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I can’t love a man who doesn’t want me—and who never will.
22
CONNOR
For three days, there’s been a stalemate between Saoirse and I. She’s slept in the guest room every night, saying I don’t need her there if I can’t fuck her with the intent of getting her pregnant, but I know it’s because she doesn’t want to be next to me. She barely even wants to speak to me—and I can’t blame her.
I’ve been cruel to her, in the name of keeping my distance. I’ve done what I set out to do, put space between my wife and I, a barrier that eventually will become so thick and impenetrable that we’ll forget we ever wanted to cross it.
It shouldn’t hurt me to do that—but it does. Today, though, I have other things to worry about.
Liam and the Kings are meeting at my warehouse, the parley I’d asked for. If all goes well today, everything will change. In a few days, Liam will be out of Boston, and I’ll take my seat as King. What I’ve come here to do will be all but complete.
My own men, as well as Viktor and Luca and their entourage, are there when I arrive. Max is with Viktor, his face smooth and emotionless, and I wonder what he’s thinking. He must be torn between the two sides, and yet he’s sticking with Viktor—maybe to save his own skin as much as anything else. I don’t know all the details of why Viktor is protecting him, but it’s clear he’s not ready to sever that, not even for Liam’s sake.
When they arrive, walking into the room one by one on the upper level, I can see how tired Liam looks, even more so than when I saw him in the cemetery. His face looks drawn, and he stands in front of me, his shoulders tense as we face off.
“I’m here to hear your terms, brother,” he says simply. “I give you no guarantees. But tell me what you want.”
My chest tightens at that. We’re here at last, this moment when I give my brother the ultimatum I’ve prepared, and a part of me wants to tell him I’ve made a mistake, that we can figure this out together. That we’re brothers, bound by blood and by love, and that I could never send him away any more than I could let any harm come to him.
But I can feel the presence of the men at my back, of all the work we’ve done to get here, see the stone-set faces of the other Kings. We’ve come this far, and I don’t know how to turn back now, any more than I know how to make peace with my wife.
“I want you to leave Boston,” I tell him flatly. “You and your wife. You may not return, or go to Manhattan or Chicago, where my allies hold territory, under pain of death. You may go anywhere else, retain your accounts and assets, and start a new life with your family unharmed. If you accept these terms, you have seventy-two hours to leave Boston with your wife.”
“And if I don’t?” Liam’s eyes narrow. “What then,brother?”
“It doesn’t need to come to that.” I can’t make the words pass my lips that could suggest he might be killed, that can express the true danger of the situation to him. “See reason, Liam—this was never meant to be yours! You only took it—”
“Because you were gone.” Liam’s voice is harder and angrier than I’ve ever heard it, and there’s pain there too, betrayal that cuts me to the core. “Youleft. You disagreed with our father, and you saw your way out, and you fuckingran, Connor. You left me here to manage him, the way he was spiraling out of control, and now you want to blame me that he’s dead. I know you do. ButIstayed! I could have left the table to the other Kings, let them claw and scrap over it like fighting vultures, but I took up the seat! I did my duty, and led them, and made sure there was peace after everything our father did—peace with the mafia, peace with the Bratva. No one ever taught me how to do this—not our father, not you, but I did it anyway.” His jaw tightens, muscles leaping as he stares me down. “I stayed, while you ran. And now you think you can come back, marry Saoirse and demand your seat back, because you say it’s yours? Because it’s yourright?” Liam shakes his head. “I earned this, brother. You don’t deserve it, and you’ve done nothing to show that you do.”
His words cut deeper than I could ever have imagined. I can hear everything in them that he’s not saying, too—years of hurt, of loss, and I’m reminded in a flash of what we once were to each other, how I once tried to be everything to him—and failed.
“I’m trying to protect you, brother—”
“I stopped needing your protection a long time ago.”
Both of us open our mouths to speak at once, and then Jacob steps forward, holding up a hand. I turn to ask him what the fuck he thinks he’s doing, but he looks at me, his brow furrowed with worry.
“Do you smell that?”
I take a deep breath, looking at him with confusion. He’s right, though, there’s something acrid in the air, and my gut tightens instinctively with fear.
“That’s smoke,” Levin says from behind me. “What the fuck—”
Somewhere in the building, below us, I hear the screeching of a fire alarm. The sound reverberates up to where we are, and I turn to look at Jacob, who is staring at the windows with a steadily growing terror in his eyes.
“The fire escapes—”
“Were shit when we moved in,” Jacob says, his voice tight. “They’re useless. They’re on our list of things to replace or fix, but—”
But they haven’t yet.I look at my brother, who is standing frozen to the spot, and a cold fear fills me.
The building is on fire.
And we’re all fucking trapped up here.
