Chapter Sixty-One
Rowen
It was late when I heard the front door open and close.
The sound cut through the silence of the brownstone like a blade, sharp, definitive, impossible to ignore. I’d been sitting in the living room for hours, the lamp beside me casting long shadows across walls I’d never seen furnished, in a house I bought for a future I wasn’t sure existed anymore.
Dante had come for Danika hours ago. He hadn’t said much, just gathered his sleeping daughter in his arms and gave me a look that said everything his words didn’t... Don’t fuck this up.
I wasn’t sure she would come back.
The thought had circled through my mind like a vulture, patient and persistent.
She could have gone anywhere: back to Sinclair’s, to Dante’s apartment, to some hotel where she could process everything without my presence weighing on her.
She could have decided that six months of silence was unforgivable, that my reasons didn’t matter, that the man who walked away wasn’t worth coming back to.
But she did come back.
My body tensed as I heard her footsteps in the entryway, soft, measured, the careful gait of someone heavily pregnant and emotionally exhausted. I didn’t move. Didn’t call out to her. I just sat there in the dim light, waiting to see what storm she would bring with her.
Her footsteps grew closer, and then she appeared.
She looked different, calmer, maybe, or just more tired.
The anger that had animated her earlier had burned down to something quieter, something that lived beneath the surface like embers waiting for oxygen.
Her hand rested on her belly, an unconscious gesture of protection that made my chest tighten as I wondered if she would do the same when she carried my child.
She didn’t say anything. Just walked into the living room and sat down in the chair across from me, her movements careful and deliberate.
The space between us felt vast, not just physical distance, but the accumulated weight of six months apart, six months of silence, six months of choices made without consultation or explanation.
The silence stretched.
I counted my breaths, trying to ground myself in something tangible.
The house settled around us, old wood expanding and contracting, the distant hum of the heating system, the muffled sounds of the city beyond the windows.
Everything felt suspended, held in place by the fragile tension of this moment.
She looked at the coffee table, at the bookshelves, at everything except me. Her fingers traced absent patterns on the arm of the chair, and I watched the movement as if it held answers to questions I didn’t know how to ask.
Finally, she spoke.
“I went to see Sinclair.” Her voice was quiet, matter-of-fact, like she was reporting the weather. “I needed clarity. Answers.”
The irony of it hit me immediately. Going to Sinclair for clarity was like asking a maze for directions.
The man dealt in obfuscation, in carefully constructed half-truths that served his purposes more than anyone else’s.
But I understood the impulse. When her world was spinning, she reached for the axis, even if that axis was a manipulative bastard who treated people like chess pieces.
I wanted to laugh. Wanted to point out the absurdity of seeking truth from the man who’d orchestrated our separation in the first place.
But I kept the comment to myself, swallowing it down with all the other things I learned not to say.
She didn’t need my cynicism right now. She needed space to process, to speak, to exist without my commentary shaping her experience.
So I just nodded, acknowledging her words without judgment.
She looked at me then, really looked at me, and I saw the exhaustion in her eyes, not just physical, though the pregnancy clearly weighed on her, but emotional. The kind of tired that came from carrying too much for too long, from trying to make sense of a world that refused to be sensible.
“He told me why you left,” she said, her voice barely above a whisper. “About the consolidation. About Sylvia St. James. About keeping me safe by cutting all ties.”
I waited, letting her words settle between us.
There was nothing I could add that would make it better, nothing I could say to erase the pain of those six months.
Sinclair had given her the facts, the strategic reasoning, the cold calculus of survival.
But facts didn’t heal wounds. Understanding didn’t automatically translate to forgiveness.
“I don’t know if that makes it better or worse,” she continued, her fingers still tracing those absent patterns. “Knowing you had reasons. Knowing it wasn’t just abandonment.”
“It was still abandonment,” I whispered, my admission tearing out of me. “Reasons don’t change what you experienced. What you felt. What you had to survive alone.”
She blinked, surprise flickering across her features.
Maybe she expected me to defend myself, to justify the choice, to explain why my reasons should matter more than her pain.
But I’d spent six months learning that some things couldn’t be justified.
Some choices left scars no matter how necessary they were.
The silence returned, but it felt different now, less hostile, more contemplative. Like we were both trying to figure out how to exist in the same space without the weight of the past crushing us completely.
I leaned forward, resting my elbows on my knees, my hands clasped between them. My words came slowly, carefully, as if I were picking my way through a minefield.
“There’s a story,” I began, my voice low and measured. “About a man who gave up everything for love. You might know it. Edward VIII, King of England.”
She tilted her head slightly, curiosity replacing some of the exhaustion in her expression.
“In 1936,” I continued, “Edward was king. He had the throne, the power, the weight of an empire on his shoulders. Everything a man could want, everything he’d been raised to believe was his destiny.
But he fell in love with a woman—Wallis Simpson.
An American divorcee. Someone the establishment would never accept as queen. ”
I paused, letting the parallel settle without forcing it.
“The government told him he had to choose. The crown or the woman. Power or love. They made it clear: there was no middle ground, no compromise, no way to have both. So he chose.”
Melissa’s eyes were fixed on me now, her expression unreadable.
“He abdicated,” I said, my words heavy with meaning. “Gave up the throne, walked away from everything he had been born to do, everything he had been told mattered. And he did it for her. Because being king without her felt like a prison, and being with her felt like freedom.”
I let the silence return for a moment, giving the story space to breathe.
“They called him weak,” I continued, my voice softer now.
“Said he’d betrayed his duty, his country, his family.
Said he’d thrown away something irreplaceable for a woman who wasn’t worth it.
But he didn’t see it that way. He saw it as the only choice that mattered. The only choice that was truly his.”
Melissa’s hand moved to her belly again, that protective gesture that seemed to ground her.
“I’m not comparing myself to a king,” I said, meeting her eyes.
“I’m not trying to romanticize what I did or make it sound noble.
But I understand him. I understand what it feels like to stand at that crossroads and realize that all the power in the world means nothing if you can’t have the one thing that makes you feel human. ”
“So you’re saying you chose me,” she said quietly, not quite a question.
“I’m saying I spent six months building something stable enough to walk away from,” I replied, my honesty raw in my throat.
“I spent six months consolidating power, bringing factions together, creating a structure that could survive without me. And then I gave it away. Handed it to Braesal and walked out the door. Because being the head of the IRA without you felt like wearing a crown I didn’t want. ”
Her eyes glistened, tears threatening but not falling.
“Edward VIII lived the rest of his life in exile,” I continued, my voice barely above a whisper.
“He never regretted it. Never looked back and wished he had chosen differently. Because he understood something that most people don’t.
.. that power is just a word for control, and control is just a word for fear.
And love... love is the only thing that makes any of it worth surviving. ”
My words hung between us, heavy with meaning and implication. I wasn’t asking for forgiveness. Wasn’t demanding she understand or accept, or even move forward. I was just offering her a story, a parallel, a way of seeing what I’d done that might make sense of the senseless.
She was quiet for a long time, her gaze distant, processing. The lamp cast shadows across her face, highlighting the exhaustion and the strength in equal measure. She looked like someone who had been through a war and was still trying to figure out if she had survived it.
“He gave up the throne,” she said finally, her voice thoughtful. “But he didn’t give up being royal. He was still the Duke of Windsor. Still had wealth, privilege, and status. He didn’t give up everything.”
“No,” I agreed. “He didn’t. But he gave up the thing that defined him. The thing he had been raised to believe was his purpose. And that’s not nothing.”
She nodded slowly, her fingers still tracing those absent patterns on the chair.
“I’m not asking you to forgive me,” I said, my words coming out more vulnerable than I had intended.
“I’m not asking you to forget the six months or pretend they didn’t happen.
I’m just... I’m trying to help you understand that when I walked away, it wasn’t because I didn’t love you, Melissa.
It was because I did. Because keeping you safe meant more than keeping myself whole. ”
“And now?” she asked, her voice barely audible. “Now that you’re back? What happens now?”
“Now,” I said quietly, “I wait. I give you the time you need. I don’t push, don’t demand, don’t try to force something that might be broken beyond repair. I just... wait. And hope that maybe, eventually, you’ll decide I’m worth the risk.”
The silence that followed felt different, not hostile or tense, but contemplative. Like we were both sitting with the weight of what had been said, trying to figure out what it meant for our future.
She stood slowly, her pregnant body moving with careful deliberation. For a moment, I thought she was leaving, walking away again, and my heart clenched with the fear of losing her before I even had a chance to try.
But she didn’t leave.
She just stood there, looking at me with an expression I couldn’t quite read, something between exhaustion and understanding, between anger and acceptance.
“I’m tired,” she said finally, her voice soft. “I’m so tired, Rowen. Of fighting, of hurting, of trying to make sense of a world that refuses to make sense.”
“I know,” I said, standing as well, keeping the distance between us. “I know you are.”
She nodded, her hand moving to her belly again. “I’m going to bed. I need... I need to sleep. To think. To figure out what I want.”
“Take all the time you need,” I said, echoing Sinclair’s words from earlier, when I remembered something.
Reaching inside my coat, I pulled out a worn envelope that had been given to me many months ago.
A promise I hadn’t yet fulfilled. Holding it in my hands, I added, “Before Ghost returned to the Silver Shadows, he gave me this to give to you when the time was right. I honestly forgot about it with everything going on. I’m not sure the time is right, but you should have it. ”
Holding it out to her, I watched as her hand trembled, her fingers closing around the worn envelope.
She looked at it for a long moment, then at me as something shifted in her expression—not forgiveness, not yet, but maybe the beginning of understanding.
The first crack in the wall she’d built to protect herself.
“Goodnight, Rowen,” she whispered.
“Goodnight, Melissa.”
She turned and walked toward the stairs, her footsteps soft on the hardwood floor.
I watched her go, my heart heavy with everything unsaid, everything still unresolved.
But as she reached the bottom of the stairs, she paused, her hand on the banister.
She didn’t turn around, didn’t look back at me, but her voice carried through the quiet house.
“Edward VIII,” she breathed. “He lived in exile. But he wasn’t alone.” And then she was gone, climbing the stairs to her bedroom, leaving me standing in the living room with those words echoing in my mind.
He wasn’t alone.
I sank back into the chair, my body heavy with exhaustion and something that might have been hope.
The story of Edward VIII hung in the air between us, a parallel, a metaphor, a way of understanding sacrifice and choice, and love.
He’d given up the throne. Walked away from power. Lived the rest of his life in exile.
But he hadn’t been alone.
And maybe, just maybe, that was the point.
I sat there in the dim light, listening to the sounds of Melissa moving around upstairs, and for the first time in six months, I allowed myself to believe that exile might not be the worst fate. That walking away from power might not mean walking away from everything.
That love, in the end, might be worth more than any crown.
The house settled around me, quiet and still, and I closed my eyes, letting the exhaustion finally take hold. Knowing tomorrow would bring new challenges, new conversations, new moments of reckoning.