Hours passed in a haze of sensation and need. We dozed and woke and reached for each other again, unable to get enough, as if we were trying to make up for all the time we’d wasted pretending we didn’t want this. Each time was different—sometimes frantic and urgent, racing toward release like we were running out of time; sometimes tender and achingly slow, mapping each other’s bodies with reverent hands; sometimes rough enough to leave bruises, our teeth and nails marking territory we had no right to claim. We spoke in the language of skin and sweat and desperate need, saying with our bodies what we couldn’t voice aloud, confessing things in gasps and moans that would have been too dangerous to put into words.
At some point, exhaustion claimed us both. My limbs felt heavy, my mind pleasantly foggy. I fell asleep with his arms around me, his heartbeat steady and reassuring against my back, his breath warm on my neck. His fingers were still tangled in my hair, holding me close even in sleep, as if he was afraid I might disappear.
When I woke the next morning, I knew I was alone. The sheets beside me were cold. Not just cool, but truly cold, as if he’d been gone for a while. The pillow still held the indent of his head, a ghost of his presence, but he was gone.
Vanished, as if he’d never been there at all.
I sat up slowly, wincing as my body protested. I was aching in ways that would remind me of him all day—sore muscles, tender skin, a deep exhaustion that came from hours of passion. The house was silent around me. No sound of movement from other rooms, no shower running, no footsteps on the stairs, no indication he’d ever been here at all.
Except for the marks on my skin.
The tenderness between my legs.
The faint scent of him on the pillows—cologne and sweat and something uniquely him. Evidence of what we’d done, of what we’d shared, written on my body in a language only I could read. I pulled the sheet around myself, suddenly feeling exposed and vulnerable in the empty room, and moved to the window, looking out at the street below.
The city was waking up—early risers heading to work with coffee cups in hand and briefcases slung over shoulders; a jogger passing by in neon running shoes, her ponytail swinging with each determined stride; a dog walker with three leashes tangled around her legs as her charges pulled in different directions. Normal people living normal lives, completely unaware that my world had just shifted on its axis.
Normal people living normal lives. Going to work, picking up groceries, complaining about traffic and the weather. Worrying about mundane things like bills and deadlines and what to make for dinner. Living in blissful ignorance of the shadows that moved beneath the surface of their everyday world.
And somewhere out there, Rowen was returning to his. To the weight of leadership and the burden of choices that would haunt him long after they were made. To a world where I couldn’t follow, no matter how much I wanted to. A world of dangerous alliances, impossible decisions, and secrets that couldnever see the light of day. A world where one wrong move could cost lives, including his own.
But he’d come to me.
Despite everything, despite the danger, despite the risk of exposing me to his enemies, despite his own iron determination to protect me by staying away, he’d come to me. He’d broken his own rules, crossed lines he’d sworn never to cross, just to see me one more time.
To hold me.
To remind himself that there was still something worth protecting in this world.
And I knew he would come again. I knew it with a certainty that settled deep in my bones. Whatever battles he was fighting, whatever darkness he was wading through, he would find his way back to me.
I pressed my palm against the glass, the cold seeping into my skin, spreading up my arm like ice water through my veins. My breath fogged the window, obscuring my view of the city lights below.
“I’m never giving up on you,” I whispered to the empty room, to the city beyond, to the man who’d disappeared back into the darkness like a ghost. “I’m not going anywhere. I’ll be right here, waiting. However long it takes.”
Chapter Fifty-Six
Rowen
Six months.
It had been one hundred and eighty-three days since I’d broken my own rules and gone to her. One hundred and eighty-three days since I’d felt her skin beneath my fingertips, listened to the way her breath caught in her throat, and tasted the salt of her tears mingled with the sweetness of her mouth. Each day, I woke up alone, forcing myself through the motions of leadership, making decisions that would either save us both or destroy everything we’d fought for.
As the blacked-out SUV glided through Boston’s streets like a shadow, its tinted windows reflecting the city lights, I sat in the back seat and watched familiar landmarks pass by. The brownstones of Back Bay, the gleaming towers of the Financial District, and the narrow streets of the South End. Each place marked by history and power. It was in the South End where Eamon O’Malley once carved out his own territory decades ago, a legacy now protected by Braesal O’Malley, the head of the Irish Mob in Boston.
Braesal was a man whose birthright was to lead the IRA, yet he chose instead to step back and support my control. He was a man who kept his word, offering counsel, manpower, and unwavering support whenever I needed him. His honor, resilience, and determination to preserve and respect the legacy of the IRA made him indispensable.
But that arrangement was about to change.
Everything was about to change.
My mind drifted, as it always did in quiet moments, back to her. To Melissa. I wondered what she was doing right now. If she was curled up on that secondhand couch with a book, if she was lying in bed staring at the ceiling, if she was thinking of me the way I couldn’t stop thinking of her. Was she happy?
The question haunted me, a relentless phantom gnawing at the edges of my resolve. I’d given her the house, a gilded cage she refused to inhabit, a symbolic gesture that felt increasingly hollow. I’d offered her space, the illusion of freedom, all while weaving a suffocating web of protection around her. Sinclair’s people watched; Braesal’s men shadowed; my own men cataloged every casual glance. The neighbors, vetted and loyal, were merely another layer of my increasingly elaborate deception. She believed herself alone, a solitary figure in the vast expanse of the city. She had no idea she was the most heavily guarded woman in New York, a prisoner disguised as a free spirit.
But was she happy? The question wasn’t just a yearning; it was a battlefield within me. Did she wake up in the morning with a flicker of hope, or did she feel the same crushing weight I carried, the gnawing knowledge that we were living half-lives, fractured by circumstances neither of us had chosen, yet both irrevocably bound by? This complex charade, this elaborate act of love, felt like a betrayal of the very freedom I claimed to offer her. Was this protection, this suffocating embrace, what she truly needed? Or was it a selfish act, a way for me to control her, to ensure she remained mine, even from afar?
Did she touch herself at night, remembering the way I’d touched her? Did she whisper my name into the darkness the way I whispered hers, a desperate prayer against the silence? God, I hoped so. I clung to the selfish hope that she was as haunted by that night as I was. Because if she’d moved on, if she’d found some way to let go, to build a life unburdened bymy presence, then everything I was about to do, the terrible, necessary choices I was hardening myself to make, would be for nothing. But even as that thought surfaced, a wave of guilt crashed over me. Was I truly protecting her, or was I merely ensuring my own solace, my own twisted form of closure? To wish for her pain felt monstrous, a corruption of the love that had brought me to this precipice. Yet the alternative... her finding happiness without me, was a darkness I couldn’t bear to contemplate. And that, that selfish, agonizing desire, was the truest torment of all.
