“If you’d asked for her hand years ago, I would have said no,” my father insisted without taking his eyes off Logan. “If you had asked now, I might have been inclined to agree to thearrangement, but this was the wrong way to go about things, boy. Now, you’ve made enough of a mess that blood will be shed. There are consequences and you are not the only one who can mete out justice.”
“The only reason you’re still alive is out of respect for your daughter. Don’t push it or she might not care that you’re lying in a box next to your former wife.”
I turned my head slightly to see Logan. He obviously meant business and I wondered what he would do if I told him it was okay to shoot my father. Despite the fact that I couldn’t stand the man, he was still my dad. I still had that history of growing up with a man who loved and cared for me. There was no way I could give the okay to have him assassinated, especially as I watched. Logan must have understood that as he backed us through the door. Lucian followed, having left Drew there fuming next to my father.
Once we were clear of the door, everything happened in a rush. I was quickly guided to a waiting car and tucked into the back. Lucian hopped into the front and Logan took the seat beside me. When I finally managed to check to see who was driving, I was surprised to find Miles - the boy who had escorted me back to New York after my last failed attempt to go see Logan.
“Miles?” I questioned, because I didn’t think I’d ever see him again.
“Hi, Aoife. Long time, no see.”
“Yeah…” I hesitated to say anything else because my mind was still trying to play catch up.
“Don’t worry, we’ll fill you in and catch you up on everything once we get you somewhere safe.”
“Does such a place exist?” I asked.
“Definitely.” Lucian was the one to answer before everyone dropped into silence.
I turned slightly to find Logan studying me. It made me nervous that he didn’t seem to have anything to say. His eyes tracked over my face then my body and back up to my face again until our eyes met once more. While neither of us uttered a word, it felt like a million things were communicated as we stared into one another’s eyes.
I missed you.
Thank God you were there.
Where have you been?
Why did you betray me?
I still love you.
I wasn’t sure if that last one was true or wishful thinking. I’d like to think that Logan had loved me at one time the way I loved him, but if nothing else, he’d loved me as a friend at some point in our history. A part of my heart would always belong to him and I wanted to believe that the reverse was true.
We pulled up to a skyscraper a few minutes later with the Maddox name emblazoned across the front. This was their building. I’d heard of it before in the news, but it was my first time seeing it in person. I wasn’t sure how to feel about being there. I’d started the day out in San Diego and ended up not only seeing my father, and finding out the man who I’d been dating was another mafia goon, but then the love of my life came to rescue me from the situation. It felt as though I’d been jerked around from one extreme possibility to another only to land inside a recurring dream that could never come true.
TWELVE
Grounded
AOIFE
No words were spokenas we took the elevator to the floor where Logan had offices. MadDox Security. The boy I’d once known, the softest of all the Maddox brothers, ran a security firm. My mind was blown. A part of me thought he was a successful programmer of some sort. It never occurred to me that he would branch out so far away from his original goals. He wanted to design video games that brought joy to people, instead he ran a business based on people’s need to be protected. The twinge in my heart made me a bit sad for the boy who hoped to put a smile on people’s faces and instead ended up seeing them in their time of greatest need.
“What exactly do you do here?” I asked.
“We’ll get to that. Let’s head to the conference room. It’s a secure space where we don’t have to worry about anything we say being overheard or surveilled.”
“Is that really a concern for you in your own building?” It was hard to believe that the Maddox brothers would have to worry about their own privacy and security considering it was like Fort Knox and getting into the building took several levels of biometrics from them.
“You’d be surprised what people try to slip past our security features and I’m not egotistical enough to assume that someone out there isn’t smarter than me.”
Wow. That did not sound like the Logan I’d once known. The boy I knew had a huge ego and didn’t think anything in life could ever stop him. I’d read about the fallout surrounding the woman who tore us apart before, so I knew he had his faith in people tested. It never occurred to me just how something like that might change him. Granted, I hadn’t been able to keep up with him after that, so I didn’t know if there were other reasons.
“I need to know how you disappeared so effectively. Honestly, at some point your father and fiancé managed to find you when I couldn’t, so I want to trace your entire timeline from the moment Miles dropped you off at your dorm until now.”
“Don’t you think all that can wait? It’s been twelve years.”
“I know it’s been twelve years!” Logan yelled as he turned on his heel and walked away from me. “Christ, Aoife, I never stopped searching for you.”
