“It would have compromised your safety, my darling.” It was said in a way that let me know she thought the question was silly and that I should have known better than to ask. “As I was saying, I kept up-to-date on Logan Maddox and I was impressed with what I saw. That doesn’t mean you get a pass if you ever hurt my family like that again. If you want her, make her your top priority. Your brothers are no strangers to scandals and screw ups with their women from what I hear. If you ever repeat their mistakes, you won’t have to worry about where Aoife disappears to because you won’t be alive to find out.”
With that threat, or maybe promise, hanging in the air, my grandmother walked over to the door and turned back to face us. “Aoife, now that your father is no longer in the picture, I expect us to establish the relationship we were never able to have all those years ago when I worried about how to get you out of your family obligations without anyone suspecting my involvement.”
“Yes, ma’am.”
“Good. I love you.”
I didn’t get a chance to say it back before she was gone and I was left with Logan in a conference room that seemed too large, cold, and imposing for the conversation we needed to have.
“Can we go to your apartment?”
“Yeah, long enough to pack a bag for me. There’s already one waiting for you.”
“Where do you plan on taking me?”
“It’s a surprise, but know that you will be safe and can leave at any time.” Logan tacked the last bit on a bit nervously. “I don’t want you to think I’m taking your choices away the way everyone else has.”
“It never occurred to me.”
“Good, then let’s go.”
SEVENTEEN
Snow
AOIFE
It only tooka few minutes for Logan to stuff a few things into a bag, grab a suitcase that had been placed just inside his front door, and usher us out into the elevator. He didn’t speak the whole time and I wasn’t sure I had enough energy to form a single coherent sentence.
“My father is dead,” I whispered.
“I’m really sorry about that, Aoife.”
“Why would you apologize for that? He organized it. It was his plan for you to come find me and take him out.”
“I’m not sorry he’s dead, just that he was your family and when you were younger, he was a decent dad to you. It has to sting to lose him. For that, I’m sorry. It might not hit you right away. You’re still processing what happened, but when you do, I’m here. Whether you need to cry, laugh, remember the good times, or be angry about the rest; I’ll be there for you.”
“Thank you.” Again, it came out as more of a whisper just before the elevator doors swooshed open and we made our way out of Maddox Towers and into the underground garage. “Looks like you boys did really well for yourselves,” I commented. The underground portion of the building was nothing fancy. It was atypical garage, but I hadn’t missed the opulence of the rest of the building. “You own an entire skyscraper,” I threw out as we got into a fully blacked out SUV.
“We own it collectively, but yeah, we’re all doing pretty well for ourselves. Our grandfather left us each a substantial inheritance. Skipped right over our father for the most part when he did.”
“I bet he was none too happy with that.”
“That would be an understatement. We left him to flounder with his own business and to my knowledge, none of my brothers have helped him out of the messes he’s made over the years.”
“I think that’s fair, considering the type of father he was to all of you.”
Logan nodded as he pulled into traffic and drove us away from Manhattan. While we drove, he filled me in on his time in the Army, staying in touch with Miles, starting MadDox Security, and the dedicated server he had set aside looking for any trace of me.
“I thought you must have forgotten all about me. I never did any research beyond that first time when I was at my lowest and didn’t care about the consequences. It was always a fear that if I looked for you specifically, someone would be able to trace the search back to me. The only time I ever saw you on the internet or in the news, was when one of your brothers was there, too. A couple times, I noticed you with a woman at your side. There was a different one in each picture, and I thought for sure you had moved on and forgotten all about the dumb girl who helped to ruin your life in college.”
“You did no such thing. Everything that happened in MIT was a result of what Grace did, and my own damn stupidity. If you’ve been carrying that on your shoulders this whole time, stop.” We were both quiet for a minute and then Logan spokeagain. “And there were never any women, especially none that you saw me pictured with. Those women were ones on the periphery who tried to be seen with me for the cameras and the clout they could drum up. I wasn’t with them. Certainly didn’t give them my time, attention, or take them to the few events I had to attend for my brothers.”
“So you’re saying you haven’t dated at all since Grace?”
“I’m not a monk, Aoife. I’ve had sex with women since then, but I haven’t dated a single one of them. There was never anyone who got my heart either. You’ve owned that since we were kids, even during the one time I started to have my doubts because of the distance between us.”
“It’s hard to believe that,” I mumbled.
