Page 23 of His Forced Irish Mafia Bride

And that meant whatever came next wouldn’t be contained by the rules I used to follow. If someone came for her again, I wouldn’t be calculating outcomes first. I would be reacting on pure instinct. And that was more dangerous than anything that had just happened in this room.

CHAPTER SEVEN

Maeve

A few days after the attack, the penthouse no longer felt like a place I was staying in. It felt like a perimeter, a cage. Like a fucking prison! Every corridor felt like there was a guard watching it, even when no one was visible.

Security rotated in quiet patterns I was beginning to notice even though I didn’t want to. The elevators required clearance I didn’t have. Even the staff moved like guards around me, careful in a way that was polite on the surface but unmistakably restrictive underneath.

The luxury was still there. As far as I could see, the city lights stretched across the skyline. But the view had lost its meaning.

All I could feel was pressure, the kind that builds quietly when your choices are made for you. I tested it in small ways at first.

I asked questions and scoffed at instructions framed as suggestions. Each time, the response was immediate but subtle—a change in staffing or the repositioning of a guard at a door.

Sean reminded me without words that security reacted to my movements. I noticed it, and I resisted it. Anything else felt like a surrender I didn’t agree to.

Sean was rarely there during the day. The penthouse always shifted slightly when he left, like something large had been removed from the room and left its outline behind. But his absence didn’t make things better. It only made them quieter.

And it made me more aware of him. His presence remained in the details that refused to reset without him—the half-finished glass on the counter that he’d used the night before, the jacket thrown over a chair in a way nobody else would dare leave it, and the conversations between staff that stoppedtoo cleanly when I entered a room. Even the silence felt like it belonged to him. I hated how quickly I started noticing it.

I hated it even more that I couldn’t stop noticing the emptiness he left behind. Because that meant I was adapting to him in a way I refused to accept.

Too often, the attack replayed at the edges of my thoughts without permission.

I saw glass breaking and the world collapsing into chaos. I saw Sean pulling me down before I even understood what was happening.

The force of him still lingered in my memory, the certainty of his movements, like he’d already decided where I needed to be before I realized I was in danger.

That was what unsettled me most—not the violence of the attack, but Sean’s instinct to protect me. Instinct was harder to argue with than intention.

I stood by the newly repaired window for a long time, staring at a city that didn’t feel like mine anymore, wondering when exactly my life would stop being measured in someone else’s decisions. Then the elevator doors opened. I turned, and Father Michael stepped inside.

For a moment, something in my chest loosened. Familiarity cut through the tension in a way nothing else had to managed since the attack. Since the wedding, he’d been the only person who felt like he didn’t want to control me.

“You look like you’ve been pacing this entire place apart,” he said gently.

I exhaled once, almost sharply. “It feels like this place is ripping me apart.”

Father Michael’s presence changed the penthouse without anything physically shifting. It was subtle at first—the way my shoulders loosened by a fraction when I heard his voice in the hallway, the way I stopped scanning exits like I wasexpecting something to go wrong. The air still felt tense, but it was less suffocating for a few moments, like someone had opened a window in a sealed room. I met him halfway across the living space.

“You look tired,” Father Michael said softly.

“I’ve been inside this place too long,” I replied.

A faint, knowing look crossed his face, but he didn’t comment on it. We sat in the living room, and the conversation started where it had to: the attack. Short sentences. Careful tone. I said more than I’d intended to, but still not enough to make sense of what had happened in full.

Then my father came up, and my expression tightened immediately. “He’s not answering my calls,” I said.

Father Michael paused just long enough for me to notice. “Patrick is…dealing with some consequences,” he replied carefully.

I narrowed my eyes. “That’s not an answer.”

“I’m sorry. I know you want to know more. But this is all I can give you.”

Well, that’s fucking convenient.

That was when I changed the conversation deliberately. “Then can you answer something else for me?”