Chapter Fifty-Two
Melissa
The ride back to Sinclair’s house passed in a blur of streetlights and silence. I sat rigid in the back seat, my body still vibrating with the aftershocks of what I’d witnessed. Every time I closed my eyes, I saw it... the twist, the crack, the way Michaels’ body had crumpled like discarded paper.
Mimic hadn’t spoken. Hadn’t looked at me again after that moment in the cage. He’d simply disappeared into the crowd, swallowed by the chaos of celebration and bloodlust, leaving me with nothing but questions that clawed at my throat.
The moment we arrived, Sinclair moved through the house with his usual measured grace, heading directly toward his office with the kind of purposeful stride that suggested he’d been anticipating this confrontation.
I followed close behind, my footsteps echoing far too loud against the polished marble hallway, my pulse hammering relentlessly against my temples.
Every beat felt like a drum warning me that something was terribly, irrevocably wrong.
“Where is he?” I demanded, my voice cracking with a mixture of fear and anger as I pushed through the heavy oak door behind him. “Where’s Rowen? I want to see him. Now.”
Sinclair didn’t turn around. He didn’t even acknowledge my presence at first. Instead, he crossed to the ornate bar cart positioned beneath the west-facing window, pouring himself two fingers of scotch with the kind of deliberate, almost ritualistic calm that made my skin crawl.
The amber liquid caught the dying afternoon light as he tilted the crystal decanter.
“Mr. Shay is attending to business,” he said finally, his tone maddeningly neutral.
“What business?” I stepped closer, fists clenched so tightly at my sides that my nails dug crescents into my palms. “What the hell is going on, Sinclair? Where is he? Why won’t you just give me a straight answer for once?”
He took a slow, measured sip, savoring the scotch as if we had all the time in the world before finally turning to face me.
His expression was unreadable, not cold, exactly, but distant.
Removed. Like he was observing me from behind some invisible barrier.
“He’s ensuring your future, Dr. Jefferson,” he said quietly, each word carefully selected.
His words hit me like a physical slap, stealing the breath from my lungs. “My future? What does that even mean?” I could hear the desperation creeping into my voice now, raw and unguarded. “Stop talking in riddles and tell me what’s happening.”
“It means,” Sinclair said, setting his glass down with a soft click against the polished mahogany desk, “that Mr. Shay is doing what needs to be done. What he believes is necessary to keep everyone safe.” His tone was measured, careful, as if he’d rehearsed this conversation a dozen times in his head before I’d even walked through the door.
“Safe?” My voice rose, hysteria creeping in at the edges, fraying my composure like worn thread. “Safe from what? I want to see him, Sinclair. I need to talk to him. Now.” My words tumbled out faster than I could control them, desperation bleeding through every syllable.
“That’s not possible.” Sinclair’s response was immediate, decisive, like a door slamming shut.
“Why not?” I demanded, hearing the pleading note in my own voice and hating it.
Sinclair’s jaw tightened almost imperceptibly, a muscle flickering beneath his skin. He looked away briefly, toward the rain-streaked window behind him, before meeting my eyes again. “Because he doesn’t want to be found. Not yet. He was very explicit about that.”
The room tilted. I grabbed the edge of his desk to steady myself, my fingers pressing hard against the smooth wood, my breath coming in short, sharp gasps that I couldn’t seem to control.
The panic was rising like floodwater, threatening to drown me.
“You’re lying. You know where he is. Tell me.
” My knuckles had gone white from gripping the desk so hard.
“I’m afraid I can’t do that.” His voice remained infuriatingly calm, professional, detached.
“Can’t or won’t?” I shot back, my eyes searching his face for any crack in that impenetrable facade.
“Does it matter?” He tilted his head slightly, regarding me with something akin to pity.
I wanted to scream. Wanted to throw something, to shatter the perfect composure he wore like armor, to break through that maddening professional distance and make him feel even a fraction of what I was feeling.
Instead, I forced myself to breathe, to think through the panic threatening to consume me, to find some shred of rationality in the chaos swirling through my mind.
That was when I remembered.
The envelope.
My hand flew to my jacket pocket, fingers fumbling for the thick paper Brian Buchannon had pressed into my palm before the fights began. I’d forgotten about it in the chaos; the horror of watching Mimic kill a man with his bare hands overshadowing everything.
I pulled it out, staring at my name written in elegant script across the front. Not Brian’s handwriting. I knew that now.
“What is that?” Sinclair asked, his tone carefully neutral.
I didn’t answer. My hands shook as I reopened the envelope Brian had given me at the fight, pulling out the single piece of paper. The message was brief. Devastatingly brief.
I’m sorry.
Two words. That was all he’d given me.
The paper slipped from my fingers, floating to the floor like a fallen leaf.
“No,” I whispered. “No, no, no.”
Understanding crashed over me in waves, each one more brutal than the last. The cage fight. Mimic killing Michaels. Rowen’s absence. Sinclair’s evasiveness.
Ensuring your future.
“He’s taking over the IRA,” I breathed, my words tasting like ash in my mouth, bitter and acrid. The realization hit me like a freight train, crushing the air from my lungs. “That’s what this is. That’s what he’s doing. That’s what all of this has been leading to.”
Sinclair’s silence was confirmation enough. The way he stood there, perfectly still, his jaw tight, his eyes refusing to meet mine, told me everything I needed to know.
“No.” I lunged forward, grabbing Sinclair’s arm with both hands, my fingers digging into the expensive fabric of his suit jacket. “No, you have to stop him. Please. He doesn’t want this. He never wanted this life. You know that as well as I do.”
“Melissa.”
“He’s a professor!” My voice broke, cracking right down the middle as tears streamed freely now, hot and relentless down my cheeks.
“He wanted to teach history. To have a family. To be normal. To live a quiet life far away from all this violence and bloodshed. He told me. He told me he wanted out. That he was done with all of this. That he was finally free.”
“Yet here we are.” Sinclair’s tone was flat, matter-of-fact.
The coldness in those four words made me want to hit him, to shake him, to make him feel something.
“You don’t understand. I can’t lose another man to this world.
I can’t. I won’t survive it. Travis is dead.
I can’t—” A sob tore from my throat, raw and ugly.
“I can’t watch Rowen destroy himself for me.
I can’t watch him become the very thing he spent years trying to escape. I won’t.”
Sinclair gently extracted his arm from my grip, his long fingers carefully prying mine away one by one. His expression softened almost imperceptibly, a crack in that carefully maintained facade. “I do understand, my dear. More than you know. More than you could possibly imagine.”
“Then help me. Please.” I was begging now, and I didn’t care. Pride meant nothing anymore. “Stop him before it’s too late. Before he crosses a line he can never come back from.”
He studied me for a long moment, his piercing gaze seeming to take in every detail of my face, every crack in my composure.
Something like sympathy flickered in his eyes, a brief softening of his otherwise stern expression.
Then he shook his head slowly, almost regretfully.
“I’m afraid it’s already too late. The wheels are in motion, and there’s nothing I can do to stop them now. ”
“Sinclair,” I started, desperation clawing at my throat.
“However,” he continued, cutting me off with a raised hand as he moved deliberately to his desk. He opened the top drawer and retrieved a manila folder, its edges crisp and new. “He wanted you to have this. He was quite insistent about it, actually. Made me promise to deliver it to you personally.”
He held it out to me across the polished mahogany desk. I stared at it like it might bite, like it contained some terrible truth I wasn’t ready to face. My heart hammered so hard against my ribcage I thought it might crack a rib, each beat echoing in my ears like a drum.
“Take it,” Sinclair said quietly, his voice gentler now, almost fatherly.
My hands moved of their own accord, disconnected from my paralyzed mind, accepting the folder with numb fingers that barely seemed capable of gripping it.
It was heavier than it should have been, weighted with more than just paper, weighted with intention, with meaning, with all the things left unsaid between us.
I opened it with trembling hands, the folder’s flap releasing with a soft whisper.
The first thing I saw was the deed. Official, legal, stamped and signed with all the proper seals and notarizations.
The address was printed in bold letters at the top—the house.
The one Rowen had shown me on that perfect autumn afternoon, the one with the sprawling backyard and the white picket fence, the kitchen island where he’d said we could make breakfast together on Sunday mornings, and the master bedroom that overlooked the garden where roses would bloom in the spring.
The one he’d promised me we’d grow old in together.