by Ella Miles
“Sleep sounds good.” He softly kisses me on the neck. “We can eat and fuck later.”
I pull his arms around me tighter.
“When I was getting the food though, I thought about what you asked me earlier. About what I see for our future. When I was standing in line, they were selling these little Claddagh rings that represent love, loyalty, and friendship. I realized then what I wanted. You. Just you. I want to be married to you. I want to have those kids you told me you wanted. Nothing else matters.”
I try to keep my breathing normal as a tear falls down my cheek.
“I know it’s too soon to be thinking like that. And I’m not going to officially ask you to marry me. Not until we have a lot more answers, but I just wanted you to know that. I see my future, and I’m married to you. What do you think? Could you see yourself married to me someday after all of this is over? Would you marry me if things were different?”
“Maybe.”
I feel his lips curl up into a smile. “I’ll take that as a yes.”
He holds me tighter, and then his breathing slows as he drifts to sleep.
But more tears fall down my cheeks. Because that maybe doesn’t mean yes. That maybe wasn’t me hesitating to answer him. It was me deceiving him. Because a future where we are married and living happily ever after will never happen.
I wake up and reach across to touch Kinsley after not having her again like we talked about last night. I’m feeling desperate to have her, but my hand comes up empty. I sit up and look around the room, but I don’t see her. I get out of bed and check the bathroom, but she isn’t in there either. If she went exploring again without me, I’m going to kill her. She doesn’t understand that it’s just not safe for her to go out by herself.
I walk back to the bedroom to put clothes on to go find her. When I see a note written on a napkin lying next to the bed, I pick it up to read it.
Maybe…never. I read my father’s letter that you hid from me. I’m sorry, but I can’t be with you. I can’t be with someone that lies and hides so many things from me. I’m going home. I’ll face whatever charges the FBI have for me, but I’m done running. I’m sorry that I no longer love you. I hope you can find happiness with the FBI.
—Kinsley
“Fuck!” I scream when I finish reading the note. “Fuck! Fuck! Fuck!”
I crumble the napkin and throw it onto the floor. I grab my clothes and quickly put them on. Then, I run out the door and out onto the street. I have to find her. I don’t know what the hell she is doing.
How can she not love me anymore when I was inside her last night? How can love disappear so quickly?
I run a block down the street before I realize this is useless. She’s not just wandering down the main street of Galway.
I run back to the bed-and-breakfast. I ring the damn little bell at the entrance and wait for the owner to come downstairs.
“The lady I was traveling with, have you seen her this morning?”
The owner looks at me for a second. “Yes, she was down rather early, around six. I hadn’t even put breakfast out yet, and she was already out the door. I figured she had an early sightseeing day.”
“Thanks,” I say before running up the stairs to our bedroom.
I look through the bag and find most of the money along with her passport are gone. “Fuck!”
I go to the closet and grab my jacket. I feel inside and find that the envelope her dad wrote her and the note her grandfather wrote is gone. She really did find it. She knows the truth. And she is turning herself into the FBI because of it. She just doesn’t realize that going home isn’t safe either. The men that were working with her father and grandfather are dangerous and they are in Las Vegas. They will kill her. The FBI won’t be able to protect her.
I pace back and forth in the room. I pick the napkin off the floor and reread it, but none of it makes any more sense than the first time I read it. I’m still just as lost as I was before. The only thing I can read from the note is that she doesn’t care about me anymore. She doesn’t love me.
So, instead, I do the only thing I can do. I take my cell phone out of my pocket, and I call Agent Hayes.
“Byrne?”
“Hayes, I need…”
“You are in a lot of trouble Byrne. Bisson is furious. Just tell us where you are. Come home and then we can straighten everything out. Their is a protocol you have to follow if you think a witness is in danger. This isn’t it. If she really is in danger she should be in witness protection.”
“I know Hayes. I just couldn’t leave her with you. I don’t trust anyone but myself right now. But listen! I need you to see if a Megan Slade or Erin Buffet has booked any flights out of Ireland today. And then I need you to assemble a team to pick her up if she did.”
“What is happening?”
“I think Kinsley is turning herself in to the FBI. I think she’s had enough of the running.”
“What?”
“I’m going after her. Just tell me where she is headed, and I’ll be on a flight to go after her. Can you do that for me?”
“Yes. I’ll text you.”
I grab a cab to the Dublin Airport, and I’m an hour away before Agent Hayes texts me, saying that she’s on a flight to New York and then has a connecting flight to Las Vegas. I text back, saying that I’m taking the next flight and I will be wherever she is going soon. I just hope that we get to her before her grandfather’s men. She’s turning herself in to the FBI, but that won’t stop his men from trying to get to her first. She’s in danger, and I have to protect her. I promised I would.
The flight to New York takes forever, and it feels longer than forever when I don’t know what the hell is going on. I run off the flight and am surprised to find Agent Hayes standing just inside the terminal. I figured he would have been with Kinsley.
“Did you get her?”
“No.”
“No? Why the hell not?”
“Killian Byrne, you are under arrest,” a man says from behind me.
Then, I’m surrounded by agents who grab ahold of me, and handcuffs go around my wrist.
“I’m sorry,” Agent Hayes says.
Then, he walks away, leaving me to be arrested.
I’m sorry, too. I’m sorry that I failed to protect Kinsley Felton. I failed her father. I failed Kinsley. I failed the FBI. And I failed myself. And I don’t know who else is going to have to pay for that mistake.
And, now that I’m being arrested, I won’t even have a chance to fix my mistake.
I wipe a tear from my eye at the thought of never seeing Killian again. I hate that I broke his heart, but it was the only way to protect him. What I hate worse is that I lied to him, I’m not going to turn myself in. I’m doing the only thing I can do after reading my father’s letter. I’m making things right and fixing my family’s mistakes.
“Boarding group three can now board,” the gate agent says over the speakers.
I stand from the blue seat that I’m sitting on in the terminal with my plane ticket and bag in my hand. I wait in a short line until I reach the gate agent. I hand her my ticket, which she scans, and then hands back.
“Have a good flight to Cancún,” she says.
I nod and force my legs to move forward. I force my body to move toward what has been my destiny all along. I force my legs to board a plane to Mexico.
Maybe Always
Book Three in Maybe Series
“Ma’am, can I get you anything to drink?” the stewardess says.
I open my eyes and then immediately yawn. I’ve been flying for over twenty-four hours with minimal sleep.
“Coffee,” I say. I have only about an hour left in this last flight. I need to start waking up.
“Here you go,” she says, handing me the coffee.
I take it and set the cup on the tray table in front of me that also has my new passport and the letter my father wrote to me.
I flip the passport open again and read the name Hannah
Grove. I got the passport from the same abandoned building Killian got our previous fake ones from in Tokyo. It was risky. I didn’t know if Killian or the FBI would check there. Even if they do, I paid the man almost ten times the amount the FBI usually does to ensure loyalty to me and not them. They can’t know where I am or where I’m going. Although I know they will figure it out soon.
I told Killian I was going to turn myself in. When I got to the airport, I called the FBI and told them the same. I even bought a direct flight from Dublin to New York.
I just didn’t get on it.
I’d learned from Killian that the best way not to be found was to get good and lost. Change passports. Change planes. So, that’s what I did.
I’m not going to turn myself in. I’m going to Mexico. I’m going to end this. I’m not going to let Killian get hurt for my family. I’m not going to let him lose his job for me. I love him, and I know he loves me, but he can’t keep harboring a fugitive. He can’t keep protecting me and keep the job that is so important to him. I just hope the FBI will believe that Killian is loyal to them and not me.
I shake my head, thinking back to my conversation with Agent Hayes.
“Hello, this is Agent Hayes.”
I nervously hold the pay phone in my hand and take a deep breath. I have to tell him. I have to do this.
“This is Kinsley Felton.”
Agent Hayes sucks in a breath on the other end of the phone, but his voice is calm when he speaks, “Where are you?”
“I can’t tell you that. All you need to know is that I’m buying a flight back home. My flight gets in at eight tomorrow morning at LaGuardia Airport and then I have a connection to Las Vegas at nine. I’ll cooperate. I’ll do whatever you want.”
“Is Agent Byrne with you?”
“No. He’s been tracking me. I saw him in London, but he didn’t find me. He’s the reason I’m turning myself in. I can’t keep living my life, running from the law.”
“That’s good, Kinsley. Just get on that flight, we will meet you in New York and fly back with you to Las Vegas. Then we can talk. You aren’t in any trouble. We just want to talk.”
I know he is lying. He doesn’t just want to talk. He wants to arrest me and my grandfather. If only he knew how much bigger this is than just money laundering and tax evasion. It’s much bigger. And I’m the only one who can put a stop to it.
“I’ll be on the flight,” I say.
I sip on my coffee. I don’t know if Killian has a chance at staying in the FBI’s good graces, but at least he will be safe in the US and not here, trying to protect me. No one can protect me. As much as my father thought he could, no one can. My family is too involved. And, as much as I want to just abandon my family, I need to make things right. After I figure it out, then I can save Killian’s career by making him seem like the hero.
I unfold the letter my father wrote and begin reading it for the hundredth time.
My dearest princess,
If you are reading this, I am no longer with you, and I’m so sorry about that. There is nothing more I wanted than to spend forever with you, protecting you from what I now must tell you. I need you to know that, even when you read the last word on this page, I love you, princess. I love you more than everything else in my life even if I wasn’t always able to show you.
I don’t know how to tell you this, but I have to. I’m not a good person. Your grandfather is worse. Your great-grandfather might have been worse than him. We aren’t casino and hotel owners. Not at our hearts. We are criminals. We like greed and money above everything and will do anything to keep it.
By now, you might have found out that we are money launderers. We don’t pay our fair share of taxes. We have lied and cheated our investors out of money. And, while that is all true, it was just a cover for what we are really involved in.
I can’t believe I’m even going to tell you the worst of it because you will never forgive me after I do. You will hate me, and your hatred for me will be valid. I won’t be there to defend myself, but you deserve to know who your family is. You deserve to know the truth.
So, here it is. We are smugglers. It started off small. Drugs and guns in small amounts, but it quickly grew. We realized we could make more money doing that than we ever could running hotels and casinos. Then, we found reinvesting the money into our casinos and hotels would make us even more money and keep our real activities hidden.
But the smuggling of drugs and guns soon grew large, so large that we got even greedier. We wanted more. Always more and more. We never had enough.
So, we grew to smuggling jewels, diamonds, anything of value. And that satisfied us for a while until we found out what our partners really wanted, what they would pay top dollar for.
People.
They wanted us to smuggle people.
Our immediate response should have been no, but we couldn’t say no because we were in too deep with these people. And, to be honest, we didn’t want to tell them no. We wanted the money and excitement that came with smuggling. So, it made no difference to us if we were smuggling drugs, guns, diamonds, or people. They were all the same to us.
I realize now that it was a mistake. But, at the time, it was just our next adventure, an adventure we passed down from generation to generation. From son to son.
I didn’t realize how wrong it was until I had you, and then my world changed. At first, I thought I could pass the company to you along with all of our illegal activities, but we quickly realized that wouldn’t be a possibility. You were too delicate to take over. You would have ruined everything we worked so hard to build.
So, instead, we thought we could pass it on to your husband. But we would have to choose your husband very carefully to ensure we could pass the company on to him.
Finding you a husband became our new mission. Tristan was horrible. We knew he was a druggie and couldn’t be trusted around drugs, so we set him up. Of course, that turned into a mess when you were caught with the drugs instead of him. But, in the end, it all worked out. He was gone from your life, and you gave us the deciding power to choose your next boyfriend and who your husband would be. It couldn’t have worked out better.
We let you date Eli because he was harmless, but we knew he would never work out.
And then I met Killian. Killian was perfect. Strong, decisive, and loyal. He would do anything I asked of him without a second thought. And I asked a lot of him.
He was strong enough to run the company and keep up with the illegal activities while still keeping you protected from them.
We thought we had found the perfect solution.
Except we hadn’t. I found out he was FBI. I was going to have to kill him, a man I had grown to love as a son. I was going to have to shoot him in cold blood.
Now, you need to know I’ve killed before, so it wouldn’t have been an unusual thing for me to do, but I’ve never killed someone I thought would one day be my family, someone my daughter would someday marry.
But I had no other choice. The day came when I had to kill him. I had the gun. I had Killian alone, but I couldn’t do it. I couldn’t kill him, but if I didn’t, we were all as good as dead. You were as good as dead. I couldn’t have that.
I had to protect you. That became my obsession. I would do anything to protect you.
So, I made the decision to sacrifice myself and your grandfather to keep you safe. I told Killian I would give him everything he needed to put us away in prison if he promised to keep you safe. He promised, and I believe him. Killian will keep his promise and keep you safe.
I haven’t told him everything yet, but I will. All he knows about is the money laundering. He’s gained my trust though, so I can now tell him the rest. Now, I can tell him everything, and he can help me nail these guys, but it will be at the cost of me and your grandfather going to jail. We deserve it though. And I would do it all again to keep you safe.
But, if for some reason I die before I get a chance to tell Killian everything, you
have to tell him. You have to give him this letter. You have to let him protect you. Promise me, princess, that you will be safe. Your safety is the only thing that matters to me.
I included the address to our main smuggling facility in Mexico at the bottom of this letter. I’ve already laid the groundwork to make sure Killian will be accepted as my successor. He will be able to gain access, and then he can call in the FBI to arrest everyone that is involved in the smuggling.
I’m so sorry, princess. I hope that you can forgive me someday, but I don’t know if you will be able to. I’m sorry, but you will be safe.
All my love,
Dad
I wipe away a tear. I cry each time I read the damn letter.
I didn’t even know my father. I knew nothing about him at all. He wasn’t a nice, caring father. He was a criminal who ruined who knows how many people’s lives.
If he thought I was going to just let Killian come in and fix all my family’s problems, he was wrong. There is no way I’m going to let the man I love risk his life to protect me. Not when I know there is a real chance Killian could be killed if he tried to arrest any of these men. I can’t let him die while protecting me even if it is his job as an FBI agent. I won’t let him do that. Not on my account. Not when his cover has been blown.
No, I have to find a way to infiltrate them myself. Once I have evidence that we really do smuggle people, then I can call in reinforcements to arrest everyone.