Chapter Sixty
Melissa
The cab’s interior smelled like stale coffee and someone else’s perfume. Something floral and cloying that made my stomach turn. Or maybe that was just the nausea of running away from the one person I’d spent six months trying to forget.
“Where to?” the driver asked, his eyes meeting mine in the rearview mirror.
I opened my mouth, but no destination came. My mind was blank, wiped clean by the overwhelming need to be anywhere but that house, anywhere but in Rowen’s presence, anywhere but trapped in the suffocating weight of everything I’d just felt in his arms.
“Just drive,” I managed, my voice hoarse from crying. “I’ll tell you when to stop.”
He pulled away from the curb, and I watched the brownstone disappear behind me, that beautiful house that was supposed to be a promise, a future, a home.
Instead, it had become a monument to abandonment.
I’d furnished it myself, room by room, trying to build a life in the shell of someone else’s dream.
The city blurred past the window, buildings and people and cars all bleeding together into meaningless shapes. My hand rested on my belly, feeling the baby shift and settle, a reminder of everything I’d lost and everything I still had to protect.
I loved Rowen more than Travis.
The thought came unbidden, unwanted, devastating in its honesty.
I’d never admitted it before. Not even to myself. It felt like a betrayal of Travis’ memory, of his sacrifice, of everything he’d given up for me. He’d died to keep me safe, and here I was, several months later, acknowledging that the man I’d mourned wasn’t the man who’d broken my heart the most.
Travis had been my partner. The father of the child I was carrying. He’d loved me with a fierce, protective devotion that had cost him everything.
But Rowen... Rowen had been something else entirely. Something that went deeper than devotion, darker than protection. He’d seen every broken piece of me and hadn’t tried to fix them. He’d just held them, acknowledged them, made space for them to exist.
And then he left.
Months of silence. Months of wondering whether he was alive or dead, if he ever cared at all, if everything between us had been just another manipulation in Sinclair’s endless games. Months of building a life without him while my heart cried out for someone who proved he didn’t want to be found.
The tears came again, hot and angry, streaming down my cheeks as the city continued its indifferent march past the window. I pressed my palm against the glass, feeling the cold seep through, grounding myself in something tangible.
“Miss?” The driver’s voice cut through my spiral. “You okay back there?”
“I’m fine,” I lied, wiping at my face with the back of my hand. “Just keep driving.” But even as I said it, I realized we were slowing down, and the cab pulled to a stop in front of a building I knew too well. The elegant facade of Sinclair’s Manhattan residence, all old money and quiet power.
I didn’t remember telling the driver to come here, but my body had known before my mind caught up. Of course I’d come here. Where else would I go when I needed answers?
“This is it?” the driver asked, uncertainty in his voice.
“Yes.” The word came out stronger than I felt. “This is it.”
I paid him and climbed out, my pregnant body moving awkwardly, one hand braced against the car door for balance. The cool air was sharp against my tear-stained face, cutting through the fog of emotion that had carried me here.
The front door was unlocked. It generally was for family, for those who belonged in Sinclair’s carefully constructed world. I pushed through it without hesitation, my footsteps echoing on the marble floor of the entryway.
“Sinclair!” My voice rang out, sharp and demanding, as my words bounced off the high ceilings. “SINCLAIR!”
Mr. Conway appeared from somewhere in the depths of the house, his expression carefully neutral. “Dr. Jefferson, Mr. Sinclair is in his office.”
“I know where he is,” I growled, brushing past him, my anger giving me momentum, carrying me down the familiar hallway toward the room where so many of Sinclair’s machinations had been born.
The office door was open.
Of course it was.
He’d probably known I was coming before I did.
Sinclair sat behind his desk, a glass of whiskey in his hand, his expression unreadable as he watched me storm into the room. He didn’t look surprised. Didn’t even look concerned. Just sat there with that infuriating calm, like he’d been waiting for me to arrive.
“Melissa,” he said quietly, setting down his glass. “I wondered when you would...”
“Don’t.” The word came out like a whip crack. “Don’t you dare sit there and pretend you didn’t orchestrate all of this. Don’t you dare act like you’re surprised to see me.”
He tilted his head slightly, studying me with those dark, calculating eyes that always saw too much. “You’re upset.”
“I’m furious.” I moved closer to the desk, my hands clenched into fists at my sides. “And you’re going to tell me why. You’re going to tell me everything, Sinclair. No more games. No more manipulation. No more carefully worded half-truths. Just the plain, factual truth.”
“The truth is rarely simple, my dear.”
“Stop it!” My voice rose, cracking with emotion. “Stop with the philosophical bullshit. Stop treating me like I’m one of your chess pieces. I want answers, and I’m not leaving until I get them.”
Sinclair leaned back in his chair, his fingers steepled under his chin. For a long moment, he just looked at me, and I saw something flicker in his expression. Something that might have been respect or might have been resignation.
“What do you want to know?” he finally sighed, his voice softer than before.
“Why did Rowen leave?” The question tore out of me, raw and desperate. “Six months, Sinclair. Six months of nothing. Why?”
“Because I asked him to.”
His admission landed like a physical blow. I suspected it, of course. Deep down, I had known on some level that Sinclair’s fingerprints were all over Rowen’s disappearance. But hearing him say it out loud, hearing him claim responsibility so casually, made my blood boil.
“You asked him to abandon me?” My voice shook now, barely controlled. “You asked him to leave me alone, to walk away from me.”
“I asked him to consolidate power over the Irish Mob,” Sinclair interrupted, his tone matter-of-fact.
“I asked him to take control of the IRA and bring its various factions under one leadership, to create stability where there was chaos. And I asked him to do it in a way that would allow him to walk away when it was done.”
I stared at him, trying to process what he was saying. “Why?”
“Because the alternative was worse.” Sinclair stood, moving around the desk to face me directly.
“The biker war was escalating. Sylvia St. James was making moves that threatened everyone—you, Rowen, Dante, the children. The Irish Mob was fractured, vulnerable, and easy to manipulate. Buchannon never really had control of it and was too old to do his job. If Rowen didn’t take control, someone else would have.
Someone who wouldn’t have hesitated to use you as leverage. ”
“So you sent him away to protect me?” My words tasted bitter. “That’s what you’re telling me? That six months of silence was for my own good?”
“I sent him away to give him a choice,” Sinclair corrected. “To give him the opportunity to build something stable enough that he could walk away from it. To prove to himself, and to you, that he could choose love over power.”
My hands were shaking. I pressed them against my belly, feeling the baby move beneath my palms. “He could have told me. He could have explained.”
“No, he couldn’t.” Sinclair’s voice was firm now, brooking no argument. “Any contact with you would have been monitored. Any communication would have been used against him. The only way to keep you safe was to cut all ties. Completely. Absolutely.”
“That’s not fair,” I whispered as tears streamed down my face again. “That’s not. You can’t just decide that for us. You can’t just—”
“I can, and I did. And I will do it again where my family is concerned.” There was no apology in his voice, no regret.
Just cold, hard certainty. “Because if I hadn’t, you’d both be dead right now.
St. James would have used your connection against him.
She would have hurt you to control him, or hurt him to destroy you.
The only way to protect you both was to sever the connection entirely. ”
I wanted to argue. Wanted to scream at him that he had no right, that he stole six months of our lives, that his protection felt like punishment.
But somewhere beneath the rage and pain, I understood.
Understood the impossible calculus of Sinclair’s world, where love was seen as a weakness and connection was used as a weapon.
“Then why come back now?” I asked, my voice barely above a whisper.
Sinclair’s expression softened slightly.
“Because he’s done. The IRA is stable. New leadership is in place.
Rowen spent six months building something strong enough to survive without him, and then he walked away from it.
He gave it to Braesal O’Malley. He stepped down from power and came back for you. ”
“Just like that?” I couldn’t keep the skepticism out of my voice. “He just decided he was done and came back?”
“Just like that.” Sinclair moved back to his desk, picking up his whiskey glass. “He made his choice, Melissa. Power or love. The empire or you. And he chose you.”
His words should have felt triumphant. Should have felt like vindication, like proof that everything I felt for him was real and was reciprocated. But instead, everything just felt heavy. Weighted with all the time we lost, all the pain we endured, all the trust that had been shattered.
“I don’t know if that’s enough,” I admitted, as my confession tore out of my soul. “I don’t know if choosing me now makes up for leaving me then.”