Chapter 28 Shelby
Shelby
The first thing I register is pain. A throbbing behind my eyes that pulses in time with my heartbeat. The second is the taste of stale whiskey and regret coating my tongue like ash. The third is the uncomfortable angle of my neck, bent at a position that’s going to hurt for days.
I’m slumped over the desk.
The realization filters through slowly, each detail clicking into place like pieces of a puzzle.
The empty bottle of Jameson lies on its side near my hand.
Papers are crumpled beneath my cheek. The light pouring through the windows has shifted from the bright glow of noon to the amber wash of fading day.
How long have I been out?
I try to lift my head, and the room tilts dangerously. My stomach lurches. I grip the edge of the desk and force myself to breathe through the nausea, waiting for the world to stop spinning.
“You look like death warmed over, son.”
The voice cuts through the fog in my skull. Authoritative. Carrying the weight of decades of command.
I turn my head slowly, every movement an exercise in controlled agony.
Jack Boyle stands in the doorway of my office.
At sixty-two, he’s still an imposing figure.
His full head of hair used to be black. His tanned scalp, visible beneath a receding hairline, contrasts sharply with the silver hair swept back from his face.
Those icy blue eyes, the same ones I see in the mirror every morning, study me with an expression I can’t define.
Disappointment, maybe. Or something worse.
Understanding.
“Dad.” My voice comes out like gravel scraped across stone. “What are you doing here?”
He crosses the room with the measured stride of a man who’s commanded a business and a criminal empire for decades. He picks up the empty Jameson bottle, examines it briefly, then sets it aside with a soft clink.
“Tommy called me.” He lowers himself into the chair that my brother occupied a couple of hours ago. Or was it longer? Time has lost all meaning. “Said you might need someone to talk to.”
“I’m fine.”
“I found you passed out on the desk. You’re reeking of whiskey, with an operation launching in...” He checks his watch. “Twenty minutes. That’s not fine, son. That’s drowning.”
Drowning. Maybe I’ve been drowning for years, and Serena was the only thing keeping my head above water.
I force myself upright, ignoring the protest of every muscle in my body. The room sways, then steadies. My hand finds the pitcher of water I keep on my desk. I pour a tall glass and drain it in three long swallows. It helps. Marginally.
“The operation,” I manage. “I need to be ready.”
My wife needs me to be ready. Damn it all to hell!
“You need to be sober first.” Jack’s voice is flat. “And you need to get your head straight before you step out. Because right now, you’re a liability that will get people killed.”
Dad’s words stab my chest like ragged knives. Each one precisely aimed at the wound I’ve been trying to drown in alcohol. I want to argue, defend myself. But he’s right.
I’ve spent the last hours doing exactly what I swore I wouldn’t do. Falling apart. Letting fear win. Becoming the broken man I’ve always been terrified of becoming.
“I can’t lose her.” The confession escapes my lips, raw and bleeding. “Dad, I can’t... I don’t know how to survive that.”
Jack remains quiet for a long moment; his face looks older than I’ve ever seen it. The lines deeper. The shadows heavier. For the first time, I see something beyond the patriarch, beyond the Syndicate founder, beyond the man who raised me to be stronger than my fears.
Before me is a man who has lost so much. He understands that pain.
“Let me tell you something about Martha Boyle,” he says finally.
Hearing her name still hurts. Five years since mom was taken from us, and the wound hasn’t healed. I don’t think it ever will.
“Dad, I don’t think—”
“When I met your mother,” he continues, as if I hadn’t spoken, “I was already in too deep. We were building something from nothing, and that kind of building requires blood and bone. I’d done things, Shelby. Things that would have sent any sensible woman running.”
I know some of those things. The stories were passed down through family legend. The violence that built our empire. The bodies buried in foundations that became the bedrock of our power.
“She knew who I was,” Jack says. “What I was. I didn’t hide it from her.
I told her everything because I thought honesty would drive her away.
I thought if she saw the real me, the monster inside, she’d realize I wasn’t worth the risk.
” He pauses, his eyes distant with memory.
“She didn’t run. She looked me in the eye and said, ‘Jack Boyle, I didn’t fall in love with a saint.
I fell in love with a man. And that man is worth fighting for. ’”
My throat tightens. I’ve heard this story countless times before, through childhood and beyond.
I’ve heard it from Dad’s perspective and Mom’s.
But never like this because now my own story gives me a different point of view.
Now, I see my parents’ marriage through the lens of my relationship with Serena. And that makes a world of difference.
“She chose me knowing the danger,” Jack continues.
“Knowing the violence. Knowing that being with me meant walking into darkness with no guarantee of finding the light again. She could have had a normal life. A safe life. A husband who came home at predictable hours and never had blood on his hands.”
“But she chose you.”
“She chose love.” He leans forward, his blue eyes locking onto mine with an intensity that pins me in place. “Every single day, she chose love over fear, even when it was hard, especially when it was hard, when it cost her. She chose love when far easier options were right there in front of her.”
He studies my face, waiting for my reactions. I shake my head, still unable to wrangle my wayward feelings into coherent thoughts.
Dad goes on, “Your mother used to say something. She said the only real failure in life isn’t falling. It’s refusing to get back up, to try again. You’re refusing to try with Serena, son. And that’s not protecting her. It’s punishing both of you.”
The accusation hits like a blow to the sternum. Fighting to breathe, I counter, “I’m not. I’m planning an assault to bring her home.”
“That’s not what I mean, and you know it.
” Jack’s voice is gentle but relentless.
“You can rescue her body. You can kill everyone who took her and burn Giovanni’s empire to ash.
But if you don’t open your heart to her, if you keep hiding behind your fear of loss, you’ll lose her anyway. Just more slowly.”
Somewhere beneath the alcohol and the exhaustion and the fear, I know he’s right.
His words find the cracks in my heart that I’ve been trying to fill with whiskey. Something shifts. Not healed yet, but maybe the bleeding's finally slowing. Maybe choosing love over fear can patch up my wounds. Then, after I save Serena, the real healing might begin.
“I’ve been so focused on not failing her the way I failed Abeera,” I say slowly, the realization crystallizing as I speak. “So focused on protecting myself from the pain of losing her that I never stopped to consider I might be pushing her away instead.”
“Trust isn’t something that happens to you,” Jack says.
“It’s something you choose. Every day. Every moment.
You choose to believe in someone even when doubt whispers in your ear.
You choose to stay open when closing off feels safer.
” He reaches across the desk and grips my hands, grounding me.
“Your mother chose to trust me for forty years, through wars and betrayals and losses that would have broken lesser people. She never stopped choosing. And I never stopped being grateful.”
Grief wraps itself around my heart like steel. This time, I let it in instead of shoving it down. I grieve for Abeera. For those children in Russia. For my mother. For the man I used to be before Syria shattered something fundamental inside me. And beneath all of that, the terror of losing Serena.
“I love her.” The words come out broken, barely a whisper. “I love her so much it terrifies me.”
“Good.” Jack’s grip tightens. “That terror means it’s real. Means it matters. The only things worth having are the things that scare us enough to fight for them.”
Again, I call to mind the moment I asked Serena to marry me, for real this time. And her prompt reply. Yes. A thousand times, yes.
She did choose me. Despite my darkness, my broken pieces, and every reason she had to walk away. She looked at the monster and decided I was worth fighting for.
And what have I done with that gift?
I’ve been calling my fear wisdom, I realize. I’ve been calling my self-protection strength. But it’s neither. It’s cowardice.
The realization is brutal. But there’s clarity in brutality. Relief in finally seeing the truth I’ve been running from.
“What if she decides I’m not worth it?” The question escapes before I can stop it. The fear that’s been lurking beneath all the others raises its ugly head. “What if she sees who I really am and realizes she deserves better?”
“Then at least you’ll know you tried.” Jack releases my hands and sits back.
“But I don’t think that’s what’s going to happen.
I’ve seen the way that girl looks at you, Shelby.
She’s not looking for perfect. She’s looking for real.
And you’re the realest thing she’s ever found in a world full of masks and manipulation. ”
I think about Serena’s words from the other night, when I told her about Syria and all the ways I’ve failed.
You didn’t freeze because you’re weak, Shelby. You froze because you cared. Because the thought of that sweet woman dying was so unbearable that your brain and your body couldn’t process it fast enough to respond. That’s not being weak, it’s being human.