Page 106 of Dublin Beast

My throat tightens. I nod once and follow her, letting her guide me to a quiet table near the window, the same one I used to share with Yasmine.

I drop into the chair, feeling too big for the space now. Like I don’t fit anymore, physically or otherwise.

“Don’t move,” she says firmly, pressing a hand to my shoulder. “I’ll get Ashwin.”

She disappears through the swinging doors into the kitchen, her pace suddenly quick.

I don’t know if I’m shaking or if it’s the table under my hands. Either way, I fold my fingers together to still them. Then the doors swing open again—and there he is.

Yasmine’s father, Ashwin.

He’s thinner than I remember. The black in his hair has surrendered to gray. But his eyes—the same dark, kind eyes his daughter inherited—go wide when they land on me.

I stand automatically.

He comes to me without hesitation, and before I can speak, before I can offer some half-assed apology, he pulls me into a tight embrace.

“Bryan,” he says gruffly, like my name is both a question and an answer. “It’s been too long, son.”

I nod against his shoulder, swallowing hard. “It has. I’m sorry about that.”

He pulls back, claps a hand to the side of my face the same way he did the day he gave me his blessing to date Yasmine. He doesn’t saywhere the hell have you been, orwhy did you vanish,he just gives a small nod and steps aside as Riya returns.

She’s carrying a plate the size of a small country.

Rice, lamb, naan, roasted vegetables, a dish of bright orange curry I don’t even recognize. The colors are vibrant. The smell is intoxicating. The love is unmistakable.

She sets it in front of me and sits across from me with a sigh, folding her hands on the table like nothing’s changed, like we’re just picking up where we left off.

“Now tell me,” she says, her eyes glistening. “How are you,mera beta?”

My son.

And just like that, the walls inside me crumble.

And, for the first time in four years, I don’t try to stop them from seeing what’s broken.

* * *

I climb into the driver’s seat of my Hilux and the door shuts with a quietthunk. For a long minute, I don’t move.

I just sit there, breathing...

Letting the warmth from the restaurant cling to me like the scent of spices still woven into my shirt.

I’m full—properlyfull. My stomach stretched from too much lamb, too much naan, too much of Riya’s insistence that I “looked thin” even though I outweigh half the Quinn security team and Devils MC.

But it’s not only my gut that’s full.

It’s my chest. My ribs. That hollow place behind my sternum that has ached since the moment Yasmine died—it’s not empty tonight. Not entirely.

Riya said she’s proud of me, but I’m not sure I deserve that. I apologized to her, sick about how long it took for me to come back.

And she’d said,“It only proves how deep your love for her went. It broke you and it took a long time for you to find your way back.”

Maybe she’s right.

Maybe I have been broken this whole time, walking around, my heart shattered into sharp and jagged pieces. The blood and violence only masked the pain I couldn’t face. And now… I’m holding a fucking letter.

---