RONAN
CHAPTER NINE
NOW
Seeing Chloe again is like having my heart torn from my chest for a second time, except now instead of pain, there’s nothing but anger.
She left me.
She left with our baby and never tried to contact me.
Not a letter to let me know they were okay. Not a fucking Christmas card or photo of my child.
Not a damn thing.
I don’t even know what we had, because despite pawing through every maternity record in the country that fell within three months of when she could have been due, I couldn’t find a goddamn thing.
Every day for months, I sat and looked through the reported births of up to ten thousand women per day, but none of them were Chloe.
None of them were my baby.
I never even knew she was pregnant until she was long gone, an afterthought I accidentally overheard.
I think they would have told me eventually, if for no other reason than to make my hatred for her grow the same way it did Damon, but finding out the way I did only hurt me more. The idea that the woman I loved would take my child and run…it fucking broke me.
Everything we shared was a lie, and that’s a reality I’ve spent years trying to accept.
A hand clasps my shoulder, and I look over to see Damon eyeing me with concern. It’s been a long time since I’ve outwardly shown emotion.
After Chloe left, with my kid and my heart in tow, I lost the ability to feel much of anything. Anger still thrummed beneath the surface, everything reminding me of the girl I loved with every piece of myself, but happiness and joy were long gone, right alongside the future I thought we would have.
“Pull yourself together,” Damon snaps.
I turn my glare on him. He knows better than anyone how much losing Chloe broke me. He can’t possibly expect me to just get over it.
He leans closer, his face so close our foreheads almost touch, and I focus on not allowing his proximity to make me flinch. It’s been years since I’ve been able to stand people close to me, and that includes my older brother. “Do not let them see you desperate, Ronan. Dad has eyes everywhere.”
The reminder of our father does nothing to settle the anger beating through my veins.
Salvatore Lombardi is the cruelest person I’ve ever met, and the DNA we share isn’t enough to exempt me from that side of him.
If anything, Damon and I are held to a higher standard than the rest of the world, facing his wrath in a way no one else ever has.
Kaos blocks the door, meaning unless we want to scale the fire escape, we can’t follow her right now, but that doesn’t mean we won’t find her.
Now that we know she’s in New York, we have a much smaller pool to work with. Plus, we know she works for the De Marcos.
Camilla and the Syndicate will be a problem, but nothing we can’t deal with.
Chloe will pay for what she did to my family.
I’m not going to let anything get in the way of my revenge, even if it means my own heart stops beating in the end.