26. Ciara #2
A sob escapes my throat before I can stop it. “This is my fault. I’m the one who brought Max into this. I asked him to help me understand Ronan’s financial system. I never thought… I never imagined—”
“It’s not your fault,” Mila says, but her voice breaks despite herself, and that sets off my own tears.
The guilt is too much. I feel as if someone has reached inside me and ripped out my organs one by one.
How am I ever meant to get over this? How is Mila ever going to forgive me?
I’m the one who forced Max to help me because I was too stubborn to let Ronan handle the encrypted payments, and it cost Max his life.
I don’t deserve Mila’s forgiveness.
Eventually, Mila pushes herself off the floor and wipes her cheeks on her sleeves. She’s trembling from head to toe, and her legs look like they could buckle at any moment.
She clutches a hand to her throat. “I have to go. I-I need air. I can’t breathe.”
I reach for her. “Mila, wait. You’re in no state to drive.”
She turns to me with sheer determination in her eyes. “Whoever sent those men, we’re going to make them fucking pay.”
All I can do is nod.
Mila’s lower lip trembles as she glances down at the laptop, which I hastily close.
She shakes her head. “I think this is as much as I can do today. It’s… a lot to process.”
“We don’t need to do anything you don’t want to do, Mila. If it’s too much, we can leave this with Rona—”
“No. I want to do this for Max.” She exhales slowly, and I can tell it’s taking a lot for her to keep her composure.
I’m not sure how she’s still standing. If I had just witnessed someone shooting Callum, I would likely need to be put in a straitjacket.
“Do you want to watch a movie?” It seems like such a ridiculously normal thing to suggest considering what we just watched, but I don’t really know what else to say.
But Mila simply shakes her head before wiping at her eyes. “I think I just want to go home.”
“Of course. I’ll walk you out.” I go to pick up the laptop to give it to her, but Mila holds her hands up as if I’m about to hand her a live grenade.
“No. You keep it.”
I don’t protest, though I will have to find somewhere to hide the laptop from Ronan because I can’t risk him learning of our plan just yet. Not until I have more information.
Once Mila is safely in her car, I close the front door to head back upstairs when Stephen appears from the kitchen.
I clutch a hand to my chest. “Christ, you scared me.”
He frowns at me. “Everything okay?”
“Yeah, why wouldn’t it be?”
Stephen’s eyebrows shoot up, and I try not to flinch under his intense gaze.
I don’t have a good poker face, and the guilt that is eating me alive makes me want to spill every thought inside my brain. But I have a feeling if I tell Stephen what I’m hiding upstairs in my room, this will be one secret he won’t want to keep from Ronan.
“I thought Mila was staying longer?”
“Oh, uh… She wasn’t feeling well.”
“I thought that was you throwing up earlier?”
Shit.
This time, I do wince.
If he overheard Mila throwing up, does that mean he heard the video footage too?
“Do you have supersonic hearing or something?”
“Something like that.” Stephen shrugs. “But if Mila is sick, you should get checked out by a doctor. A stomach bug could be bad for the baby.”
“I’m sure I’ll be fine.” I start to head for the stairs.
“Ciara…”
“I know.” I sigh, waving a hand. “I’ll tell him soon.”
I rush up the rest of the stairs and lock myself back in my room before Stephen has a chance to lecture me about my dishonesty. But the sight of Max’s laptop on the bed tightens my chest.
The image of his bruised cheek flashes in my mind, and I frown.
Something doesn’t sit right with me about the timeline of his injuries. When I left his apartment, he was completely fine. There was no sign of a bruise on his face when I was with him, and yet they were present before his killer arrived.
What the hell happened in between?
I climb back onto the bed and pull the laptop onto my lap, opening up the video file once more. I slide the time bar back a few hours, squinting as I watch Max move about his apartment at double speed.
A huge figure eventually appears in the frame, his hands wrapped around Max’s throat as he holds him against the wall.
“What the hell?”
I recognize the figure all too well.
Ronan.
My heart feels like it’s about to explode out of my chest as I watch him throw Max to the ground. His face is a mask of undiluted rage, one I’ve seen before, the night he walked in on Stephen and me watching a movie.
He’s seeing red, and if I didn’t already know that he wasn’t the one who put the bullet in Max’s head, I would have thought he was about to from the look in his eyes.
I watch in silent horror as Ronan hauls Max to his feet and punches him again, snapping Max’s head to the side as his fist collides with his cheek. But he doesn’t stop there. His anger is relentless as his knee connects with Max’s ribs, and Max instantly goes down.
Ronan towers over him, an unyielding and unforgiving force of solid muscle, before he storms out of sight, leaving Max broken and bleeding on the ground.
I know from the timeline of the footage that he’s alive, but not for much longer.
My throat burns as tears blur my vision.
I’m going to be sick.
Ronan beat Max just hours before he was murdered, practically giving his killer a helping hand by wounding him badly enough that he couldn’t fight back.
All this time, Ronan knew this, and he never told me. I think of all the times he looked me in the eye since Max died, the way he held me when I cried over the loss of my friend, and he never said a single word.
As if his silence could erase the part he played in Max’s death.
The betrayal cuts like a knife.
Of everything I’ve ever kept from Ronan, none of it compares to this. No matter what excuse he will try to offer me, because I know there will be one, he can’t hide from the truth.
Ronan hurt Max, and while he wasn’t the one who pulled the trigger and ended his life, he might as well have pointed the gun.