Silent promises, p.6
Silent Promises, page 6
part #3 of Dark & Silent Night Series
“This is your new home,” she said as we both turned to a cozy little white building with a bright blue roof. “I am afraid this is the last time we will meet, as I can’t risk anyone finding you through me.” She handed me a card and leaned in to kiss the side of my head. “Should you ever find yourself in trouble, use this, but only if it is an emergency. Once you use it, your identity will be burned and there will be no going back. Do you understand?”
I nodded and went willingly into the arms of the woman who appeared cold and calculated while giving the warmest hug I’d ever had from another woman. “I never visited you so that we would have the element of surprise today. If we had a relationship before, I would have been the first suspect your father came to. I wanted to know you, darling, but I wanted freedom for you more.”
It felt like she was family for all of fifteen seconds before she pulled back, gave a quick sniff. “Will you get word to Logan Maddox for me? Find a way to let him know that I am okay.”
Grandma gave me a look that said I should know better, but she at least had the heart to lie to me. “I will do what I can.”
That false promise sat uneasily between us as I turned and walked away from her without another word. With the envelope containing all the details of my new identity clutched firmly against my chest, I worked up the courage, grabbed an old iron key out of the packet, and made my way to the blue door with a number three hanging at an odd angle in the middle.
Of all the places in the world, my grandmother had to choose Greece - the homeland of Logan’s mother. I didn’t think she was originally from Mykonos, but being close to his heritage was not going to make it easy to forget my first love.
EIGHT
Helpless
LOGAN
12 years later
I glanced down at my phone and picked it up the minute I saw Lucien’s name pop up.
Lucian: Ferraro, Calista. Need a full workup.
A woman. My brother who was just as anti-relationship as I was wanted me to check out a woman. It had to be a joke, and that was exactly the tone I used when I messaged him back.
Logan: Am I vetting your Tinder matches again?
Lucian: She’s a target.
Well, fuck.
Lucian was used to living in the shadows and fulfilling hits the criminal underground took out on one another. For some reason, my brother needed the little trips he took on the dark side to dispatch the souls who did something bad enough to earn a death sentence. He didn’t mind being the executioner. In fact, the asshole thrived on it.
None of that was unusual. What was strange, was that he almost never asked for me to run a check on someone before he popped them. Whether he realized it or not, he was having second thoughts about killing this woman. Still, I had to keep the communication going as I input her name and started to search.
Logan: Figured
Lucian: Well?
Logan: It’s been seconds since you first texted, asshole.
Lucian: You’ve gotten slow.
I rolled my eyes and laughed as I dove a little deeper into the life of Calista Ferraro for him. I was stumped when it didn’t turn up anything that might make a person a target.
Logan: Fuck you. And I’m already halfway through her data.
As I pulled more and more information on Lucian’s latest target, I quickly realized why my brother might have a hard time pulling the trigger on this one. His target being a woman made no fucking difference to him. Her being a damn saint might, though.
Logan: You sure she’s a target? This one’s got nun energy. She runs a homeless shelter. Has no debt. No savings. No criminal record. I think the last person she killed was probably a spider.
Lucian: There’s got to be something.
Logan: Then it’s deep. I’ll need time for that.
Lucian: Like I said, you’re slipping.
I sent him back a middle finger emoji and slipped my phone back in my pocket as I tried to dig up more information on my brother’s latest hit. There was no way someone wanted this woman dead. Not unless…
I was distracted by a ping on the laptop.
The laptop.
The one I kept running in the background with one specific search on it. There was never a ping. It had remained quiet for twelve fucking years.
“It can’t be,” I said to myself as I rolled my chair over to the lone desk across the room and started to scan the data that was being analyzed when information was flagged.
A picture.
After twelve fucking years, I finally had a picture of the girl who got away.
Aoife.
I would know her face anywhere, even if she had filled out a bit since I’d last seen her. Miranda Bradford was the name that popped up associated with her image, but I knew better. The woman staring back at me from that picture was Aoife Quinn, the only woman to ever capture my heart.
The organ in question ran a race against itself inside my chest as I zoomed in on the picture. Her hair was darker. Rather than the light strawberry blonde of our youth or the slightly darker, almost peachy-orange hue of our teen years, it was now dark enough that in low lighting it might have been mistaken for a light auburn or mousy brown.
It was unmistakably red in the image, though. The other distinctive element of the photo was the sparkling diamond on Aoife’s finger. I glanced down and read the caption.
She’ll hate me for posting her happy moment, but my friend deserves her time to shine in the spotlight, along with that absolute sparkler on her left ring finger!
#MirandaBradfordIsGettingMarried
I felt sick to my stomach. There was no way my Aoife was marrying anyone else. It wouldn’t even be possible, considering she’d never bothered to legally change her name. The only way for her to follow through with it would be if she trusted the man she was about to marry with her real identity. Did she trust him the same way she once had faith that I would save her from the fate her father had in store for her?
My chest ached. I couldn’t stomach the thought of her putting the same faith in another man that she’d once had in me. I fucked it up when I let another woman come between us, and I could only imagine what some other schmuck might do when faced with Bill Quinn.
I already had the post and image screenshotted and saved the minute it popped up, and thank fuck for that because it was deleted off Shaina Carmine’s profile feed moments later as I stared at the first image I’d seen of my long-lost best friend in twelve years.
She was out there, and now that I had a thread to follow, it wouldn’t take long to find her. All I had to do was find Shaina Carmine or any trace of Miranda Bradford. Considering how well-hidden my girl had been up until now, I figured Shaina was my best bet. I called the only man in my circle I trusted with this knowledge.
“Miles, need you in my office.”
“Now?”
“Yesterday, if you can time travel,” I said and hung up the phone.
Miles didn’t even need to see what was on the screen, just that I was seated in front of the infamous laptop. “Holy shit! You found her?”
“I did. We need to make sure no one else got wind of her friend’s post before it was removed.”
“Someone outed her?”
I shook my head. “Not on purpose. Looks like someone in her circle wanted to share Aoife’s happy news.”
I turned to see pity plastered on my friend’s face. “What happy news?”
“She’s engaged.”
“Shit.”
“Yeah, that sums it up. I need you to run down Shaina Carmine for me. I want every fucking detail you can find about her.”
“Is that her new name?” I shook my head. “Friend who posted?”
“Yeah, Aoife’s apparently going by Miranda Bradford now.”
“Miranda Bradford?” Miles asked as he seemed deep in thought. “Is that name significant in any way?”
“Not that I know of, but if it triggers something for you, I need to know that, too.”
NINE
Hopeful
AOIFE
I stared at the ring Drew held out for me. All my friends were gathered around the periphery, but it felt like none of them existed.
This was all wrong.
My heart hammered and I started to feel lightheaded as the ring sparkled from the box Drew held up. He was on one knee in front of me and my tongue was practically glued to the roof of my mouth.
“Will you marry me, love?”
Nope.
I was still incapable of words, but my answer rang loudly inside my head. There was no way I could marry Drew, or anyone else for that matter.
He grinned at me and then took the ring out of the box and slid it on my finger. The same finger I always dreamed would one day be home to a ring that Logan Maddox put there. My stomach ached at the thought. He had well and truly betrayed me for a scheming, conniving woman who didn’t even have to try terribly hard to push a wedge between us. Before I could even blink, that wedge had grown into a gaping canyon, and I had to leave my first and only love behind to start a new life of my own.
“She’s stunned speechless,” Drew teased, but I could see a glimmer of something in his eyes that hinted at his displeasure in my inability to find my voice and declare an emphatic, “Yes,” to his proposal.
That was something I could never bring myself to do. I wasn’t in love with Drew, no matter how much I tried to make myself fall for him. There was something nagging at my brain that told me he wasn’t the right fit for me. I had ignored that voice until now, assuming it was just my younger self beating against the cage I’d locked her in all those years ago. She didn’t understand that Logan stopped wanting us more than a decade ago.
I knew that Logan had found out exactly what karma felt like in the days and weeks after I disappeared. I might have been smart about staying hidden, but that didn’t mean that I wasn’t curious. I looked into him, during a desperate moment, and found information about a scandal that got him kicked out of MIT. That bitch had stolen his code and set him up.
Eventually, it was proven that he was the one wronged, but it took time. By then, the damage was done and Logan refused to return to their school. That had been the last time I purposely looked for information about him. Though, it was far from the final bit of news I’d received about my first and only love.
I’d inadvertently had his and his brothers’ escapades thrown in my face over the years as they were all in the news or in some tabloid or other. Logan and Lucian, being the youngest, were often with a different woman on their arm for various events. Gideon and Adrian had their own bouts of press because of their billion-dollar empire. It was hard to believe that Adrian was married with children of his own and Gideon kept things so professional that there was barely a blip about him on a personal level - beyond him being one of New York’s most eligible bachelors for a few years running.
I wanted happiness for all of the Maddox boys; despite the way Logan broke my heart. That didn’t mean it wasn’t bittersweet to think of some of them as happily married and ridiculously successful when I never got to experience that with the one person I wanted more than anyone on the planet. Then again, I knew better than the average person that you never really knew what was going on in a person’s life. My friends didn’t even know my real name. The man who got down on one knee to propose to me didn’t know it either.
I should have felt guilty for thinking that as another man’s ring sat heavily on my finger. The reality was that I hadn’t, and more importantly, couldn’t say yes to him. Not yet anyway. Still, I didn’t remove the ring and allowed Drew to wrap his arms around me as tears, born of frustration, fell from my face.
Everyone around us cooed over the beautiful moment and my supposed “happy tears,” but that was only because they didn’t know the real me well enough to understand that they were tears of complete devastation. I had asked one thing of my grandmother when she left me in Greece. I needed her to tell the Maddox boys - especially Logan - that I was okay. She promised to give Logan the message, in case he ever wanted to disappear with me.
That never happened.
I swore that I would move on.
“You could at least pretend to be happy rather than acting like your world just ended,” Drew whispered in my ear.
“I’m in shock,” I argued quietly.
“No, you’re not.” His insistence held a violent quality that sent a shiver down my spine as well as putting me on high alert.
“Not even five minutes, and the proposal announcement photo has already had over two thousand likes!” Shaina squealed excitedly.
“What announcement?” I snapped as I grabbed the phone from her hand. My eyes widened as I saw my face, the ring, and my alias plastered in a hashtag on her Insta account. “What have you done?” I asked as my fingers flew across her screen and worked to delete it immediately. “Did anyone else invade my privacy like this?” I yelled as my eyes shifted from person-to-person. They all shook their heads.
“I know you’re a private person, but come on, Miranda. It’s not like a wedding between you and Drew won’t be crawling with media attention and people who will post pictures everywhere because of who he is.”
Who he is.
That was something Shaina hinted at more than once and I had begun to dread the fact that maybe I wasn’t the only one hiding in plain sight. “Why would there be so much interest in my potential wedding to Drew?”
“Shaina thinks because I’m hot that everyone will want to know about us, babe. Ignore her. You know she has that vapid influencer thing going on. All makeup and zero substance.”
“Wow, you think so highly of your friend,” I said. Everyone quietly dispersed and headed back down from the rooftop of the building we were on. It wasn’t smart to come back to the United States. I knew that. I figured being on the west coast would be far enough to keep me safe from my father and the New York-based Sweeney Gang. I’d been living in San Diego for a little more than a year with no problems, but a single picture could be the difference in my continued peaceful existence and my world imploding.
Once everyone was gone, Drew took my hand and guided me to the outdoor lounge area near where he’d just proposed. His hands kept hold of mine the whole way and when we sat, he maintained that contact. “I know I sprang that on you out of nowhere. We talked about getting more serious, and now I realize that I was thinking about marriage while you were obviously headed in a different direction, or at least a slower one.” His tone implied that he expected me to answer a question he hadn’t bothered to ask.
“Drew, we’ve only dated a short time. I think it’s too soon.”
“We’re not getting any younger, babe. I want to have kids someday, and you said the same thing. We’re both in our thirties and I’m creeping up on forty in less than a year.”
Everything he said was true. I was only thirty-three, though. I still had time, at least, I hoped I still had enough to make a family one day. The problem was that I didn’t want to bring a child into a world where I had to live under an assumed name. If I couldn’t be Aoife again, then what was the point? My children would know my damn name, not some fake identity that was necessary to hide me from my own family.
“How about you keep that ring on your finger and accompany me to see my mother next week. She’s been begging me to come home for the holidays and isn’t able to come out to California to see me this year.”
“New York? You want me to go to New York with you to see your mom?”
“Yeah, what’s your problem with New York?”
“It’s just a big trip and what will she think if I’m wearing your ring and then decide it’s too soon to marry you?”
He chuckled but that thing behind his eyes that shouted to the world about how angry he was seemed to blaze to life again, contradicting the humor he meant to portray. “She’ll love you enough to hope that you eventually decide to walk down the aisle with me.”
“How do you know that?” I asked as he gave me back that cocky grin that made him look like the epitome of a handsome devil.
“I know because I love you enough to want that and my mom wants me to be happy above all else.”
Well damn. What could I say to that?
Could I really take a chance and go to New York? It had been more than a decade. I didn’t think my father was still looking for me, but then again, he was a mobster to the bone and whether he wanted to let me go or not, he had to save face in front of his men. The same men who would think he was weak because he couldn’t locate his only living daughter when she was supposed to be sold into a marriage that would benefit the family.
“Okay, let’s go to New York and see your mom,” I decided. It was a gamble, but one that needed to be taken. If I was ever going to have children of my own, I needed to know that it would be safe to be me. The trip to New York would be the first step toward a future where I could openly be Aoife Elaine Quinn again.
Or Aoife Elaine Connolly.
Another shiver ran down my spine at the thought of becoming a Connolly instead of rightfully being a Maddox like I’d always dreamed. I supposed that the dream my younger self had would only live on through fiction, through the writings of A.E. Maddox and all the stories I made using different characters’ names, even though each of them was a prime example of wish fulfillment. Each story was a different fantasy for how mine and Logan’s life might have played out differently, if only...
