Chapter 4
LOCHLAN
Whatever happens, don’t you ever lie to me.
Adriana’s words have been looping through my head since I walked out of that hospital.
They stayed with me during my drive home, all through the scalding shower that turned my skin blotchy and red.
They festered in the two hours of sleep I managed to get before my brain kicked back on and wouldn’t shut up.
Don’t ever lie to me.
She said it like a dare. Like she already knew I would.
She’s right. I’m already lying to her. I’ve been lying since the second I pulled her out of that gala, because I knew the attack was coming and I didn’t warn anyone. I just saved her and let the rest of them fall.
And now I’m supposed to marry her.
I can’t sleep after that thought lands like a brick on my head, so I do what I always do when I can’t sleep. I research. It’s kind of an occupational hazard. I always need intel on clients, their associates, and their enemies so I can provide top-tier security for them.
I grab my laptop, type her name into Google, and pages of results appear in seconds.
Adriana Colonna.
The Forbes profile shows up first.
How One Woman Built a $300 Million Consulting Empire Without a Single Dollar of Family Money
There’s a photo of her in a navy blazer with her arms crossed, standing in front of floor-to-ceiling windows overlooking the Boston skyline. She’s not smiling. She’s looking at the camera like it owes her a favor.
I stare at that photo for way too long.
The Wall Street Journal article shows up next in the search results.
Then Bloomberg. Then some podcast interview where she talked about scaling her firm from three employees to two hundred in under a decade.
Her voice is different in that interview…
more relaxed and almost warm when she talks about her team.
She laughs once, a real laugh, and fuck me, my heart jumps the tiniest bit.
Then I find the Inc. Magazine cover story.
The Colonna Method: Why Corporate America’s Toughest Negotiator Is Also Its Most Feared
There’s a line in the text that rattles between my ears like a piece of shrapnel.
“I don’t need people to like me. I need them to take me seriously. If they happen to like me, too, great. If not, I’ll survive.”
That’s the woman who stared down my father without flinching. The woman whose perfume is still stuck in my nose.
I finally close the laptop at noon and rub my burning eyes. I’ve been reading about Adriana DiMicheli for four hours straight.
A couple of hours later, I show up at my brother Cillian’s bar, Venom. It’s one of the hottest nightclubs in Southie on the weekends, but on a Tuesday afternoon, it’s quiet and calm. At least until the rest of my brothers show up.
Cillian is behind the bar when I walk in. He looks up from the glass he’s cleaning.
“There he is.” Cillian grins, putting the glass and rag on the bar. “The groom.”
“Don’t start.”
“Too late. Started about six hours ago when Gavin texted me.” He reaches under the bar and pulls out his phone.
“‘Bro. LOCH IS GETTING MARRIED. To a HOT CEO. What the FUCK.’” He winks at me. “All caps. Seventeen exclamation points. That’s some serious business, Loch.”
“Sounds about right.”
“And then you sent me more than enough reading material to keep me home all day. Whiskey?” Cillian asks.
“Ice cream.”
He lifts an eyebrow. “It’s two in the afternoon.”
“And?”
He shakes his head but reaches into the freezer behind the bar. He always keeps a pint of mint chocolate chip back there just for me, because that’s the kind of brother he is. And Christ knows, I need it right now, way more than whiskey. He pulls out a spoon and slides both across the bar.
I peel the lid off, my mouth watering. First good thing that’s happened to me in twenty-four hours.
“So,” Cillian says, leaning his elbows on the bar. “Adriana DiMicheli.”
“Colonna. She goes by Colonna professionally.”
“Oh, we’re already using her professional name. Cool. Very normal behavior for a man who met her twelve hours ago.”
“I’m being thorough.”
“You’re being obsessive. You texted me six articles about her before I even finished my first cup of coffee this morning.”
My jaw tightens. “It’s what I do. I always need to be prepared.”
That was the plan, anyway. Be prepared. Get informed. Treat it like a security assessment.
Except security assessments don’t usually involve watching the same podcast interview three times because you can’t stop thinking about the way a woman tilts her head when she’s about to decimate an argument.
“She’s impressive,” I say, struggling to keep my voice even. “That’s all.”
“Uh-huh.” Cillian’s grin is insufferable. “What else is she?”
I stuff a spoonful of ice cream into my mouth and swallow. “Forty.”
“And?”
“And nothing. She’s forty. I’m twenty-eight. Dad is forcing us to get married because he’s a manipulative sociopath. That’s the whole story.”
“That’s not what your face says.”
A snort escapes my lips. “My face says I haven’t slept.”
“Your face says you think she’s hot.”
I cram more ice cream into my mouth to avoid responding.
Cillian leans forward. “I watched the TEDx talk, by the way.”
“She did a TEDx talk?”
“You read every article about this woman and missed the TEDx talk?” He rolls his eyes. “‘The Myth of the Seat at the Table.’ Fourteen minutes long. It was all about why you shouldn’t fight for a seat when you can build your own table.”
“That’s…” I trail off. Fuck.
“Yeah.” Cillian studies me. “You’re really going to sit there and pretend you’re not into her?”
“C, I met her during a mass shooting. It’s not exactly romance novel shit.”
“And yet…”
“And yet nothing. She thinks I’m part of the trap. Which I am.”
He chuckles. “You’re already in over your head, brother.”
I flip him off just as the door opens and our youngest brother Gavin walks in like he’s the one who owns the place.
“What happened to your face?” I ask, pointing at the bruise blooming across his left cheekbone and his split lower lip.
“Bar fight.”
“It’s still light outside.”
“What can I say? Dumbasses walk the earth at all hours of the day. Don’t judge me.” He drops onto the stool next to mine, steals my spoon, and takes a bite of my ice cream before I can grab it from him. “So. You’re marrying a CEO.”
“Give me back my spoon.”
“Is she really forty? Because I looked her up and she looks thirty, tops. Like, have you seen the Bloomberg photo? The one of her in the red dress? Because—”
“Gavin.” Cillian’s voice jolts him, and a mischievous smile lifts his lips.
“What? I’m just saying she’s hot. That’s a compliment. Loch should be thanking Dad for once.”
“Nobody is thanking Dad for anything.” I snatch my spoon back and point it at him. “And stop looking up my future wife. I don’t want you drooling over her. Or worse.”
“Your future wife.” Gavin’s eyebrows shoot up. “Listen to you. Getting all possessive already.”
“I’m not—” I stop and take a breath. “It’s not like that.”
“It’s exactly like that.” Gavin leans back, grinning through his busted lip. “You should’ve seen your face when you said, ‘my future wife.’ Like a bouncer guarding the fucking VIP section.”
Cillian slides a glass of water toward Gavin, who ignores it. “How bad is it, Loch? Really.”
The question lands heavy between us. I stick the spoon into the carton and push back my hair.
“Look, this is what I have to do. It’s the only way to protect you guys.
Dad’s a fucking asshole, and he made a lot of threats to get me to agree.
He brought up C’s liquor license, said he’d make sure it didn’t get renewed.
Threatened to tip off the authorities about Wolfe’s hacking.
And Gav—” I look at my youngest brother, my stomach twisting.
“He said it would be tragic if no one was there to bail you out next time you got into trouble. Which, knowing you, will be in a few hours.”
My brothers are quiet, my words poisoning the air around us.
Gavin’s jaw muscle tics. He picks up the water glass and gulps it down.
“That heartless prick,” Cillian mutters.
“Same playbook. Different day.” I run my finger over the indentations in the wood. “He also told me my security firm is bullshit. That he’s been feeding me clients, blocking competitors, and sanitizing my background checks.” I pound my fist on the bar. “Everything I thought I built on my own—”
“Is bullshit?”
“His word. Not mine.”
“It’s not bullshit.” Cillian says. “You built something real, Loch. Whatever strings he pulled doesn’t change the work you put in. You know he only said all that shit to piss you off.”
“It worked.” And while I want to believe my brother, I’m not sure I do.
Wolfe walks in without a sound, without acknowledging us, which is his signature move. He’s twenty-four years old, moves around like a ghost, and has the brain of a supercomputer. He slides into a booth in the corner, opens his laptop, and starts typing.
“Hey, Wolfe,” I call out. “Nice of you to grace us with your presence.”
“I’ve been here for six minutes,” he says, pushing his glasses farther up his nose and not moving his eyes from the screen.
My brow furrows. “No, you haven’t. We’ve been here the whole time. We would have seen you.”
“Would you have?” he asks, his sharp eyes finally peeling away from his laptop and focusing on me. “I came in through the back while Gavin was monologuing about the Bloomberg photo.”
Gavin balls up a napkin and tosses it at him. It goes wide and misses him by about three feet.
“I’ve been tracking the Kozlovs,” Wolfe says, returning his attention to the screen.
“Viktor Kozlov specifically. He’s twenty-six years old and runs the enforcement arm for his father’s bratva.
He’s been in Boston for a year with a crew.
And if the Russians are responsible for that attack, it wasn’t a random thing. They were planning this.”
“Any idea why they’d have targeted Francesco specifically?” I ask.