Page 13 of Overstaying His Welcome

“To be honest with you, I’ve run out of ideas for him. My resources are at a loss on how to get to him. He’s more slippery than Mordecai was.”

The memory of the bitch that took Archie and bugged my offices still sat uneasy with me.

"What the fuck are we going to do then?" Ronan asked me, his voice full of exasperation.

I knew exactly how he felt.

This entire Gilded Ones Operation had destroyed our peace. Everything we had built and worked for felt like it was in shambles.

Sure, the business was operating, but the men that were at the core of it all had been shaken. We had all faced setbacks of some kind, whether it was one of our team members being hurt or a new person that we cared about being taken advantage of.

The threats and the violence were not what they had signed up for.

Thankfully, everyone had taken to the project with ease. I didn't know what to think whenever it first came into our hands. I was never the type to just let things go.

I could hold a grudge like nobody's business, and I really fucking hated people who hurt the little guy. I was a fan of the underdog every time, because if you were bigger and meaner and stronger, then you should use that to do good things, not bad.

Intimidating someone else or hurting them simply from the joy of it was horrible.

The Gilded Ones were the worst of the worst. All the information that we had found on them, and continued to find, clearly painted that picture.

The bulk of the work was getting the six-figure heads taken down. With five of them gone, we only had one remaining.

Finding Diestro was going to be tougher. We all knew it.

It hadn't been an easy journey already, but this was, well, to be honest, it was looking damn near impossible.

“We do what we always do, Ronan. We pull our shit together, and we figure it out. I don't have an easy answer. There's nothing I can say to make this problem go away and put us all back in our safe little bowl. What I can do is fight for my team, to provide all the resources I can.”

Ronan scrubbed his hands over his face.

He looked at me then, his eyes pleading. "Shit, boss, I'm sorry. It's just taking a lot out of me lately. It's hard to sleep at night when all I do is worry about the team or remember how Damari felt when everything happened.”

I nodded once, hard enough to let him know that I understood without the words. He and I had been working together for so long we didn't need them. A simple look or a slight movement told us everything.

I was thankful for it because it had come in handy more times than I thought it would have needed to.

With the silence stretching between us, I knew he understood everything that I couldn't say out loud: that he was my best friend, that I loved him like a brother, that I would have his back and the rest of the team as well, that I would protect their loved ones with my last breath, and that we would figure this out.

But amidst all those truths there was a lie. And it was a lie that ate me up inside every time I thought about it.

It was also a lie that wasn't mine to tell.

The man I loved more than anything in this world couldn’t be mine. He wouldn't be mine so long as his parents were living, and his goals were to make them happy.

I had settled with that unfortunate reality long ago, but I would rather have Chance Sheppard in my life in some form or fashion than to not have him at all.

Which meant not telling my team.

It meant hiding and sometimes lying to ensure that his sexuality wasn't called into question.

It meant watching him attend events and give speeches that I knew he didn't really believe in or want to be at.

Ronan stood from the chair and put his hands on his hips. “I'm going to go back in there and see if maybe we missed something. Let me know if you hear anything, okay?”

“I will,” I promised. “As soon as I know something —”

My phone started to go off, the alarm letting me know it was time to go to my meeting. That acid burning my chest rose up again as I knew I was about to have to lie.

---