Chapter Seven
Ronin, Age Twenty
Mick finds me in my office just after nine. I hear him whistling his way down the hall before he even reaches the door, and when he gets there, he raps his knuckles against the doorframe like the bastard doesn’t already know I know he’s there. “Let’s go,” he says.
I keep my eyes on the papers spread across my desk. Numbers, shipments, times. Anything but him. “Go where?” I mutter.
He snorts and steps inside, stopping in front of my desk. “Don’t start. You know where.”
I turn a page I’m not reading. “Not interested.”
Mick laughs. “Yeah. Sure. You’ve been saying that all week.”
That does it. He wants my attention. Fine. He has it. I lift my head from the papers and look him dead in the eye, saying the same words I’ve been telling him for weeks now, slower this time, since the message clearly isn’t getting through his thick skull. “I’m. Not. Feeling. It.”
His eyebrows climb halfway to his hairline, and I think maybe, finally, he’s going to let it die.
Then a grin spreads across his face, like I’ve just told him the funniest thing he’s heard all week.
“You serious?” he says. “Jesus. It’s only been a few weeks since you proposed to my sister and you’ve already gone soft. ”
“A few weeks of you bugging me about the same shit,” I say. “I told you I’m not interested.”
“Not interested,” he repeats. “Funny how that started right after you got engaged.”
The amusement in his voice grates. “I was already engaged to her. The ring didn’t suddenly make it real.”
He scoffs. “That’s exactly my point. So why bother proposing at all?”
I lean back and scrub a hand over my jaw, feeling the rough stubble there.
Lately, I’ve been leaving the office around midnight and getting back to my desk by dawn.
This morning, I was too tired to bother shaving before I left the house.
Business is booming, and I’m exhausted just trying to keep up with it all.
I don’t have the patience to keep repeating myself just because he can’t stand hearing no.
Still, he isn’t wrong. I didn’t have to spend the last year dating my arranged fiancée, getting to know her better and letting her get to know me. I didn’t have to propose to her, either. I didn’t have to do any of it.
But I wanted to. And I’m glad I did.
Mick clears his throat, still standing there like he’s waiting for an answer I’ve already given him half a dozen times. Apparently leaving without dragging this out again is asking too much.
“It’s not like I never go out with you,” I say. “But every time I do, you start in about how I’m not really engaged to your sister. That it wasn’t my choice. That it doesn’t count yet.”
His grin tightens. “Because it doesn’t.”
“Then how the fuck does it make me soft?” I snap. “You can’t have it both ways.”
He doesn’t bother answering. He crosses the office to the small bar against the wall and pours himself a drink without asking. He takes a swallow before facing me again. “You’re different lately,” he says finally.
“Different how?” I ask, hating myself for taking the bait. He wanted me looking at him, arguing with him, and now I am.
A flicker of satisfaction crosses his face before he puts the glass down hard and sneers. “So damn above it all now. Like you’re fucking absolved. Like putting a ring on my sister’s finger can erase the past and all the women you fucked even after your betrothal to her was signed.”
“That’s rich,” I say, voice flat.
He shrugs. “I’m just saying. You don’t get points for pretending you’re tied down now—not when it’s never stopped you before. And I’m sure my sister would love to know what you were doing while she was sitting at home, thinking you were some kind of love story.”
Regret and anger twist together in my gut, and all I want is to reach across the desk and wipe that smug fucking grin off his face.
He’s not saying anything I haven’t already told myself.
I should never have stepped out on Alannah.
Betrothal or not, choice or not, I knew what she was to me.
Knew what I stood to lose every time I did it.
But I’m not about to give him that.
I hold his stare, daring him to keep pushing. “I’m done with that,” I say. “That’s all you need to know.”
He gives a low laugh, like he can’t help getting one last dig in. “Aye. Sure you are.”
I turn back to the papers on my desk, finished with him. “If you want to go out, go,” I say. “I’m not in the mood, and I don’t see that changing anytime soon.”
He doesn’t move. He stays there, silent and staring, waiting for me to look up and give him another excuse to keep going. I don’t give him one. “Fine,” he says. “Stay in. I’ll find someone else to drink with.”
His boots start toward the door. I let him get a few steps before I say his name. “Mick.”
His footsteps stop.
“Whatever I did before I proposed to Alannah is in the past,” I say. “She’s going to be my wife. Don’t make the mistake of thinking that doesn’t mean something to me.”
He huffs a laugh. “You give yourself too much credit.”
The door shuts behind him, but his words stick with me.
I know he and Alannah aren’t close, but she’s still his sister.
Before I proposed, maybe he could pretend this was nothing more than something our fathers decided for us.
But after I put a ring on her finger because I wanted to, he should know better.
Instead, he’s still acting like being faithful to her is some unfair thing I’m being asked to do for a woman I didn’t choose. But whatever he thinks, I’m done.
Done with the bars. Done with the women. Done with him talking shit about his own sister like she’s some foolish girl playing at romance instead of my fiancée.
Every time Mick drags me out, it ends the same way.
Every Southie bar we hit, the routine’s already waiting for me.
Women who know my name. Who know what it means.
Smiles that aren’t shy. Drinks sent over without asking.
A girl finding an excuse to sit close, like she knows I’m a sure thing.
Like being with me is a notch. A story. Something to brag about the next day, quick and careless, claimed like it proves something.
It used to feel easy. Normal. Just part of the noise that came with the work, the reputation, the rooms I moved through. When I was younger, it had even been fun—something simple to take without thinking too hard about it.
Now it just feels crowded.
If there’s one thing I’ve learned watching the older men on my father’s crew, it’s that a man’s home life bleeds into his work whether he wants it to or not.
You piss off the missus, you start slipping.
You bring trouble through the front door, it follows you into the back room.
Decisions get sloppy. Tempers get short. People get hurt.
I don’t want that for my future. I want a marriage like my parents have. Like Alannah’s parents have. A solid one. One that doesn’t bleed into everything else.
I refocus on the numbers on the page, the irritation burning itself out.
Mick can keep acting like nothing’s changed, like my engagement to Alannah is still just an arrangement our fathers decided for us.
If getting down on one knee didn’t show him that I chose his sister, that what we have is real, I don’t know what will.