Chapter 17
Cillian
The Romano meeting runs for two hours. I manage to smooth over all ruffled feathers from being unavailable over the weekend, and instead of pulling out of the deal, as they’d threatened, the Romanos agree to continue—after I offer a few concessions.
Ronan looks pleased. Declan looks satisfied. I look at my phone.
Nothing from Nora.
“Can anyone say pussy-whipped?” Declan says afterward, nodding at my phone.
I glare at him.
He holds up both hands. “I’m not starting anything. I’m just stating what I see.”
“Keep your commentary to yourself.”
He doesn’t push further. Smart.
Ronan claps me on the shoulder. “This arrangement with the Romanos has turned out to be better than what we were planning with the Sullivans. Less political noise.”
“Good.” I know they’re both still pissed at me for not being able to contact me this weekend while shit was hitting the fan with negotiations over our brand, new deal, but I honestly don’t care. Neither of these fuckers understands what it means to love a woman, and I’m not sure they ever will.
Before Ronan can try to rope me in for celebratory drinks, which I will decline, I grab my jacket and get the hell out of there.
On my way home, I call Nora’s phone. It rings four times and goes to voicemail. I call again. Same result. I text.
On my way home. Everything okay?
The message delivers. No response.
My instincts—the ones I’ve sharpened over twenty years in a world where hesitation gets people killed—are screaming.
I drive too fast.
The doorman greets me with his usual nod, and the elevator takes forever. When I push through the penthouse door, the silence hits me wrong—not peaceful, but a specific kind of hollow. The place feels empty.
“Nora?”
Nothing.
I searched the kitchen, bedroom, living room, and guest bathroom—all empty.
All undisturbed. Our bedroom looks untouched until I open her side of the closet.
The dresses I bought her hang in a neat row.
The shoes are lined up. Her old clothes—the thrift store things she came with, the ones I never threw away because she asked me not to—are gone.
The garbage bag that was folded in the back corner is gone.
I stand there with my hand still on the closet door.
Then I go to my office.
A note is centered on my desk, and her wedding ring sits on top of it.
My heart drops to my toes.
I pick up the ring first. Is it still warm? Or am I imagining it? Either way, I close my fist around it and can’t open my hand.
I read her words standing up.
I’m sorry. You deserve someone who fits into your world, who can stand beside you without costing you everything. I love you too much to watch you lose more because of me. Please don’t look for me. Let me do this one thing for you—let you go.
—Nora
I read it again, but the words don’t change.
I read it a third time, and something in me—the control I’ve spent thirty-eight years reinforcing—splinters into a thousand fragments.
The laptop flies off the desk first. Then the stack of files. Then my fist slams through the drywall. I don’t feel the impact even after I pull my hand back and see the split skin across my knuckles and the blood welling in a clean line.
I slide down the wall and sit on the floor among the debris.
She’s gone. She’s fucking gone.
She left me a note and her wedding ring and walked out of this penthouse with everything she came with—which was nothing—and she thinks she’s doing me a favor.
I picture her face this morning when I kissed her goodbye. The way she held on a beat too long, like it meant something more than see you tonight.
I was so sure I was imagining it.
My phone rings. It’s Finn.
“Boss.” His voice carries the careful flatness he uses when delivering bad news. “I just got a call from security. It seems your wife left the building a half hour ago. The surveillance video shows she had… It looks like one of those black plastic trash bags. I’ve already got people—”
“Find her.”
“Already working on it.”
“Use every resource. I don’t care what it costs.” I’m on my feet. “Find my wife.”
I hang up and call Declan. He picks up on the second ring.
“Hey, bro, change your mind about celebrating with us? We’re here at the family pub.”
“Nora’s gone. I need your help.”
A pause, then, “I’m on my way.”
I hear him make a quick, muffled explanation and then Ronan’s voice comes on the line, “We’ll be there in twenty.”
Lorcan texts less than a minute later.
Heard what happened. Omw!
I’ve washed the blood off my knuckles and straightened my clothes by the time they arrive. I’ve become the version of myself that moves, plans, executes—the version that doesn’t fall apart. But my fist is still closed around her ring.
We work through the afternoon and into the evening.
Finn has a team checking traffic footage, ATM records, and transit schedules.
Declan thinks like a tactician—where would someone go with no money, no car, no family?
Ronan pulls contacts at the bus terminal.
Lorcan works the street level, talking to people who notice things cameras miss.
She hasn’t used the credit card I gave her. Not once.
She’s not taking anything from me. Not even the means to survive. That realization lodges in my throat like shards of broken glass.
“Bus terminal,” Ronan says, off the phone. “Got an informant on the street says she asked for directions.”
We’re moving before he finishes his sentence.
The Greyhound terminal is fluorescent misery—scuffed plastic chairs bolted to the floor, out-of-order vending machines, a handful of people who look like they’ve been here waiting for buses for months. I show her picture to everyone I can find.
The ticket agent at window three squints at my phone. “Yeah. Quiet girl. Looked scared.” He hands the phone back. “Didn’t buy a ticket. Sat a while, then left.”
“Which way?”
He points east.
We spread out across six blocks. I run the calculations—no money, no contacts, nowhere to go. She’d find the cheapest possible shelter. Not a hotel. A motel.
Lorcan calls, his voice level but carrying some apprehension underneath it.
“I’ve got her. She’s at a motel off Route 9. Room fourteen.”
“Is she alright?”
“She’s inside. I haven’t gone in. But Cillian—this place is a shithole.”
“Don’t let her leave.”
“She’s not going anywhere. I’ll be outside.”
The drive takes nine minutes. The motel is exactly what I expect—cracked asphalt, flickering neon, full of crack whores and meth heads.
Did my wife look at this place and think, this is where I belong?
My brothers are parked across the lot. Declan gets out and walks to me.
“You good?”
“No.”
“You want backup?”
“No. This is between my wife and me.” I look at all three of them—Declan with his arms crossed, Ronan leaning against the car, and Lorcan standing by the door to room fourteen with his hands in his pockets. “Thank you. All of you.”
Declan nods once. “Bring her home.”
They give me the lot. I walk to room fourteen and stand outside the door.
On the other side of this cheap slab of wood is my wife. The woman who is so misguided, who thinks so little of herself, that she assumed the most loving thing she could do for me was disappear.
She’s wrong.
I’ve never been angrier, more scared, or more relieved to have found her.
I knock—three sharp raps—and don’t wait for an answer before I reach for the pick in my jacket pocket.
My father taught me this skill at twelve.
Right now, I’m grateful for it, because if Nora thinks a thirty-dollar motel lock is going to keep me from her, she has severely underestimated how far I’ll go to bring her home.
The lock pops quickly, and the door opens.