Chapter 34
LOCHLAN
I’m out of my car before Adriana has a chance to pull into the driveway at her parents’ house.
I’ve been sitting out here like a stalker for the past three hours, waiting for her to show up. My ass is numb, and my neck is stiff, but she’s finally here. Twenty feet away from me. And I’m not letting her disappear inside without talking to me.
“Adriana!” I call out, running toward her.
She freezes, her hand still on the car door handle. Then she slowly turns to look back at me. And the look on her face—
Cold spreads through my chest.
It’s not anger. I could handle anger. This is worse. This is… complete indifference. Like I’m a stranger. Like I mean nothing to her.
“You need to leave.” Her voice is flat as she steps onto the driveway and slams the door shut without a look back at me.
“Just give me five minutes. That’s all I’m asking.”
“I already gave you five minutes.” She stares straight ahead. “After the meeting. It didn’t change anything.”
“Then give me five more.” I move around her so she has no choice but to face me, my hands up in the air like I’m approaching a cornered animal. “Please. Adriana, please—”
Two of her security guys jump out of their truck and rush over to step between us. Big guys. Armed ones I don’t recognize. The kind who won’t hesitate to put a bullet in my skull if she gives the order.
“Sir, you need to step back,” one of them says.
“I just want to talk to her—”
“Step. Back.”
I ignore them and rush after her as she heads up the front steps. One of the guys grabs my arm and yanks me backward. I shove him away. Bad fucking idea, I know it even as I’m doing it. They drag me over to my truck and slam me against the hood with my arms wrenched behind my back.
I struggle against them, using my shoulder to pop one guard in the chin. Then I fire out a leg to hit the other in the gut. He hunches over with a groan, and I twist out of the grip of the one I just elbowed.
“Lochlan, enough.” Her voice cuts through the grunting. “Let him go.”
I straighten up, breathing hard, and look past the pissed-off guards to where she’s standing on the steps.
“I don’t want to see you,” she says. “I don’t want to talk to you. I need you to stop showing up wherever I am.”
I step forward. “I can’t.”
“You have to.”
“Please, Adriana. I can’t.” My voice cracks, and I hate myself for it.
“I love you. I know I fucked up. I know I don’t deserve another chance.
But I can’t just walk away like you don’t matter to me.
Because you’re everything, and I can’t be without you.
I miss you so fucking much.” I take another step.
“Do you really, honestly, not feel anything for me anymore? Do you hate me so much that it erases what we had? You know what we had. You felt it, I felt it. Please don’t bury it like it never happened. ”
Something flickers in her eyes. Pain, maybe. Or maybe I’m just seeing what I want to see.
“Go home, Lochlan.”
She turns and walks inside. The door slams shut behind her.
The guards are still watching me, their hands on their weapons. I could take them both, unarmed. But it wouldn’t get me what I want.
I stagger back to my truck, my chest burning with each painful rasp of air. Sinking into the driver’s seat, I stab the ignition button and peel away from the curb.
But I’m not going home. Home is a fucking tomb.
Her coffee mug is still on the kitchen counter, one of her romance novels peeks out from under the bed where it must’ve dropped, and her smell fades more and more every day from the pillows no matter how hard I try to preserve it.
And Reaper is the worst. He whines at the elevator door every goddamn day, waiting for her to come back.
No fucking way can I be there right now.
So I drive to the gym instead, the knife in my heart twisting the whole way over.
When I get there, I toss my bag onto a bench and wrap my hands.
Luckily, it’s quiet this afternoon. I walk over to the heavy bag and take a deep breath before I let my fists fly.
I pound the hell out of it, and twenty minutes later, I don’t feel any better.
The heavy bag doesn’t retaliate, and that’s a problem.
I need something to hit me back. I need pain, resistance, something to focus on besides the look on her face when she told me to go home.
I clutch the sides of the bag and grit my teeth.
The emptiness in her eyes, the way she looked at me like I was nothing…
fuck, it shattered me worse than any words she could ever spew.
But I keep going because I need a distraction. If I’m too tired to think, to lament, to wallow, then I’ve accomplished my goal. My knuckles are raw even through the wraps. My shoulders are screaming. Sweat pours down my face, and I haven’t stopped moving since I walked in.
Jab. Cross. Hook. Again and again and again.
She won’t take my calls. She won’t read my letters. She won’t let me within fifty feet of her without security stepping in.
Jab. Cross. Hook. Faster, harder.
I’ve tried everything. I’ve camped outside her building, showed up at her office, sent notes, fucking handwritten letters through her assistant Jayne because it’s the only way to get anything past her security.
My fists numb.
Nothing works. Nothing fucking works.
I hit the bag so hard the chain rattles. Again. And again. My arms shake, but I don’t stop.
“You’re going to tear a rotator cuff if you keep that shit up.”
Cillian’s voice slices through my toxic thoughts.
I don’t turn around. “Go away.”
“Can’t do that, bro.”
I finally stop, chest heaving, and turn to face him. He’s not alone. Wolfe and Gavin are behind him, and—
Ronan?
“What the fuck is this?” I grab my water bottle, twist off the cap, and guzzle it down. “An intervention?”
“Something like that.” Cillian crosses his arms. “Security at Adriana’s parents’ house called Ronan. Said you made a scene out on the street.” He cocks his head to the side. “Jesus, Loch, have some self-respect.”
I flip him off. “I didn’t make a scene. I tried to talk to my wife.”
“You fought her guards.”
“They grabbed me first.” I give my head a shake. “And I could’ve fucked them up way worse if I wanted to.”
“Yeah, because that would have really impressed your lady love,” Cillian says with a snort.
Ronan steps toward me. He looks different than he did a few weeks ago. The arrogant prick facade is gone. I guess realizing that the person you aspired to be is actually a selfish traitorous bastard will get you thinking that maybe you need a new plan for yourself.
“You can’t keep doing this, Loch. Showing up, making scenes—it’s not going to win her back. It’s going to get you shot.”
“Then what the fuck am I supposed to do?” I hurl the water bottle. It bounces off the wall behind Ronan, spilling across the floor. “Just give up? Walk away? Pretend I don’t love her?”
“No.” Ronan’s voice is calm and steady, the exact opposite of everything I feel. “You’re supposed to be smart about it.”
“What the fuck is that supposed to mean?”
He glances at Cillian, then back at me. “I heard from her yesterday.”
I still, my eyes narrowing. “You what?”
“She reached out to me as head of the Molloy family.” His jaw tightens.
“Not that I want to be the heir to his fucking poisonous legacy. But since I’m next in line, she wanted to let me know that the Kozlovs accepted her terms for how we will move forward.
She scheduled a meeting for the three families to discuss details of how our organizations will exist together here in Boston. ”
“When?”
“In three days,” Ronan says.
“I’m going.”
“You’re not invited.”
“I don’t give a shit.” I step closer to him. “If there’s a chance I can see her and talk to her without her security throwing me against a car, I’m taking it. You’ll just have to deal.”
Ronan rolls his eyes. “Will you please just listen? She reached out to me as a courtesy. She wants all three organizations on the same page about territories and routes going forward. The Molloys don’t get anything beyond what we had before the marriage contract. No expansion, no DiMicheli access.”
“I don’t care about territories.”
“I know you don’t. But she’s trying to cut ties with us cleanly so she can make a fresh start.” He pauses. “If you show up at that meeting, you need to let the business happen first. Don’t blow up a negotiation that’s keeping us out of a turf war with the Russians.”
“I won’t,” I say through clenched teeth.
“And you need to actually have something to say. Not just ‘I love you, give me another chance.’ That’s not enough.” Gavin shakes his head. “She needs more. She’s smart and she deserves some groveling. So make it count. Do the whole grand gesture thing. Women love that shit.”
“I know she deserves so much.” I push back my sweat-soaked hair. “I know she needs more. I know I need to—fuck!” I swivel around and kick the heavy bag, knocking it off the chain. “I don’t know how to prove to her that I’m worth trusting again.”
“So figure it out.” Cillian says. “You’ve got three days. And for what it’s worth? She could do a fuck ton worse than you, Loch.”
“Fuck off or I’m gonna throw you in that cage,” I growl.
Cillian chuckles and starts to dance around in his fighter’s stance. “All right, let’s go. You wanna piece of this?” he taunts. And I can’t help the smile creeping across my face.
Wolfe, who’s been silent in a corner this whole time, finally speaks. “I can get you the location, the time, and the schematics for the meeting. She’s using a secure channel, but I can—”
“That’s not necessary,” Ronan cuts in. “I’ll tell him where it is. I don’t need you to hack into her phone or anything. Let’s save those skills for another day.”
Wolfe shrugs. “The offer stands.”
I look between my brothers. These guys, some of the most important people in my life, showed up here to stop me from self-destructing. Even Ronan, who I said wasn’t my brother anymore, is here trying to help me.
“Why?” I ask him. “After everything I said to you. Why are you helping me?”
Ronan is quiet for a moment. “Because you were right. About Dad. About all of it.” He meets my eyes. “And because you’re still my brother. Even when you’re being an asshat.”
“Three days,” I say.
“Three days.” He nods.
Cillian claps me on the shoulder. “Now go home and shower. You smell like a gym bag full of dicks.”
“You need to eat something, too,” Wolfe adds, adjusting his glasses. “Your cognitive function is impaired from lack of nutrition. You can’t plan a grand gesture if you starve your brain cells.”
“Thanks, doc,” I say. “I’ll take that into consideration.”
We walk out together, all four of us, for the first time in I can’t remember how long. It’s not like it used to be. There’s still tension, still history, still shit we need to work through. But it’s a start. And we’re all willing to figure things out and move forward together.
How fucking ironic is it that my asshole of a father is the reason why we’re putting the pieces of our fractured family back together.
He forced me into a marriage with a woman I want to spend the rest of my life with.
And he made me realize just how important family bonds can be, and how destructive life can be without them.
I slide into the driver’s seat of my truck.
I have three days to figure out how to win Adriana back, to convince her that I will spend the rest of my life making her feel like the queen she already is to me.
No more camping outside her building. No more desperate voicemails. No more pathetic attempts at groveling. I need a solid plan.
A really grand gesture.
And I need it to work. Because I can’t lose her.
I won’t.