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I wanted to see him there. Not beaten, shirtless, or running for his life, but healed and dressed in black, walking through the world he had built.

And I wanted to know what it would feel like to walk in beside him and have every woman in the room realize Lachlan Byrnes wasn’t looking at any of them.

I shook my head, forcing reality back. That thought had gotten ahead of me.

I adjusted my legs and dragged my attention back to the man beneath me instead of the one I was already imagining in Manhattan.

“So, was that how you got pulled into the underworld?”

“It helped.” Lachlan adjusted his grip as he stepped around a gully in the path. “Once men start trusting you with the things they don’t want anyone else knowing, you learn who actually has power and what they’re willing to do to keep it. Xyst became neutral ground for people who wouldn’t normally sit in the same room without somebody getting shot.”

“Is that how you met Nikolai Volkov?”

“Nik came later. Anastasia started working with us before we knew who the hell she really was. We thought she was a librarian with bookkeeping skills who needed a job. Turned out she was Nikolai Volkov’s twin sister and connected to Luca Genovese through family.”

“That seems like a fairly significant detail for her to leave out,” I said, trying to imagine their reaction.

Another quiet laugh moved through his chest. “Aye. After a few years, we made her an equal partner in Xyst. She’d earned it, and by then she was one of us. We still had no bloody idea who she really was. By the time the truth came out, Luca was already involved in our lives, and Nik wasn’t far behind. Things got complicated fast.”

“And somehow all of that still ended with you taking a blood oath.”

“Something like that.” Lachlan was quiet for several steps. “That night came with another surprise. Luca and Nik knew more about the Byrnes name than Lucian and I ever had. We’d grown up believing Da was exactly what he seemed—a farmer who wanted a quiet life in Ireland.”

His voice took on a more serious edge.

“Turns out Da had been born into one of the most powerful Irish crime families. His brother, Jack Byrnes, runs the family out of Boston now.”

That took a moment to process. “So he’s your uncle?”

“Aye. A man neither of us even knew existed until recently.”

I started to wonder how anyone could keep something that enormous from their children, then stopped myself. Until yesterday, I’d believed Ciro was my father. Lachlan and I had both grown up surrounded by family secrets without knowing they were there.

“So, your parents never told you that you had an uncle or anything about the mafia ties?”

“No. They’d walked away from that world before raising us. The farm, the sheep, the quiet life Mam and Da gave us—it wasn’t an accident. They chose it because they wanted Lucian and me nowhere near the life they’d left behind.”

His steps remained steady beneath me, though several moments passed before he continued.

“Mam begged us not to leave when we decided to come to America. Da hardly said anything. I was young and thought he was simply letting us make our own choice.”

“You don’t think that now?”

“No.” He stepped carefully over a root. “I understand the look on his face a hell of a lot better now.”

“What do you mean?”

“That he’d spent our whole lives trying to keep us away from his world, and the two of us were walking straight out the door toward it without even knowing.”

The irony of it was not lost on me.

“He and Mam had escaped that life, and somehow Lucian and I crossed an ocean and ended up right back in it.”

“Have you met your uncle?”

“Aye. Not long after we learned the truth. Jack wants Lucian and me involved with the Byrnes family in Boston. He thinks that’s where the Byrnes blood belongs.”

“And what do you think?”