Chapter 25
A headache has been grinding behind my eyes for three straight days—dull and relentless, the kind that makes you blink slow, and hard like maybe the dark will ease it.
It doesn’t. Nothing does. Not the vodka.
Not the phone calls I half-hear. Not the work I keep drowning in because it’s easier than thinking about how fucked up everything is.
I’ve been avoiding Lily’s streams like they might drag me under and never let me surface. Missing even one leaves me feeling anxious but I won’t gamble with her safety.
Not when I don’t have a plan. Not when she’s already on Antonio’s radar and every sign points to him being at least complicit in the trafficking.
I have more fucking questions than answers, and that’s exactly why I need to get my head in the game and off her.
But then again… I’ve never been good at forgetting Lily Davis.
She’s always there, no more than half a thought away, crawling into every corner of my mind at the most inconvenient times.
Behind my eyelids when I blink.
In the shadowed corners of my room that feel too empty without her, too silent.
In my dreams and nightmares, taunting me with all that I’ll never have.
Every memory, every flicker of her in my mind, sharpens the ache I’ve been trying to bury.
No matter how much I try to focus on work, on obligations, on anything that isn’t her, it’s futile.
Lily exists in every pause, every silence, every moment my mind refuses to surrender and all roads lead back to her.
The more I dig into Jen, the more my thoughts circle back to the girl who used to look at me with hearts in her eyes, until I shattered everything good between us.
Sending her coffee isn’t enough, so… I cracked.
I sent her the lingerie I’ve been imagining tearing off with my teeth.
I want her in silk and lace. I want her moaning my name.
I want every secret she’s buried to spill across me like confession, like absolution.
I want the past rewritten, every fracture mended, every wound undone.
Wanting her might be wrong. But I want her anyway.
When she didn’t come for me after BegForMe disappeared—when she let me vanish without chasing—I splintered.
A darker part of me wanted her to fold, to prove I still lived inside her in some small, ruined way.
I wanted proof that I mattered, even in my absence. Anything I could use to keep breathing.
Maybe that makes me a coward. Maybe it makes me something worse. All I know is that with every day that passes, the silence eats me alive. The need to see her grows heavier, sharper, until it feels less like wanting and more like suffocating.
That last stream—her chin lifted, her gaze steady, every curve of her body screaming unbothered, unclaimed. She’s not the Lily who used to hide behind me when the world turned sharp. She’s this new version, steel threaded into her spine like a crown she forged herself.
And fuck… I couldn’t be prouder of her.
The ache behind my eyes spikes. I drag a hand down my face, press my palm into the sockets until stars burst, but it’s useless. This tension is rooted deeper than bone.
My phone buzzes on the table, snapping me from the cloud of self-pity. Liam’s name flashes on the screen, and the ever-familiar dread curls tight in my gut.
I let it vibrate twice before answering, leaning back hard in the chair. “Tell me you’ve got something good.”
“You’re dreaming if you think there’s any good left in this mess,” Liam rasps, sounding as wrecked as I feel. “Aidan’s been at the docks all morning. You’re going to want to hear this.”
My body goes rigid. “What did he find?”
There’s a pause, dead air, heavy enough to taste. “Some cargo came in from Napoli last week, but the manifests were scrubbed. Apparently, they were offloaded to some private trucking company with false plates.”
Heat crawls up my neck. “Human?”
“That’s the problem, we don’t know. I looked back through the camera logs but they’re blank. Between that and the empty logs, it's a dead end.”
Blood roars in my ears. “They’re moving them through our ports?”
“We don’t know who,” Liam repeats, careful now. “But someone is. And they’ve got help on the inside.”
Aidan cuts in, his voice sharp enough to split glass, fury threaded through every syllable. “Micky spotted one of Salvatore’s guys leaving with the truck.”
The words hit like a fist to the sternum. My vision goes hot around the edges, red and pulsing, because of course it’s them. It’s always the ones we trust, and I am sick to death of these bastards thinking they can pull one over on us.
“Who?” My voice is all teeth.
“Micky didn’t recognise him. Scrawny, dark hair, covered in ink, walks with a limp.”
“Carlo.” The name tastes wrong in my mouth, bitter.
Salvatore’s IT guy. Micky’s worked the docks long enough that it makes sense he wouldn’t know him and Carlo has no reason to be near shipments, no business anywhere close to the cargo runs.
But despite not meeting him yet, I’ve seen photos, and he fits the description too perfectly.
And that unsettles me more than I want to admit.
If he’s there, it means lines are blurring I can’t afford to ignore.
“Yeah,” Aidan grunts. “That’s who I thought too.”
I push to my feet, pacing hard, every step ricocheting off the walls tighter around me. “He doesn’t work cargo, he’s Salvatore’s IT. Why the fuck would he be near the docks?”
“Because he’s the one they trust to keep it clean,” Liam suggests. “Or because Salvatore’s not the only one he’s answering to anymore.”
The silence after that is heavier than any answer.
We’ve all thought it, but none of us wants to speak it.
Because admitting it means the rot spreads deeper than we feared.
If Salvatore’s behind the ring, at least it’s the devil we know.
But if there’s someone else, well, that’s a whole new shitshow to unravel.
“That would fuck every theory we have,” I force out past the rock sitting on my chest.
“Only if we let it,” Aidan sighs, sounding as exhausted by this shit as I feel. “We just need to dig deeper until we work out if Carlo was there on Salvatore’s orders or someone else’s.”
“Fine,” I snap, though my pulse doesn’t agree. “How’s Cora? Owen?”
Liam lets out a dry huff. “Owen’s good. Busy being a stay-at-home dad half the time, pretending he isn’t soft as shit about it.”
A pause, then—
“And Cora says to tell you she expects an invite to the wedding. Claims even a farce deserves champagne.”
A bitter sound escapes me, half laugh, half broken breath, and I have to bite my tongue against telling them that that shitshow is officially cancelled.
“Tell her it’s coming. Right after my funeral notice.”
“Keep talking like that and Ciaran’s going to call you himself,” Liam warns.
“Let him. I’ve got bigger problems.”
“Like Lily?”
My jaw locks. “I didn’t say that.”
“You didn’t have to.”
Silence hangs for a beat before Aidan cuts in, teasing. “You know, you should come to Lyon with us this weekend. Cora and Abbie are visiting Lily, and there’s still time to get your ass down there before we land this afternoon.”
My chest tightens and my pulse spikes. “I… I can’t,” I mutter, trying to sound calm.
Liam laughs, sharp, and amused. “Can’t or won’t, Matt? Jonathan and your dad might be blind to it, but we all know you’d crawl across a mile of broken glass to see her if you really wanted to.”
I grit my teeth. “Keep your jokes. I’ve got bigger fires to put out.”
Aidan chuckles low. “Sure, sure. But just so you know… they’ll be laughing, sipping something pink, probably plotting ways to get back at you. Those girls love each other, something fierce, and something tells me they’re all out for your blood.”
“I said—” I pause, swallowing.
“That you’re too busy to hash it out with the girl you’re still hung up on?” Liam cuts in, voice dry as smoke. “Yeah, Matt. We heard every word.”
The line crackles with a weighted silence until Aidan adds, “We’ll get some guys to keep an eye on the ports while we’re gone. If anything moves, we’ll hear about it. But Matt… stay sharp. If Salvatore’s IT is tied in, this is bigger than any of us thought.”
Click. The line goes dead, and silence stretches over me like a wet blanket, and the image they painted keeps flickering in my mind.
Lily laughing with Cora and Abbie, hair pulled back just so, lips curved into that soft, unguarded smile that has no idea I’m watching, no idea how much I’ve missed her, no idea what I’ve become in the year she’s been away.
This girls’ weekend isn’t just a trip. It’s a lifeline, a chance. A small, dangerous beacon slicing through the chaos of Salvatore’s world. Going is reckless—probably the most idiotic thing I could do—but the thought of passing up the chance to see her, to finally talk to her, is unbearable.
I pace, muscles coiled tight. The estate sprawls below—soldiers stiff, doors opening and closing in endless rhythm.
But it’s all noise, meaningless compared to the thought of her—her laugh, the tilt of her head, the weight of her gaze when she looks up from a joke, a drink, a sketch, unaware that I’ve been carrying the memory of her beneath my ribs, humming with danger.
I can almost feel her warmth before I see it, the familiar pulse of her presence that has haunted my every thought.
I imagine the way she’ll glance up when I walk into the room, eyes widening just slightly, eyebrows lifting in that exact way that says, You?
Here? And I know, without a doubt, that she’ll still remember the spaces we carved out for each other—the stolen laughter, the stolen touches, the stolen nights that no one else could touch.
My pulse quickens, hands itching to reach for the proof that she’s still real. I can almost taste her, silk against skin, the scent of her hair tangled in the wind, the brush of her shoulder against mine as we talk, tentative at first, testing, remembering.
This could be the start of something—our second chance, fragile and dangerous, threaded through with all the mistakes, regrets, and half-truths of the past year. If I’m not careful, I’ll ruin it before it begins. If I’m not careful, she’ll ruin me.
But I’m so fucking tired of pretending I can stay away.
I stand at the window, eyes tracing the broken puzzle of the city below, feeling every nerve raw, every muscle taut. Girls are being moved like cargo. Someone inside is greasing the wheels. Everything is collapsing around us.
And Lily—sweet, dangerous, impossible Lily—remains the only thing I want in a world made of rubble.
I shouldn’t trust her. Not fully. Not yet. I still don’t know what’s real and fake when it comes to her and her mother. Even now, part of me wonders if she was really tied up in Jen’s recruitment of girls for Angus and whether I’ll survive knowing.
But the bigger part—the reckless, ruined part—doesn’t give a damn.
I’ll find her. We’ll talk. One way or another, we’ll drag the truth out from under all the lies and I’ll make her remember us, remember me. And if Salvatore or anyone else thinks they can cage her? No one touches her. Not while I’m breathing.
Because this weekend, for the first time in over a year, she feels close enough to reach.
And I’m done pretending my hands won’t burn the second they’re on her again.