Chapter 12 Ronan #2
He doesn’t get out of the car when we arrive back at the estate, intending to go straight back to Miami. I walk back into the mansion alone, the weight of all of this feeling heavier than ever.
My father’s approval has been the thing that’s mattered most to me all of my life. But for the first time, I'm going to have to choose between his approval and my conscience.
It's not really a choice at all.
—
The next morning, I'm in my office reviewing the added security protocols when Leila knocks on my door. I've gone back to maintaining distance between us, but seeing her standing there in a dark green blouse that brings out her eyes, I feel my resolve wavering.
"Come in."
She enters hesitantly, closing the door behind her. "I wanted to ask you about something."
I sit back, pushing the paper I was studying aside. "Of course."
"My best friend, Alicia.” Leila bites her lip. “I haven't talked to her since this all started, and she must be worried sick. I was wondering if I could see her, maybe have her come for lunch or something? Here, instead of somewhere else. Maybe—"
The request is reasonable, innocent even. But the memory of yesterday's meeting with Sorokov is still fresh, and I know that Rocco is watching. He could be watching Alicia. Could have her followed. He could take her on her way back home and do horrific things to her to try to get to Leila.
I shake my head. "No."
The flat refusal clearly catches her off guard. "No?"
"It's not safe. You need to limit contact with those you care about until this is over. Your calls to your mother are on a secure line, but even those can’t be all that often. What you’re asking isn’t possible."
Frustration wells up in Leila’s eyes. "But she's just one person. My best friend. She wouldn't tell anyone where I am."
"She wouldn't have to tell anyone. Following her here would be child's play for De Luca's men.
" I lean back in my chair, trying to project calm authority despite the anxiety clawing at my chest. "Until the threat is neutralized, you need to keep the people you care about at a distance. No contact, no visits, nothing that could put them in danger. He could hurt her, try to use her to get to you. He might be watching her. I have security guarding your mother, but I can’t watch everyone who means something to you. "
Leila's face goes pale. "How long could that take?"
I resist the urge to rub a hand over my face. "I don't know. Until Rocco is dead and things have quieted down."
"Weeks? Months?" she presses, her voice taking on a frantic note. I can hear the cabin fever in it, the feeling that she’s being hemmed in, and I wish there was more I could do. I know my response is unnecessarily harsh, but when I’m gentle with her, things seem to spiral out of control.
Boundaries. Cold, hard boundaries are all I have to keep this in line.
"I don't know, Leila."
She stares at me, wrapping her arms around herself as if she’s cold. "So I'm supposed to just... disappear from her life? Leave her wondering what’s happened to me?”
“I’m sure your mother has shared that she’s heard from you.”
“Except I can barely tell her anything. I don’t think the little bit I’ve been able to give her is going to make her or Alicia feel all that much better.”
“We have a deal.” I let out a sharp breath. “I’m taking care of your responsibilities at home. You follow the rules here to stay safe. This is one of those rules. No visits. No unnecessary calls. You stay here, you wait this out.”
She flinches back. "Right. Of course." Her voice is quiet, but I can hear the hurt underneath. "I forgot my place for a moment."
Fuck. I resist the urge to run my hand through my hair, my own frustration welling up. "That's not what I meant."
"Isn't it?" She glares at me. "I'm not your houseguest, Ronan. I'm a problem you're managing until you can be finished with me."
"You're under my protection." The sentence sounds tired even to my ears, but it’s the best I have. It’s incredible, frankly, how quickly so much has fallen apart in a couple of weeks. I’m sure Leila feels the same.
"Same thing, isn't it?" She moves toward the door. "Thank you for clarifying the situation. I won't bother you with any more requests."
She's gone before I can respond, leaving me sitting in my office feeling like I've just kicked a puppy. But I tell myself it's for the best. Even if she starts to hate me, it’s better than what was brewing between us before.
Even if I still ache to taste her again, to find out if every part of her is as sweet as her mouth.
My phone buzzes, jolting me out of my thoughts before they can take over. Tristan's name appears on the screen, and I answer, hoping it has nothing to do with my most recent conversation with our father.
“I hear there’s trouble in paradise,” Tristan says amusedly. “Except it’s not really paradise where you are, is it? Dad said it’s about to snow again. Twenty degrees?”
Despite everything, I find myself smiling. "Closer to fifteen, actually. And yeah, it's supposed to snow again tonight."
"Fuck that. I'm never coming back to Boston in December.
" There's the sound of ice clinking in a glass.
"Dad told me what the hell you’ve got going on there.
A twenty-something-year-old girl living in the mansion, and now the Russians are threatening to break the alliance over her?
Please tell me there's more to the story than that.
" His usual levity is there in his voice, but I can hear the concern in it.
I lean back in my chair, suddenly feeling exhausted. "There's more."
"I'm listening."
I explain it all to him: finding Leila in the cage in Rocco’s warehouse, the debt that she took out with Neil Sawyer, her default on it, and how it led to her getting sold to Rocco.
How I brought her home to keep her safe and realized that I’d put a larger target on her back, the meeting with Ilya and his insistence that I should give her back, my father’s agreement with that.
“I killed Neil,” I say flatly. “He didn’t have all that much useful information about Rocco that we didn’t already have, but I made damn sure of it.”
"So let me get this straight," he says when I'm finished. "You rescued a girl from sexual slavery, and now Dad is pissed because you won't throw her back to the wolves?"
"That's a simplified version, but yeah, that’s basically accurate."
"Then Dad can go fuck himself."
The casual dismissal of our father's opinion surprises me. "Tristan—"
"No, Ronan. I'm serious. What you did was right, and if the old man can't see that, it's his problem, not yours." There's steel in Tristan's voice now. "You've spent your entire life trying to earn his approval. Maybe it's time to stop caring what he thinks."
"He's our father. The head of this family."
"He's a sixty-two-year-old man who's spent the last six months in Miami because he can't handle the cold anymore, and because he likes trying to bully me since you’ve always made him happy before this.
You're the one running operations, making decisions, keeping everyone alive.
His opinion matters, but it doesn't outweigh your conscience. "
I want to argue, but there's truth in what he's saying.
Our father handed over day-to-day operations to me two years ago, when my betrothal to Siobhan became official, but he's never stopped trying to control every decision from behind the scenes. And Tristan is right—he has moved mostly to Miami so he can micromanage Tristan, since until now, he’s had no complaint with me.
“Is there something more with this girl?” Tristan asks, and I frown.
“Does that matter?”
“Maybe I want to know.” His voice is slightly teasing again. “Annie mentioned you’ve been preoccupied, but not why.”
I let out a long breath. "It's complicated."
"It always is, with you." There's affection in his voice now. "But maybe complicated isn't always bad."
“For me, it is. Right now, especially.”
After I hang up, I stare at the papers on my desk, working until the sun is down and it’s well past dinner. A knock on my door just after nine startles me, and I look up, realizing the time has gotten away from me.
“Come in.”
Finn steps in, his expression grim. "We have a problem, boss."
Fuck. "What now?"
"It's the girl. She's gone."
My eyes go wide, and my blood turns to ice. I’m on my feet in an instant. “What do you mean, gone?"
Finn shifts uncomfortably. "She's not in the house. Tommy checked all the rooms, and she's nowhere to be found. Ida doesn’t know where she went. She let me know that Leila wasn’t in her room after asking to have dinner up there."
I’m striding toward the door before he finishes speaking. "How long?"
“Maybe twenty minutes since Ida said something?”
Twenty minutes. In twenty minutes, Rocco's men could have taken her, could have spirited her away to God knows where.
The thought makes something violent claw at my chest. But how?
How would he have gotten to her? Did she run off despite our agreement?
Was my refusal to let her see her friend the last straw?
"Search the grounds," I bark as I push past him. "Every inch. And get me the security footage from the last hour."
We spread out across the property, moving through the gardens and outbuildings, across the property, with military efficiency.
My men know how to conduct a search, but I can see the tension in their movements, the awareness that if something has happened to Leila on their watch, there will be consequences.
They all remember too clearly what happened to the guards who abandoned Siobhan at her request. I wouldn’t kill my men over a mistake, but there’s a clear undercurrent of fear.
And then I catch sight of a flash of dark green against the snow near the back gate—her heavy winter coat, I realize.
She’s talking to one of the perimeter guards.
I stride quickly toward them, relief flooding me, but it's quickly replaced by anger when I see how close the guard is standing to her. As well as who it is—a new recruit who I don’t know all that well.
He’s young, maybe twenty-five, with the kind of pretty-boy looks that probably have women falling all over him.
Right now he's standing close enough to Leila that he could reach out and touch her, his head bent toward hers in an intimate gesture that makes something dark and violent unfurl in my chest.
"—dangerous to wander around out here alone," he's saying as I approach. "There are bad men who want to hurt you. You need to stay near the house or inside it." There’s something almost patronizing in his voice that makes me want to punch him, even though he’s repeating the same things to her that I’ve said.
"I know," Leila replies, and I can hear frustration in her voice. "I just needed some air. I felt like I was suffocating in that house."
"I get it, but you can't just—"
"Step away from her." The words come out as a growl, low and threatening.
The boy jumps back like he's been burned, his hand instinctively moving toward his weapon before he recognizes me. "Boss! I was just—"
"I can see what you were doing." I move between them, an alarmingly possessive instinct screaming through me at the sight of another man so close to her. "Get back to your post."
"Sir, I was just explaining to Miss—"
"Now."
The command brooks no argument. The boy nods quickly and hurries back toward the gate, but not before I see the way his eyes linger on Leila's face. The sight makes me want to put my fist through his.
"Ronan," Leila says behind me, "he was just—"
I turn on her, and whatever she sees in my face makes her take a step back. "What the hell were you thinking, wandering around out here alone?"
"I needed air. I felt trapped in the house."
"Trapped." I laugh, but there's no humor in it. My tone is vicious, and I know it, but I’m too angry—at myself and at her—to stop it. "You want to know what trapped looks like? It looks like being chained to a bed in one of De Luca's mansions while men bid on your virginity."
She flinches like I've struck her. "That's not—"
"That's exactly what this is." I move closer, close enough to smell her perfume, clinging to her coat in the icy air. "You think this is some kind of game? You think my men are out here for decoration?"
"Of course not, but—" Tears well in her eyes, and I feel her hurt like a punch in my chest, but I don’t stop. It feels like something has been cut loose inside of me.
"But nothing. You will stay in the house, you will follow the security protocols, and you will not put yourself in situations where my men have to choose between doing their jobs and keeping their hands off you."
The words come out harsher than I intended, loaded with implications I didn't mean to say out loud. Leila's eyes widen.
"You're jealous," she whispers, shock coloring her words.
“I’m trying to protect you,” I bite out.
"You're jealous." She stares at me. "You saw him talking to me, and you—"
"I saw one of my men standing too close to someone I’m supposed to be protecting." I grit my teeth, refusing to let her take this conversation down a path I can’t let myself follow. "Stay in the house, Leila. Don't make me post guards inside to ensure you comply. My men will take you back."
I turn and walk away before she can respond, before I can see the hurt in her eyes any longer, before I can do something stupid, like pull her into my arms and kiss her again the way I want to so badly.
I nod to Finn as I walk past, and he and three of the guards walk to Leila, intending to escort her back to the mansion.
Inside, I pour myself a whiskey and try to forget the way she looked when she realized I was jealous. The moment when she realized I still want her, despite everything I’ve said.
And I was. I wanted to carve that boy’s eyeballs out for looking at her like she was something he could enjoy seeing. I want to cut his fucking cock off so he can’t touch it while thinking about her.
The whiskey burns going down, but the chaos in my head lingers, the torment of jealousy and desire and guilt that is slowly suffocating me.
I drain my glass and reach for the bottle, knowing that tomorrow I'll have to face her again, and that it will be harder after what happened tonight. Knowing I have to put an end to this so I can send her home, and that the mansion is going to feel like a mausoleum after she’s gone.
Knowing that I want her so badly it hurts. But letting myself have her could destroy us both.