Page 165 of Claiming Pretty

“I love you more, too,” I sobbed, the words pouring out uncontrollably. “I’ve always loved you! I choose you, Ty.”

But the call went dead.

I stared at the phone, my breath catching in my throat.

“No, no, no!” I screamed, my voice echoing into the night.

The weight of his absence hit me like a physical blow, shattering me from the inside out. My knees buckled, and I crumpled to the ground, unable to hold myself upright beneath the crushing grief.

The phone slipped from my trembling fingers, clattering away, forgotten. A guttural scream tore from my chest, raw and primal, as if releasing it could somehow fill the unbearable void he’d left behind.

I couldn’t breathe.

My sobs racked my entire body, jagged and unrelenting, each one cutting deeper. Tears blurred my vision, but it didn’t matter—everything around me had dissolved into chaos.

He was gone.

He’d misunderstood the cruelty of my grief, mistaking my desperate accusations for truth.I wish it had been you.

And in doing so, he’d condemned himself. The man who fought for me, who knew me better than I knew myself, believed he wasn’t enough.

But it had always beenhim. I’d been blind, stumbling in the shadows, and he’d seen it all along. He’d waited, hoped, and finally sacrificed himself—for me.

For what? To give me to Ciaran, because he thought that’s what I wanted most? Because he thought I didn’t love him back?

But I did. God, I did. It had always been him, and now… he was gone. He’d given himself up so I could be with the one I loved most, never realizing that it had been him all along.

The realization ripped through me, hollowing me out.

My hands clawed desperately at the gravel beneath me, seeking some anchor in a world that had suddenly become unrecognizable.

And yet nothing grounded me. Nothing could.

Through the haze of despair, I felt it—Ciaran’s gaze.

It burned into me, filled with his own anguish and helplessness.

When I turned, his face—too fucking familiar, a reminder of everything I had lost—was pale, his eyes wide and filled with something unreadable.

He’d heard everything.

The realization tore through me like a jagged blade. The brother I had chosen would never hear my confession.

But Ciaran had.

EBONY

Iswirled the twenty-five-year-old Macallan in my glass, watching the amber liquid catch the flickering firelight, its color shifting like molten gold. This was supposed to be the whiskey of victors. A taste for the triumphant.

Yet as the smoke curled on my tongue, I couldn’t decide if I actually enjoyed it or if I had spent years convincing myself I did.

Colleagues always assumed it was my favorite. A bottle every Christmas, without fail. A glass ready and waiting at every meeting, a silent toast to my victories, my lineage, my power.

But sitting now in my father’s worn leather chair in his study, the same one I’d once stood beside as a child watching him sip from the very same cut-crystal glass, I wasn’t even sure if I liked the taste.

I swallowed the burn, wincing as it scorched its way down my throat, and forced myself to think it was pleasant.Delicious, even. A pleasure far greater than the power plays cloaked in intimacy that always left me hollow.

This, I told myself, was my victory drink. The sweet sting of conquest.

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