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 by my 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.
The SUV slowed, pulling onto a tree-lined street in Beacon Hill. Old money. Old power. The kind of neighborhood where secrets were currency and loyalty was bought with blood.
The house sat at the end of the block. A massive Federal-style home not quite large enough to be considered a mansion with black shutters and a red door, the kind of place that screamed understated wealth and quiet menace.
Lights glowed in the windows, warm and inviting, a stark contrast to the cold calculation that governed everything that happened within those walls.
The vehicle came to a stop.
For a moment, I didn’t move. Just sat there, staring at that red door, feeling the weight of what I was about to do settle over me like a shroud.
This was it.
The culmination of six months of careful planning, strategic moves, and dangerous gambles. Six months of playing the long game while every instinct screamed at me to go to her, to take her away from all of this, to find some quiet corner of the world where we could pretend the past didn’t exist.
But that wasn’t possible.
Not yet.
Not until I finished what I’d started.
The front passenger door opened first. Eric, one of my father’s most trusted men, stepped out, his eyes scanning the street with practiced efficiency. He was followed by Finn and Seamus, both of them moving with the kind of fluid grace that came from years of violence.
They were sworn to protect me now.
Sworn to protect Braesal, though they didn’t know it yet.
That would change tonight.
Eric opened my door, his expression neutral but his eyes sharp. “We’re clear, sir.”
Sir.
Not Rowen. Not professor. Sir.
The title still felt wrong, like wearing someone else’s skin. But I’d learned to accept it, to use it, to wield it like the weapon it was.
I stepped out of the SUV, the cool Boston air hitting my face. It was early March, the kind of night where you could still see your breath but feel spring approaching. The trees lining the street were mostly bare, their branches reaching toward the sky like skeletal fingers.
I straightened my suit jacket, a Tom Ford, black, tailored to perfection.
Sinclair had taught me that appearances mattered in this world.
That the right suit could be armor, that the right watch could be a statement, that every detail communicated something about who you were and what you were capable of.
Tonight, I needed to communicate power.
Tonight, I needed to look like a man who belonged at this table.
Finn and Seamus flanked me as I walked toward the front door, their presence a silent reminder of the violence that lurked beneath the surface of this civilized facade. Eric moved ahead, his hand resting casually on the weapon concealed beneath his jacket.
My heart pounded against my ribs, but my face remained impassive. I’d learned that too. How to hide fear, how to project confidence even when uncertainty gnawed at your insides.
Was I doing the right thing?
The question had plagued me for months. Every decision I’d made since that night with Melissa had been leading to this moment, but that didn’t mean I was certain. Certainty was a luxury I couldn’t afford.
I thought about her face when she’d discovered what I’d done. The shock, the hurt, the desperate determination in her eyes when she’d refused to give up on me. I thought about the letter I’d written, the words I’d poured onto paper because I couldn’t say them to her face.
I’m doing this for you. For us. For the life we should have had.
But was I?
Or was I doing this because I’d been backed into a corner, because Sinclair had maneuvered me into a position where this was the only move left on the board?
The truth, as always, was somewhere in between.
I’d gone to her that night six months ago because I couldn’t stay away.
Because the weight of leadership, the burden of the crown I’d never wanted, had become too much to bear alone.
I’d needed to feel something real, something that wasn’t tainted by violence and manipulation and the endless chess game of criminal politics.
And she’d given me that.
For a few hours, wrapped in her arms, I’d remembered who I was beneath all the layers of armor I’d built. I’d remembered what it felt like to be wanted for myself, not for what I could do or who I could become.
That night had given me strength.
It had reminded me why I was fighting and what I was fighting for.
It had also shown me just how far I’d fallen, how much I’d sacrificed, how much I’d lost. Because when dawn came and I’d slipped out of her bed, leaving her alone, I’d felt something break inside me.
I couldn’t keep living like this.
I couldn’t keep being the man Sinclair wanted me to be while pretending I could still be the man Melissa needed.
Something had to give.
So I’d made my choice.
I’d started putting pieces in motion. Careful, calculated moves that would either free me from this life or trap me in it forever.
I’d reached out to Sinclair, not as a supplicant but as an equal.
I’d negotiated with the Italians, with the bikers, with every faction that had a stake in the war that had been tearing the underworld apart.