Page 65 of Starting Over

“We were kids. We’re different now. Everything is different now. I’m a Mob widow. I can’t be with a cop.”

“You are a widow. That’s all. It doesn’t need a clarifier. You bought your way out. You’re done. You moved away.” She was shaking her head at me again.

“To a town where the boss’ brothers live. Don’t you get it? I am never getting away from the Mob. My daughter still lives in Boston. She will get married someday, have children, and I will be right back in Boston. Right back in the middle of the fucking Mob.”

Moving my hands, I held her head still. I didn’t want her telling me no again.

“Then get your daughter to move here.”

“It’s not that simple.”

“It’s not that fucking complicated,” I argued.

She stared into my eyes, and I saw the sadness. I saw the turmoil that lived there. She was right. We were different people now. We had lived different lives. But that didn’t mean we couldn’t combine those lives now.

“You should go.”

“Reenie, no.”

“Declan, I’m sorry. I can’t. It wouldn’t be fair to either of us. Maybe if you had stayed. Or maybe if you had come back, things could have been different. But they weren’t.”

“They can be different now.”

“They can’t.”

I straightened up and dropped my hands.

“I’m sorry, Declan. What we had was a schoolyard crush. We’re adults now. Hell, we both have adult children.”

“So that means life is over? I’m fifty fucking years old, not a hundred, Reenie.”

“Please, just go.” She turned away from me, but I couldn’t move. Not yet. I had to try. Wrapping my arms around her, I buried my face in her neck.

“We can have this, Reenie. We can still live the life we were supposed to have.”

“If we were meant to have that life, we would have.”

“Maybe we were meant to have it a little later.”

“Declan, please... just go,” she implored, pulling away from me again.

“Fine,” I huffed, letting go of the only woman I ever really wanted. “This isn’t over, though. King wants to meet Sal. Which means he’ll be coming here. When he does, I plan to make it clear to him that you belong to me.”

She spun around, the shock of my words evident on her face.

“You can’t do that. No one tells Sal no.”

“You did.”

I turned and walked to the front door. Opening it, I turned back to her once more. “I’m not afraid of my brother.”

“Well, you should be. You don’t know him. You don’t know what he’s capable of. He killed his father.”

I looked her in the eye. She didn’t know just how much my brother and I were alike. She was right. We didn’t know each other anymore. Maybe she wouldn’t like what she saw when sheknew the man I was now. Then again, maybe she needed to see that darker side of me.

“And I killed my daughter’s mother. I will do whatever I have to, to keep my family safe.”

Chapter Seventeen

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