Chapter 17
Maeve
Las Vegas was fun, but Hawaii was amazing.
The villa was obscene.
White walls, open doors, polished floors that stayed cool under bare feet, and an infinity pool that looked like it was spilling straight into the Pacific.
Every room faced the ocean. Every surface held something, from fruit cut into shapes, towels folded into swans, to flowers drifting in ceramic bowls.
Six security men were pretending to be landscaping staff.
They were terrible at it.
One had been standing beside a hibiscus bush for twenty minutes holding pruning shears upside down.
Another wore a floral shirt over what was clearly a shoulder holster and had spent the morning glowering at the sun.
The third kept repositioning a tray of pineapple slices as though the pineapple's tactical placement was critical to the villa's defenses.
"Are those gardeners?" Mary asked, peering over her sunglasses.
Ivan was floating in the pool with Mac asleep on his bare chest. He didn't even look. "Yes."
"That one has an earpiece."
"Modern gardening."
"And a gun."
"Very aggressive weeds in Hawaii."
Mary looked at me.
I shrugged. "I've decided not to ask questions before coffee."
It had been three days since Vegas. The wedding had taken approximately twelve minutes in a chapel that had the overwhelming scent of three alphas who found their match.
Artem had worn a suit. I'd worn a dress Mary had found in a shop two hours before the ceremony, pale pink and simple and not at all the kind of thing a Bratva wife was supposed to wear.
"Perfect," Mary had said. "You look like you're marrying him because you want to, not because anyone told you to."
"That's the idea."
Artem had held my hands through the whole thing. His palms were so damp that I'd nearly called it off just to spare him, but then he'd looked at me while the officiant was still talking and said, very quietly, "Thank you.”
Afterward, Ivan had produced a bottle of champagne and Gregor had held my shoulders and whispered, “You’re ours.”
“I am,” I said.
Now we were in Hawaii because Artem had announced that real weddings required real honeymoons, and Ivan had added that fake weddings required real honeymoons too, and Mary had pointed out that she was technically the fake bride and had therefore earned a tropical holiday by default.
Who knew that the Petrov’s owned a villa in Hawaii? Not me. And now Mary decided this is where she’d want to stay once her part of the deal was done.
I disapproved.
The estate had its own private stretch of coastline. Black rocks below the cliff, waves smashing into white spray, the sea so blue it looked fake. Birds in the palms.
The scent of my alphas now mixed with salt, sunscreen and the faint charcoal smell of Gregor grilling fresh fish while the villa chef stood beside him waiting to take over.
I was on a sun lounger, the heat sinking into muscles I'd been clenching for three years. Mary was on the one beside me, applying sunscreen with the grim focus of someone going into battle. Between us, under an umbrella big enough to shade a small wedding party, Fergus slept at my side.
"I'm thinking about painting my room," Mary said, capping the sunscreen. "The one in Surrey. Artem said I could have any room in the east wing and I took the one with the balcony, but the walls are beige. Aggressively beige. The room looks like someone weaponised oatmeal."
"Paint it whatever you want."
"Even black?"
"If you're going through a phase."
"What if I paint it pink? Really, really pink. The kind of pink that makes people uncomfortable."
"Then I'll buy you a matching duvet and we'll call it a statement."
Mary grinned and settled back against her cushion. "I went from Dad's prisoner to fake Bratva bride to permanent houseguest in a matter of weeks. It's a lot."
"Take the time." I watched Mac's chest rise and fall. "You're family now. No expiration date."
She was quiet for a moment. The waves filled the silence. “I met someone in Vegas.”
“How did you manage that without the news getting back to me?”
She grinned. “I was strategic with the guard changeover.”
I shook my head. “Someone could have kidnapped you.”
“Nobody knows me to kidnap me.” She pushed her hands over her head and sighed. “He lives in Boston.”
“Nice.”
“Yeah. But you know, long distance relationships…”
“You have to be careful Mary. I know you’re desperate for some…”
“Fun.”
“Yes. I get it. But you’re still a McCarthy. I was on the run for years because I never trusted Father or Finn or alphas to be honest.”
“I’m not you, though. I want to live my life and not be scared of it.”
I turned my face to her. “You should be a little scared.”
"What happened to you?" She wasn't looking at me. She was looking at the sea, her jaw set the way it used to set when she was trying very hard not to cry and very hard not to show it.
“I just kept a low profile.”
"I thought you were dead. Dad said you were dead. He had a funeral. There's a gravestone in Dublin with your name on it and I put flowers there every month."
The words landed like stones in my stomach.
A gravestone.
Of course there was a gravestone. Callum McCarthy couldn't have people knowing his daughter had run. Better to bury an empty coffin than admit he'd lost control of an asset.
"I didn't know," I said.
"How could you? You were gone." She still wasn't looking at me.
"I mourned you. For three years. And now you're alive and you're married to a Russian mob boss and you have a baby and you've clearly been through absolute hell, and I don't—I don't know any of it.
I don't know what happened to my own sister. "
Her voice cracked on the last word.
I reached across the gap between the loungers and took her hand. Her fingers were cold despite the heat.
"I ran," I said. "At first, just ran. Bristol, Manchester, Cardiff. Never more than a few weeks anywhere. Paid cash. No friends. No phone. Slept with one eye open. Finn had people and he always promised he'd find me. I believed him."
Mary's grip tightened.
"I ended up at a caravan park in Ripon because it was cheap and nobody asked questions. I thought I'd stay a month. Figure out the next move."
"And?"
"I met someone." I smiled despite myself. "Presley. She lived in a caravan near mine. Northern girl, funny, absolutely no filter. She decided we were friends before I'd agreed to it, and by the time I thought to argue, it was already true."
Mary raised an eyebrow. "She wore you down?"
"She brought me tea and refused to leave. It was very tactical. Gregor would have approved."
"She sounds wonderful."
"She was. Is." I moved on the lounger, pulling my knees up. "She found her pack. Got her happily ever after. I was thrilled for her and absolutely gutted for myself, which is a terrible combination. Makes you feel like a monster for being sad at someone else's wedding."
"Because you were alone again."
"Completely." I paused. "So I went north. As far as I could go without hitting the hills. Edinburgh."
"And opened a coffee shop."
"Not exactly. I walked into this little bookshop with a café attached, and I was exhausted, it was raining, I just wanted to sit down somewhere that wasn't a bus shelter.
The owner was this Scottish woman, Mrs. Higgins.
Her husband was sick. She was trying to run everything herself and failing, and she was so angry about it.
Just furious at the universe. I liked her immediately. "
Mary smiled. "So you helped."
"I offered to cover for a few weeks while she looked after him. Then he passed, and she wanted to move to Aberdeen to be near her daughter, but she couldn't bear to close the shop." I shrugged. "She gave me the lease. The Highland Bean was hers, really. I just... kept it warm."
"Bullshit," Mary said.
"Excuse me?"
"You built a life. From nothing. On your own. That's not keeping something warm, that's building a fire."
I looked at her. She was fierce and young and still so breakable, and she'd been putting flowers on an empty grave because nobody had told her the body wasn't in it.
"I survived," I said. "And then, very slowly, I started living. There's a difference."
"Which is?"
"Survival is counting down. Living is—" I stopped. Looked at Mac, at his ridiculous hair and his tiny fist and the way he loved being held. "Living is counting up."
Mary followed my gaze. "He's really something."
"He's a menace. Gets it from his father."
"Which one?"
"All of them, probably."
Across the terrace, Gregor dropped a piece of grilled fish onto the flagstones, swore loudly in Russian, and then looked around to see who'd noticed.
The villa chef closed his eyes.
The security man with the pineapple adjusted his tray.
Mary laughed. It was bright, reckless, the laugh I remembered from a bedroom in Dublin with glitter-blue toenails and stupid jokes and the door locked against our father's temper.
When she caught her breath, she looked back at me. "Okay. You're running a coffee shop in Scotland. Hiding from the Irish mob. Living a quiet, peaceful life." Her eyes narrowed. "So how the hell did you end up with the scariest men in the Russian Bratva?"
The ocean crashed below. Somewhere behind me, I heard Artem's voice, low and steady, still on a call about whatever empire business didn't stop for honeymoons. Gregor had rescued his fish and was gesturing at it with a spatula.
The scent of caramel and champagne drifted past on the breeze.
"Prague," I said.
Mary sat up. "What were you doing in Prague?"
I took a slow breath.
"That," I said, "is a very long story involving a very bad decision, a very expensive dress I didn't pay for, and a hotel room I definitely shouldn't have been in."
Mary propped herself on one elbow, sunscreen forgotten. "Tell me."
"Now?"
"You just told me the three-year summary in two minutes. I want the good bit."
"It's not good. It's complicated."
"Complicated is my favourite."
Fergus made a soft sound in his sleep. I reached over and rested a hand on his back, feeling the tiny rhythm of his breathing.
"Fine," I said. "But you're not allowed to judge me until the end."
"Absolutely no promises."
"Fair enough."
The sun was high and the sea was endless and my sister was looking at me like I was a story she'd been waiting three years to hear.
So I told her.