Chapter 2
TWO
College
AOIFE
“We’re so close to our happy beginning,” I shouted as I spun around holding up the dress I wanted to wear to surprise Logan.
He had come back to the states full-time when he entered college. There was nothing his father could do to stop that. Like his brothers before him, Logan was given a choice of where he wanted to attend, and thanks to his brilliant brain, he was assured that he would get into his top choice.
Unlike Logan, I was not. I didn’t even bother applying to MIT because there was no way I’d ever be accepted. I was smart, but in different ways. Numbers didn’t make sense to me the way they did for my best friend.
He spoke an entirely different language when he sat behind the keys of his computer.
My language was romance. As in I wrote it, not that I’d ever admitted that to anyone.
Plus, there was my assumptive choice of pen names.
A.E. Maddox. Aoife Elaine Maddox, not that anyone knew that was what the A.E.
stood for. And I didn’t think anyone would connect Logan’s last name to me, at least not yet.
My father would probably have a coronary if he ever found out. Most of my friends would laugh me out of their group if my dad wasn’t paying them to keep tabs on me. If they knew I’d used Logan’s last name as my own, I would never hear the end of them tormenting me for it.
Logan had always been my best friend. He and I had never officially dated because we wanted to be able to be together in the same place before we committed to one another that way.
My so-called friends already ridiculed me for thinking that Logan would stick to our agreement to finally become a couple when we graduated college.
Deep down, I knew most of them weren’t really my friends.
They were people my father approved of me being around.
Aimee Horton was the only one who had not been on my father’s “approved friend” list because she wasn’t a part of our world.
Funny that she was my best friend out of all of the girls I went to school with.
It helped that she was too stubborn to be pushed aside by my father and his goons.
She also refused to be on their payroll and keep tabs on me like everyone else did.
“Aoife, Logan doesn’t even know you’re graduating early. I wouldn’t get your hopes up that he’ll dash off to Vegas and tie the knot with you right away. He still has two years of college left.”
“Hope is literally all I have,” I admitted while pretending not to see Aimee cringe at the desperation in my voice.
“His jaw is going to drop all the way to the floor when he sees you in that dress.”
“You think?” I asked. If Aimee was willing to pretend that I didn’t have a hope in hell of Logan marrying me this weekend, then I could stay wrapped in my own little fantasy bubble, too. She sat on the edge of the bed and studied me as I twirled while holding the dress up to my body.
“I don’t have to think. I know. You’re drop dead gorgeous on a bad day, but when you put effort into yourself, you could go toe-to-toe with any models out there.”
I scoffed. “Dad doesn’t pay you to be nice to me like everyone else. No need to pump up my ego.”
She threw a novel at me. “I will always tell it like it is. Are you sure you don’t want me to go with you?”
“Positive.”
“It’s just…” I could see the concern in her eyes as she hesitated to reel me back in from my fantasy future. “What if something happens?”
Aimee had been a little freaked out about our overall safety since she found out that my dad was in charge of the Sweeney Gang, who controlled most of the Northeastern United States and answered to the larger Irish Mob Syndicate that expanded the globe.
I attended NYU and stayed in the dorms rather than living at home. I ended up randomly roomed with Aimee before my father could interfere, and despite his protests, I was able to keep her as a roommate.
My mom passed away during my senior year of high school, but she was never the same after Faye died.
She lived for my older sister. I was the afterthought.
The experiment that didn’t work the way they had hoped.
My parents conceived me to try to save my sister who had a rare form of childhood Leukemia.
It worked, until it didn’t. I think my mom always blamed me because what she thought would be a forever cure turned out to be a bandaid on a gaping wound.
After Faye’s death, my father moved us to his penthouse apartment in the city.
I grew up there without the memories of my sister hiding in every shadow.
My mom preferred to stay in the country house where she could be closer to my sister.
Most of the time, it was just me home alone with one of Dad’s goons.
When I finally graduated high school, Dad expected me to stay home while I attended university, like a good little girl.
I had other plans and fought tooth and nail to see them through.
My father wanted to marry me off to one of his cronies, or worse, to a family who he was at odds with.
I was meant to be a bridge between warring mobsters just as I had been a fix for my sister’s cancer.
He would have married her off, too, if she was still alive.
That had been the original plan. They hid her illness from everyone, so that no one would know she might not be able to conceive an heir because of her treatments.
None of it mattered when her cancer came back with a vengeance when she was thirteen and took her from us a year later.
I refused to be a pawn in my father’s games, though. I behaved badly, I threw fits, and made sure I wasn’t liked by any of the men he put me in front of. Thankfully, my father wasn’t cruel enough to give me to the few who said they could put me in my place with some well-meaning smacks.
Still, I fought hard and won my independence, or at least the appearance of it.
I had minders, babysitters, and spies all around me.
I chose to ignore them for the most part.
I also ignored the fact that my time was running out.
If I couldn’t convince Logan to marry me, then I would soon be faced with a choice between two ruthless up-and-coming rulers of the Irish Syndicate.
One of them would one day rule the empire my father had grown from the old Sweeney Gang he took over after marrying my mother.
That was how power passed when there were no sons to take over.
There hadn’t been a male born since Bloody Monday in the early 1970s, where the last American male members of the Sweeney family were butchered in broad daylight by the Italians.
Some people claim there is a curse on the Sweeney Gang, or at least the family, and that we can only produce female heirs now so that the line of power passes to a new Irish family.
The name of the gang remains the same as a testament to how they overcame and persevered after the Italians almost destroyed them.
I shook off the stories of my family’s violent past and answered Aimee.
“Nothing will happen. You know there’s always someone watching my back, whether I want them there or not.”
“Yeah, so how do you think your plan will work when there will be someone to stop you from running away with Logan?”
“He will know how to give them the slip. His family is just as powerful, if not more so, than mine. Just because they’re not mobsters doesn’t mean they don’t have their own tricks up their sleeves.”
“Rich people problems,” Aimee muttered. It wasn’t the first time she’d rolled her eyes at my privileges or the gilded cage that came wrapped around the excess.
“You know that even if I wanted to, I couldn’t help the way things are.”
“I know. Sorry, it just seems so wild and unbelievable sometimes. Plus, you’re my best friend and I want you to be safe. What if you marry Logan and your dad has him killed off or something?”
I gasped. “That’s awful. Why would you say that?”
“Because your head is stuck in the clouds where that boy is concerned, and I don’t think you’ve thought things through completely. I don’t want to see either of you hurt.”
“Well, I know that Daddy would have to accept it once we’re married. Doing anything to harm Logan would bring too much heat down on his organization.”
Aimee shot a dubious look my way. I was kidding myself. We both knew better. My dad could make Logan disappear and never have it linked back directly to him. It was my heart, the little girl part of me who wanted to think the best of her father, that didn’t think he would go through with it.
“I hope you know what you’re doing.” Her warning lingered that time in a way that it hadn’t previously. Maybe I hadn’t thought things out enough. “What about the wicked witch of MIT?”
It was my turn to roll my eyes. “I hate her,” I whispered, as if someone else might hear me admit it. “She thinks he belongs to her.”
“Maybe he does.”
“He does not. He would have said something to me if they decided to…” I couldn’t bring myself to even mention my Logan being in a serious romantic relationship with another woman.
I wasn’t stupid. The chances that he hadn’t hooked up with someone else over the years were nil.
There was a difference between hookups and getting serious, though.
“He kind of doesn’t have to. Remember last time you spoke to him and he chewed you out because that bitch said you were rude to her?”