Page 9 of Daddy's Ring
But I'll get her back tonight. Text her around three, casual but insistent.Dinner at mine. Already got everything.She'll pretend to consider it, like she hasn't been coming over almost every night this week, like my place hasn't become as familiar to her as her own cramped apartment. Then she'll say yes because she always does, because whatever's building between us has momentum now, gravity pulling us together whether either of us planned for it or not.
Stellan shifts beside me, checking his phone with that habitual swipe and scroll. His face is bathed in blue light, making the sharp angles sharper.
"You really have an issue with her?" The question comes out rougher than I intend, scraping past my throat. "With Zola?"
He glances up, surprise flickering across his features before he shutters it. "What?"
"All that shit you were saying back there. About domestication, about going soft." I navigate around a delivery truck, watching its brake lights flash red. "If you've got a problem with her, say it now."
Stellan's quiet for a long moment, the kind of silence that means he's actually thinking instead of just deflecting with sarcasm. I wait him out, patient in a way I'm only patient with him and with her. Nobody else gets this—the space to breathe, to gather thoughts, to exist without my immediate pressure.
"No." He locks his phone, setting it in his lap. "I don't have a problem with her."
"But?"
"No but." He shifts to face me more fully, and there's something in his expression I rarely see—genuine consideration, the mask of cold detachment lowering just enough to let me glimpse what's underneath. "I like her, actually. She's sharp.Doesn't take your shit. Doesn't try to change you into something you're not."
I process that, turning left toward South Street. "Then why the commentary?"
"Because..." He drags a hand through his dark hair, messing it up in a way that makes him look younger, less like the calculating strategist everyone else sees. "She's too good for all of this. For us. For the blood under the floorboards and the bodies in warehouses and every fucked up thing we do to keep this empire running."
My jaw tightens. "I know that."
"Do you?" His gray eyes pin me, sharp and searching. "Because from where I'm sitting, you're pulling her deeper. Making her care about you, making yourself essential to her life. And when she figures out the full scope of what we are, what we do—what happens then?"
The question sits heavy between us, weighted with all the things I don't let myself think about too hard. Zola knows I'm not legitimate, knows the money comes from places she doesn't ask about. But knowing in abstract and knowing in concrete detail are different countries, separated by oceans of blood and moral compromise.
"She deserves better," Stellan continues, voice going soft in that way that means he's being serious for once, really serious. "Someone clean. Someone who doesn't come home with split knuckles and other people's blood under his nails. Someone who can give her a normal life, whatever the fuck that means."
"Yeah." The word scrapes out. "She does."
"But you're not letting her go."
It's not a question. I don't treat it like one.
"No." I navigate through a yellow light, watching the sun climb higher, burning off the last of the morning mist. "I'm not."
"Why?" No judgment in it, just curiosity. Stellan genuinely doesn't understand romance, looks at relationships like algebraic equations that never quite balance. "If you know she deserves better?—"
"Because maybe I'm selfish." The admission tastes like copper, like blood and honesty mixed together. "Or maybe I'm delusional enough to think I can protect her from all of it. From us, from this life, from every consequence that comes with being mine."
"Can you?"
"I'll die trying." The certainty in my voice surprises even me, but it's true, solid as the concrete that built this city. "Everything she's been through—growing up without a family, losing her mom, clawing her way up from nothing—I want to give her the world. Want to make sure nothing ever hurts her again."
"Declan—"
"I know it's impossible." I cut him off, needing him to understand. "I know I can't protect her from everything. But I can try. I can be what she needs, give her stability and security and someone who actually sees her instead of just looking through her."
Stellan's quiet again, processing. Then, surprising me: "Okay."
"Okay?"
"Okay." He settles back in his seat, something almost like approval in the set of his shoulders. "If you're all in, then you're all in. Just don't fuck it up."
I almost laugh. "That's the plan."
"Your plans are shit."
