Page 89 of Brutal Collateral

“Here is your schedule for the week.” Kai’s voice pulls my attention back to him. “Dinners with building inspectors, union bosses, and a few senate aides in town for...”

“For?” I raise an eyebrow.

“Fun. Handouts.”

I roll my eyes and grab my phone, needing to talk to Shane. Reaching across the desk, I see the photo Kai set up there is now facedown.

Wren...

Since I’m in a shitty mood, now is as good a time as any to do what I’d been dreading for months.

Telling my mother I’m getting married to a woman I hate.

I still hate her, right? God, I could have fucked her in that bridal dressing room. She lights my fuse easily enough.

I hated the idea of a spoiled princess. Even though I see more of Ava than Hadleigh lately, I realize Ava was never spoiled.

***

SHANE AND I CROSS THEborder into Astoria, and an immediate sense of loss surrounds me. Everything I’ve left behind to take my place on a throne that was thrust at me out of nowhere passes by in a blur.

“I don’t like Ma living here all alone,” I mutter.

“Ma’s hardly alone. Sadie is there after school, and she minds Maggie all day for Ewan and Darcy.” He reminds me Darcy is a surgical nurse who works full-time.

“You know what I mean.”

We reach the house, and I get chills passing the gate I opened for Kai Powers on New Year’s Day when our lives changed.

If I could go back, knowing all that I know, would I toss him out on his arse?

No. Because now I have the woman of my dreams back in my life. Even if she won’t touch me.

I take out my key, but the door swings open.

“Uncle Griffin!” Our niece Sadie stands there smiling and reaching for a hug.

Christ, she can’t just be answering the door like that. I reach in and lift her into my arms, an empty ache hitting me. I’ll have a wife. I’ll be expected to have a child, but I’m throwing it all away.

For what? To stay single my whole life? To keep fucking around? To find someone I actually love?

When Ava is gone, finding someone to love a mob boss who’s not just aching for status or my money will be impossible. I can’t help but feel deep in my bones that Ava would love me for the man she met seven years ago. She doesn’t want to be a queen any more than I want to be a king. In the pageantry sense. Sure, I want to rule, I want to be in charge, I want to call the shots after so many years as the protection force behind the O’Rourkes.

Christ, I came up with the idea to let her go, and I’m the one already looking to break my word.

Shaking my angst away, I carry Sadie into the kitchen where Ma is feeding her baby sister Maggie in a highchair.

Seeing Ma with grandbabies now hits differently. I’m ready to tell her I’m getting married while hiding the secret that I have no intention of having children with my wife.

Sadie wiggles out of my hold and attacks Shane, who takes her into another room to play princess tea party. He’s the no-relationship guy who I doubt will ever get married, never expressed wanting to be a father, but he adores our nieces.

“Ma, I need to talk to you,” I say, turning away from Shane and Sadie in the playroom.

She stops the spoon lifting to Maggie’s mouth. “Everything all right?”

“Aye.”

She pulls Maggie out of the highchair and sits the cherub on her lap. It flashes at me, the day we found out Darcy was pregnant with this wee one. How Ewan utterly freaked because he thought a bullet to the femoral artery took away his ability to conceive.

---