. At first, the police thought a serial killer was on the loose, but everyone knew who those boys really were at heart, and the community quietly let the murders go unpunished. The police made it look like they were trying hard to find us and gave great quotes to the papers, but everyone knew it was all for show.”
He clenched his hands a few times. “When we were done, Ramsey asked me to come back to Dornoch with him. He told me his father wanted to speak to me and—”
With a shuddering breath he said, “And my life was never the same again.”
Chapter Twenty-Four
He finally got up and I instinctively backed away, but his attention wasn’t on me. He all but fled to the bedroom, and I followed at a more sedate pace.
I sat down on the edge of the bed. I was exhausted from the events of the late night already, but it didn’t feel like we were done. Not by a long shot.
Hadrian stood, clad in nothing but a pair of navy-blue boxer briefs. I wanted to hug him to me, but I wasn’t sure he’d allow the comfort.
He went to the liquor cart and poured two drinks. Hadrian came toward me, holding out a glass. When I reached for it, my hand shook.
I grasped it but didn’t drink. Instead, I stared into it like