Epilogue #3
But many families—most mafia families, I’d say—wouldn’t see it that way.
Old-fashioned traditions run deep in every flavor of the mafia, and a daughter is most often seen as a prize, a bargaining chip to add more power and money to a family’s name.
It’s archaic and off-putting, as far as I’m concerned, but it’s the way of our world.
I’ve never been expected to marry, though.
I’ve often suspected that it’s because I’ve made myself so valuable to the family in other ways that my father didn’t want to risk a husband wanting more of me than I gave to the family.
Ronan, on the other hand, would never pressure me to do anything I didn’t want to do.
Still, the odd look in his eyes troubles me.
What if he’s changed his mind? What if he needs me to marry for some reason?
The criminal politics of Boston have changed dramatically in the last six months, and there’s always a chance that Ronan would ask of me what he himself had to do at one point. What Tristan was asked to do.
I’ve been an exception, but that could always change.
“No,” Ronan says, shaking his head, and I let out a relieved breath. “Of course not. You’d find a way to have me sent to prison for sure. One wrong line in the taxes, and this could all come crumbling down.”
A laugh escapes from me, a little high-pitched and nervous. “Good,” I manage. “Besides, I have a date tonight, so I’m already spoken for.”
The teasing comment slips out before I can stop it, probably from my rattled nerves. Ronan gives me a quizzical look, and my breath catches in my throat.
“A date? Really?”
I’m not offended by his surprise. At twenty-eight, I’m firmly what, back in the day, they would have called a spinster.
The kind of heavy guard that my father and now Ronan has following me around at all times isn’t exactly conducive to dating, or to sneaking off and getting hot and heavy with a guy, even when I was in college.
My romantic experience is, putting it mildly, nearly nonexistent.
“Yes.” I give him a narrow-eyed look. “I have a date. And yes, my security team knows, and I’ll have three of them going along with me.”
“Good.” Ronan pauses. “Who’s the guy?”
My heart thumps in my chest. That’s not a question I want to answer right now… not one I’m really prepared to answer anytime soon, actually. At least not until I know if this is actually going somewhere.
“I—” I open my mouth to answer, frantically thinking of some way to deflect without outright lying to my brother, when a firm knock at the door interrupts me.
Ronan’s attention switches to the door, and relief floods me as he calls out in his brusque, Irish-accented baritone: “Come in.”
He’s not going to grill me about my love life in a meeting. In fact, my first thought is that he didn’t say I had to stay for the meeting, only that I might want to. I could slip out now, and I wouldn’t have to answer any more potential questions about—
My hand is reaching for my bag when the door opens, and I freeze in place.
I know the man who walks into my brother’s office… and I don’t, all at the same time.
He’s almost offensively gorgeous. Tall—definitely a few inches over six feet—dressed in a tailored dark grey suit that clings to a frame that I can tell is rippling with lean muscle.
He moves like a cat, graceful and confident, his green eyes sparkling in the cold January sunshine.
His jaw is strong and shaved smooth, his face chiseled like someone sculpted him into an example of masculine perfection.
His hair is a deep brown, medium length, and curling softly just beneath his ears and at the nape of his neck.
I’m struck with a sudden, alarming urge to reach out as soon as he’s close enough and run my fingers through his hair.
I wonder if it would be as soft as I remember it being twelve years ago. Or eleven, when I touched it for the last time, just before we said goodbye.
His attention is fixed on Ronan, and I catch a glimmer of what I think is uncertainty in his eyes, something that looks like self-doubt. Like he’s not entirely sure he should be here.
I don’t know why he is.
And then he sees me.
He’s midstep when his gaze flicks over to the seat I’m occupying, as if to take in who else is in the room. There’s a moment of questioning in his face, as if he’s not entirely certain it’s me—all grown up now, eleven years after he left Boston when he was eighteen and I was seventeen.
The realization that it is me slides into his eyes. I see the light of recognition there, see the stunned look on his face, and something else too—a heat that darkens the brilliant green of his eyes and sends an answering heat flooding through my body.
My lungs suddenly feel too tight, my skin too small. Every muscle in my body is tight, my heart hammering against my ribs, and it’s as if time winds to a halt, as if Ronan and everything else in the room has vanished, and it’s only me and the boy-turned-man that I thought I would never see again.
“Annie.” He breathes my name, and I feel dizzy from the sound of it. I feel the blood rush to my face, my cheeks heating. My lips part to say his name, to make the shape of it for the first time in eleven years.