“I’m glad Charles suggested this,” Ryan continues, shifting slightly to face me. “I’ve been wanting to spend more time with you since you came back. Get to know you again. Or maybe—” He smiles. “—get to know you for the first time, properly.”
The opening is there. I can take it or leave it. But I need to know.
“Ryan,” I say carefully, “can I ask you something?”
“Of course.”
“Why would Charles think we’d been in contact while I was in California?”
The question hangs between us. Ryan’s expression doesn’t change, but something flickers in his eyes—calculation, maybe, or resignation.
“Because I told him we had been,” he says finally.
I blink. I’d expected deflection, or confusion, or maybe a smooth lie. I hadn’t expected honesty.
“Why?” I ask.
Ryan sighs, running a hand through his hair in a gesture that’s probably meant to look rueful but comes across as practiced.
“Because I thought it would help my case. Make Charles more supportive of... this.” He gestures between us. “Of us getting to know each other. I thought if he believed I’d been watching out for you, helping you, that he’d see me as a better option.”
“Option for what?”
“For you.” He says it simply, like it’s obvious. “Parker, you’re brilliant. You’re beautiful. You come from one of the most powerful families in the region, and you’ve proven you can build something on your own. You’re exactly the kind of woman I want as a partner.”
The words should be flattering. They’re meant to be flattering. But all I hear is transaction. Calculation. Strategy.
“So you lied to my brother about our history to make yourself look better.”
“I made myself look like someone who’d been there for you when no one else was,” Ryan corrects. “I thought—” He pauses. “I thought it would show I was serious. That I wasn’t just interested in the alliance or the power. That I actually cared about you.”
“But you don’t actually know me,” I point out. “We haven’t had a real conversation in years. You don’t know anything about my life in California, about my children, about what I want or need or care about.”
“Then let me learn.” He shifts closer, his voice dropping into something more intimate. “That’s what tonight is for, isn’t it? Getting to know each other. Seeing if there could be something real between us.”
I look at him—really look at him. Ryan Matthews is handsome, successful, from a good family. He’s intelligent, ambitious,probably capable of being charming when he wants to be. On paper, he’s everything someone in my position should want.
And he’s not what I want at all.
“Ryan,” I say gently, “there isn’t going to be anything between us. Not romantically. Not ever. I’m sorry if Charles gave you the impression otherwise, but I’m only here tonight as a colleague. A professional courtesy.”
His expression hardens slightly. “Because of them.”
“Excuse me?”
“Jace, Cal, and Silas.” He says their names with something that might be disdain or might be jealousy. “I’ve seen the way they look at you. The way they position themselves around you like guard dogs. The way you look at them when you think no one’s watching.”
My heart stutters. “I don’t?—”
“You do,” Ryan interrupts. “And I get it. History, loyalty, whatever this thing is between the four of you. But Parker—” He leans forward, his voice earnest now. “They can’t give you what I can. Stability. A real partnership. A future that doesn’t involve looking over your shoulder or wondering if the violence will ever stop.”
“You don’t know what they can give me,” I say quietly.
“I know they work for your brother. I know they’re enforcers, soldiers, the people Charles sends when he needs someone hurt or killed or disappeared.” Ryan’s voice is matter-of-fact. “I know that’s not the life you want for yourself or your children.”
He’s not wrong. It’s not the life I want. It’s not the life I chose when I ran to California six years ago.
But it’s the life I’m choosing now. Because the men who do that work—who carry that violence, who live in those shadows—they’re also the men who look at my sons like they hung the moon. Who kiss my scars like they’re something precious. Who fight each other and doubt each other and fuck up spectacularly, but who love me enough to open their mouths and let me take their DNA without question.
