RONAN
CHAPTER ELEVEN
THEN
TEN YEARS AGO
She’s gone.
My ears haven’t stopped ringing since Damon told me with too much satisfaction that the love of my life left without a word.
How could she do this to me?
We’ve spent our whole lives planning for our future, it doesn’t make any sense that she would do this. That she would throw away everything we’ve worked for.
Next week we’re supposed to be going off to college together, to start a new chapter, to have space from the mafia life and decide what we want in the long term, because I’m not so sure I’m cut out to be a part of the Lombardi organization.
Try as I might, I’ll never be as ruthless as Damon or as cunning as my father, leaving me wondering what my role could possibly be in the future.
Chloe and I were going to figure it out together.
But now she’s gone.
She was my everything, and yet she left like I was nothing.
The estate is in complete disarray. I was gone for seventy-two hours, barely enough time to miss home, and yet somehow my dad’s number two and his wife are dead, and my girlfriend is missing.
Not missing. She left of her own free will. She could have stayed. We could have worked things out. But she chose to go, chose to leave without even leaving a note.
I press my phone to my ear, knowing she won’t answer but calling anyway.
It stopped ringing a few hours ago, so either she’s turned it off or it died, but either way, hearing her voice on the answering machine is as excruciating as it is soothing.
“Hi, you’ve reached Chloe. You know what to do.”
Nine words. That’s all I have to savor the sound of her voice.
The voice that pulled me out of every darkness I’ve ever faced. The voice that was my strength when we lost Mom.
Why didn’t I keep more voicemails from her?
It was strange when I hadn’t heard from her the last couple of days. I was out of town overseeing the movement of arms across the border, meaning I had little time to dwell on why my girl had gone radio silent. But now I know.
She was planning on leaving. Planning on leaving me.
Were there signs I missed?
I try to think back to the last week, but she was happy. She was so excited to start college together, to have some time away from the family, away from the life we grew up in.
“You’re not still listening to her voicemail message over and over, are you?” Damon’s voice comes from the doorway, and when I drag my aching eyes up to meet his, I find him leaning against the doorframe with his hands shoved in his pockets.
Once upon a time, he would have been just as upset by her leaving as I am, but the deeper he’s ingrained into the family business, the more his hatred for Chloe grows.
I didn’t understand it. I still don’t. They went from best friends to enemies overnight, and I can barely remember a time they weren’t at each other’s throats.
I used to think Damon had feelings for her, it sure seemed like it growing up, but his engagement was set from the day he was born.
As the firstborn son, his responsibility to the family was to strengthen our alliances.
It wasn’t sprung on him one day. He grew up knowing he wouldn’t choose who he married.
“Fuck off,” I murmur, allowing myself to fall back into sheets that still smell like her.
She likes to sleep in my bed when I’m away, but even her perfume is fading. Did she stay in here the nights before she left? Or did she kiss me goodbye and immediately invoke her plan to leave?
There’s so much I don’t understand from the last few days, but I don’t have it in me to go to my father for an update. I can’t face him when he was right.
He told me Chloe was wrong for me, that there was no way we would make the distance. I thought he just wanted to ensure I was available to marry whoever he deemed fit, but now I’m wondering if he saw something I didn’t.
Did the fantasy of spending the rest of my life with my childhood sweetheart blind me from reality?
If I could just talk to her, just hear her voice and understand why she would do this to me, to us, I might be able to pull myself from the brink of the abyss I find myself teetering on.
Damon sighs and steps further into the room, doing the exact opposite of what I just told him.
Older brothers are the fucking worst sometimes.
He drops down onto the edge of the bed beside me, his weight causing the mattress to bounce. “Ronan, I’m not trying to be a dick here, but if Dad finds you wallowing like a sad puppy, he’s going to kick your ass, and then you’ll have a broken heart and a broken body.”
I drag my eyes up to meet his, finding pity swirling in the icy blue pools. We look alike in every single way except for our eyes. Where mine are a striking green, his are more akin to a glacier. “I just don’t understand.”
Hesitation crosses his normally unfeeling gaze as he drags his attention from me back to the door, checking we’re still alone. “It’s better you don’t have all the details, but I can tell you this—she didn’t have a choice.”
I stare at him for long seconds, trying to process what he’s just said. “What the fuck does that mean?”
“It means pull your shit together. Dad wants to see us in his office in twenty. And cheer the fuck up because he won’t tolerate you being a sad sack over a girl he sees as a traitor.”
I don’t get a chance to ask any other questions before he pushes to his feet and stalks out of the room.
He says she didn’t have a choice, but she could have called me. She could have left me a note or got in touch since.
But she’s done none of that.
And if she’s not going to care about me enough to give me an explanation, I’m not going to waste my time mourning the love I thought we shared.