Chapter 5 Shelby
Shelby
The weight of my decision settles in my chest like shrapnel—painful, persistent, impossible to ignore.
I stand at the floor-to-ceiling windows of my penthouse living room, nursing a whiskey I don’t taste.
I watch the sun set behind the Blue Hills and Boston’s lights come alive, blurring into abstract patterns.
The city breathes and moves below, oblivious to the fact that I’ve just agreed to the most strategically sound and personally reckless thing I’ve done since enlisting.
Marriage. To Serena DiLorenzo.
Temporary marriage, I remind myself. A solution to her problem, a chess move in the endless game our families play. Nothing more.
My shoulder aches where the Russian bullet tore through muscle three months ago. Phantom pain, the doctors called it, but I know better. Pain is memory made physical, and my body remembers every mistake I’ve made, every person I’ve failed to protect.
The door to my penthouse opens without warning. I don’t turn around—I don’t need to. Only one person besides me has the combination to my private elevator.
“You’ve lost your goddamn mind.” Tommy’s voice cuts through the silence, sharp as a blade.
“Good evening to you as well, brother.” I take another sip of whiskey, eyeing his reflection as he approaches the window.
“Don’t.” He stops beside me, his dark hair slightly disheveled, blue eyes—identical to mine, identical to our father’s—blazing with barely controlled fury. “Don’t deflect. Don’t joke. Explain to me how you agreed to marry Joe DiLorenzo’s sister without consulting anyone.”
“I consulted myself. That seemed sufficient.”
“Shelby—“
“She needed help.” I finally turn to face him, meeting his gaze head-on.
His face is a replica of mine, minus the glasses I’m wearing.
I square my shoulders and lift my chin. “Not that it’s anyone’s business.
I don’t need permission to marry. Serena came to me, desperate to escape an arranged marriage to a sleazy Italian.
I trust her instincts, and she believes he’s up to no good.
He might be gunning for Syndicate business with an alliance with her family.
What was I supposed to do? Tell her to figure it out on her own? ”
Tommy’s jaw clenches. We’re twins, mirror images of controlled violence and tactical thinking, but where I learned to compartmentalize in Afghanistan and Syria, Tommy learned diplomacy. He’s always been better at seeing the big picture, at thinking three moves ahead in the family business.
“Even if all that is true, you should’ve brought it to Dave,” Tommy says, his voice tight. “You were supposed to loop in the family before making a decision that affects all of us. This isn’t just about you playing hero for a girl—”
“Watch it.” The warning in my voice makes him pause. “Serena isn’t ‘a girl.’ She’s Joe’s sister. She’s brilliant, independent, and got trapped by her father’s machinations. I made a call.”
“A call that involves a fake marriage.” Tommy moves to my bar cart, pours himself three fingers of the same whiskey I’m sipping.
“A Vegas wedding. To a DiLorenzo. During a time when our alliance with the Italians is already strained because of our poking around in the Camorra’s trafficking businesses. Do you see how this looks?”
“I do. Of course I do. I’m not an idiot, regardless of what my recent actions might suggest.”
“Makes one wonder,” Tommy murmurs.
As my blood races, I’m beginning to regret calling him after Serena left. I take a long breath to keep my cool.
“The way I see it, we’re strengthening family ties,” I counter. “Joe is one of our closest allies. Protecting his sister from a forced marriage to Cesare Dellamare shows loyalty.”
“Does it to their father, though?” Tommy challenges. “Or does it look like you’re making impulsive decisions based on... what? Attraction? A misguided need to rescue people?”
His words hit too close to the truth I’m trying to avoid.
I can’t let her become important to me. The thought circles through my mind like a mantra, but it’s already too late.
The moment Serena showed up at my door, vulnerability bleeding through her carefully constructed armor, something in me shifted.
“This is strategic,” I insist, but the words taste like sand because I’m aware they’re lies. “We go to Vegas, get married, and she becomes unavailable for Giovanni’s plans. In a few months, when the heat dies down, we quietly dissolve it. Clean. Simple.”
“Nothing about this is simple.” Tommy drains half his glass in one swallow. He refills before barking at me, “And you know it. I saw the way you look at her. I’ve seen that look before.”
My spine goes rigid. “I don’t know what you’re talking about.”
“Don’t you?” He steps closer, and now I can see the concern beneath his anger.
“Shelby, you came back from Russia a mess. You barely slept for weeks. You had nightmares. And the first person who could get through to you, who could sit with you without demanding explanations, was Serena. So forgive me if I’m skeptical about how strategic this marriage really is.
” His fingers draw air quotes around the qualifier.
He’s on to me.
I turn back to the window, unable to hold his gaze. He’s right, and we both know it. After Russia, after the warehouse where I failed everyone who mattered, Serena had somehow known exactly what I needed.
Not pity. Not platitudes. Just presence.
She’d sat with me in this very room, not saying much, not asking questions I couldn’t answer. Just existing beside me while the ghosts screamed in my head.
“I can’t do this,” I say quietly, the admission scraping my throat raw. “I can’t let her become important to me. Every person I’ve gotten close to dies or gets hurt.”
Tommy’s expression softens marginally. “Then why did you agree to this farce?”
“Because—“ I stop, searching for words that make sense. “Serena is already in danger. I mean, she grew up under the shadow of the Syndicate. She lives and breathes the violence that we all pretend is business as usual.”
“So your solution is to marry her while keeping her at arm’s length?” Tommy’s tone is incredulous. “That’s not protection. That’s self-delusion.”
Is it? I don’t know anymore. The lines between my past failures and my present situation get tangled up.
A memory surfaces, unbidden and unwelcome. Sand and smoke and the deafening crack of an explosion that comes too soon, too fast. A woman’s scream is cut short. A small hand reaching through rubble, fingers still moving until they’re not.
Abeera.
I close my eyes, but that only makes the memory sharper.
“Syria,” I hear myself say. “2014. We were running an extraction for a Kurdish informant and his family. His wife’s name was Abeera.”
Tommy goes still beside me. I’ve never told anyone this story. Not Dave. Not our father. Not the Marine psychiatrist who cleared me for duty after the mission went sideways.
“The intel was compromised,” I continue, my voice mechanical. “We got there too early. The building came down during extraction. IED that I’d assumed my best man had swept for. He didn’t because we were operating on a compressed timeline.”
I can still smell it. Burning concrete and copper and something sweet-sour that I later learned was death in its most immediate form.
“She reached for me,” I whisper. “This small hand, covered in dust, reaching out from under the rubble. I tried to pull her free, but the weight was too much, and the structure was unstable, and my team was screaming at me to fall back because secondary explosions were imminent.”
“Shelby—“
“I let go of her hand.” The confession tears through me like the bullet in Russia, creating a wound that never heals. “I fell back. And three seconds later, the secondary explosion buried what was left of her.”
The silence that follows is absolute. Tommy doesn’t offer empty comfort or meaningless reassurances. He knows me too well for that.
“That’s why you froze in Russia,” he says finally. Not a question. An understanding.
I nod. “I looked at those kids, and all I could see was Abeera’s hand. All I could feel was the moment I chose to let go. So I froze. Two children died because I couldn’t move fast enough, couldn’t think clearly enough, couldn’t be what I was trained to be.”
“That’s not on you.”
“Isn’t it?” I finally look at him, showing him the raw edges I usually keep hidden.
“I’ve spent twelve years in situations where split-second decisions meant life or death.
Syria, Afghanistan, all those places where the government pretends we were never operating.
I should be better than this. I should be able to execute missions without letting ghosts derail me. ”
“You’re human,” Tommy says quietly, while his warm fingers squeeze my shoulder. “Not a machine.”
“In our world, being human gets people killed.” I drain the rest of my whiskey, welcoming the burn. “This marriage is a convenient move. That’s all it is. Serena’s Joe’s sister, which means she’s practically family. That’s where this ends.”
“Does it?”
“It has to,” I state more to myself than to my brother.
I must remember it all the time. “There’s no real involvement.
No real feelings. We show up as a couple at Syndicate functions, and we don’t let it become more than that.
Because if it becomes more, I fail her like I failed Abeera.
Like I failed those kids in Russia. And I won’t survive that again. ”
Tommy studies me for a long moment, the way only a twin can. We’ve spent thirty years learning each other’s tells, understanding the silences between words.
“You’re building walls,” he observes. “Same ones you built after Syria. Same ones you reinforced after Russia. But those walls are not protecting you. They’re keeping everyone out. They’re just making you a prisoner in your own head.”
“Better that than watching someone else die because I cared too much to think clearly.”
“That’s not how it works. We’ve been in countless situations before when you didn’t freeze.”
“Tell me something honestly. If you were in that warehouse in Russia, if you had to watch kids die because you froze for five seconds, would you be eager to let someone close? Would you risk caring about them enough that their safety could compromise your judgment?”
He doesn’t answer immediately, which is answer enough. When he finally does, it’s barely above a whisper: “I get it. You got close to Abeera and were concerned about those kids. But I promise you that caring about another person is what saved me from my own demons.”
“Your story with Maeve is totally different. And I’m happy you’ve found one another.” I truly am, so I pause to hold my brother’s stare and let him read my real feelings.
He nods and smiles. “I know. I am too.”
“My marriage is happening,” I say, my tone brooking no argument.
“In forty-eight hours, Serena and I will be legally bound. We’ll play the part of a devoted couple for however long it takes to neutralize the threat from Cesare Dellamare.
And when it’s done, we’ll divorce quietly and return to our respective lives. That’s the plan.”
“And what happens when this plan falls apart spectacularly?” Tommy asks. “Because it will, my dear brother. Plans involving your particular brand of self-destructive nobility always do.”
I don’t have an answer for that question. Instead, I pour myself another whiskey, even though I know it won’t help.
After Tommy leaves—still concerned, still skeptical, but ultimately supportive because that’s what we do—I stand alone in my penthouse, building the armor back up piece by piece.
Next time I see Serena, I’ll be professional. Distant. Safe.
I’ll treat this marriage like the operation it is. Clear objectives, defined parameters, minimal emotional involvement. I’ve conducted hundreds of missions under worse circumstances with less intel. This should be fine.
Except when I close my eyes, I don’t see Abeera’s hand reaching from the rubble. I see Serena’s amber eyes, the green flecks in them enticing. I see her expression, fierce yet vulnerable. I see her trust that I will help her.
I can’t let her become important to me.
But the thought already rings hollow.
The armor I’m building has cracks, fissures that let in light where there should only be darkness. And the most terrifying part isn’t that Serena might get hurt because of me.
It’s that I might not survive losing her.
And I’m not sure I would want to.