16. Ronan
Day 5
Ruth Davis.
I grind my teeth. We don’t have the necessary proof to accuse her of anything. Chances are Olivia might be wrong, but still.
For the first time in this craziness, there is finally someone else in the picture to point at instead of her.
I cannot begin to imagine what all of this is doing to Olivia mentally.
I need to get this sorted and very fast.
Two days.
Two fucking days.
That’s how long I have to get this thing fixed. That’s how long I have to find the killer, or Cesare will expect Olivia’s head on a plate. And it will be either that or war.
I do not want her to pay for something she didn’t do, and while I might not have been able to relax and truly think through the situation, I want to believe my instinct. Olivia didn’t kill Barbara.
Some part of me knew this, but I had to keep my mind open to the possibility of any person being involved.
I have two days left.
Wehave two days left.
What do I do if this doesn’t go as planned? What can I do to make this go according to plan? What would be the right thing to do?
I scoff, mocking the question.
When have I ever thought about right and wrong?
Those things don’t matter in situations like this. You do what you must do, and your motive justifies it. And my motive is to protect Olivia, which is why whatever I do feels justified.
There is a knock on the door. I know it’s her.
I felt too betrayed by Liam’s report to stand around her. I needed time to think and to process the information I was getting.
And I did.
I had the time to think away from the thick fog of my desire for her. To start entertaining the thought that Ruth Davis might be behind all this. But it still doesn’t make any sense because we don’t know why she would do it.
I strut to the door and throw it open.
She looks refreshed in the simple dress she is wearing. Her hair is strapped into a ponytail, and her eyes have a lot more glimmer than they have had since she left the clinic. She is also not as riled up as she was while making breakfast with me this morning.
“Hi,” Olivia steps in, hands clasped together in front of her. “You asked me to meet you here,” she takes cautious steps into the room.
“I did,” I close the door and go after her. “Coffee or tea?” I point at the tray on the table before us.
She shakes her head, “I’m fine for now,” she gulps.
I nod. “Liam is out scouring for information about your intern.”
She nods.
Breathing feels challenging being in the same enclosed space with Olivia.
“About this morning…”
“No,” she waves me off, “It’s fine,” she chuckles, “I get it…” She gulps, “You do what you have to do, and I will try to stay out of your way.”
What does that even mean?
“It’s good, you understand,” I reach for a bottle of water on the table and snap it open. “I wanted to talk about what happened in the pantry, though.” I relax on the couch.
She looks at me.
“The part where I had my mouth on your pussy,” I sip.
“I…” She stutters, blushing. “Well, that part was…”
“Come here. I can’t hear you from there,” I lie.
I have two days before things go south and all of this is taken away. Before she is taken away from me.
She stands, and with a small smile, she struts over and sits beside me. “Close enough for you?”
It”s not close enough—it is never close enough—but better. “Better,” I sip my water again.
“Thank you for cooking with me,” she starts twiddling her fingers, and I hate it—not the act itself, but what drives the act. She does that whenever she is scared or nervous, and I hate to think she is getting that nervous around me.
“I enjoyed myself,” I swing my head to the side to stare at her, and I watch her burn up, from her face to her neck, turning red hot, “Relax.”
She nods and leans back on the couch, dropping her head to the side to lock eyes with mine. There are so many fucking things I want to be doing to her right now.
I lean towards her and extend my hand to briefly brush my fingers on her cheek. Then, I lean into her even more to brush my lips against hers. She gasps, and I take advantage of her slightly parted lips to slip my tongue inside her mouth, savoring her.
I let my hand explore her body thoroughly, with the same tender wonder of the very first time she ever allowed me to.
This is the woman of my dreams. Always has been. Always fucking will be.
My default around her is to let loose and taste, own, claim.
I drag my hand from her face to her neck, a subtle chokehold as my thumb now draws lazy circles under her chin. I drag my hand further down to the line drawn by her breasts. No bra. Hard nipples.
“This is wrong,” I allow myself to touch, stroke, and pinch slightly, using her twisting under my touch as a propellent to keep going. “Tell me to stop.”
I let my hand slope down, tracing a line from between her breasts to her navel and then going down some more to gather some of the fabric of her dress. My cock is tingling at the thought she might not be wearing any underwear like yesterday.
She is not wearing any.
“No,” she sighs into the kiss, “please.”
I slip my hand between her thighs, and she, as I have come to see and love, opens her legs for me, allowing me. She makes coming back to her so easy. She makes it feel like coming home.
I can’t even believe that we ever separated. I could trick myself into believing we never spent more than one single night apart.
“Fuck,” I can’t resist her plea as I let my hand skate up to her center. I adjust in my seat because my cock is straining to come free. My body is burning.
I want Olivia. I can’t control myself around her. I can’t… I nip her lower lip.
Her mouth is parted and her swollen breasts are heaving under that dress.
Just as I”m ready to claim her, the door suddenly swings open, forcing me to immediately back away. But knowing Liam, he saw us.
Fuck him for having the fucking worst timing in the fucking world. I grit my teeth. Olivia straightens up in her seat and tries to gather herself while I clear my throat.
“You won’t believe what I found,” Liam does not address in any way what he might have bumped into, “Ruth Davis might not have any motive to kill Barbara, but she might have planned to implicate you,” he points at Olivia.
I sit up.
“Go on,” I edge him on.
“About a year ago, somewhere around July or so, her mother’s bakery shut down, and Ruth has been trying to open it again but to no avail. In the meantime…”
“My bakery opened,” Olivia says.
“Exactly,” Liam snaps his fingers at her, “and the interesting part is that Ruth’s mother’s bakery is on the side of Boston that belongs to…” Liam turns to me now, “you wanna guess who?”
I don’t need to guess, I know, “Ivanov’s Bratva.”
He snaps his fingers at me, “Correct,” he spreads his arms open, “But the question is, was it Olivia’s fault that Ruth’s mother’s bakery went under after Olivia opened hers?”
Of course not, and that is no grounds to kill someone as powerful as Barbara Cesare. That is sheer wickedness. Besides… who is to say Olivia going out of business will mean better business for Ruth?
“Ruth is not…” Olivia shakes her head, “She is a sweet person, and I doubt she…”
“She is dead,” I clip.
“Ronan, please, just listen to me…” She tilts to face me but can see in my eyes that I will not listen.
“It’s not up for debate.”
“Ronan,” she snaps.
“I will be outside,” Liam stands, extricating himself from the scene.
“Olivia, listen…”
“No, you listen to me,” she stands.
Here we go.
“Olivia, I won’t be having this conversation with you.”
“Think about it,” she sits on the table. “Please,” she tries to use a more persuasive tone, but I’m shaking my head.
The little bitch has put me in the most uncomfortable situation ever. I cannot even begin to point out all the things that her petty meddling have done to me and will be costing my clan. If I weren’t firm on protecting Olivia, she would have been dead, and for fucking what?
A fucking bakery?
“You have to think,” her tone turns sharp again, “Ruth has her bakery in the Braga territory.”
“Bratva,” I correct her, and she hisses at me.
“That’s not the point,” she shrieks. “The point is, they are capable of getting her to do whatever they want her to do,” she throws her hands in the air, “You said it yourself that your world is dangerous, right?”
She has a point, but I hate it.
“You are too na?ve,” I mumble, cussing under my breath because she is getting me to rethink what I would have done out of impulse.
“This is not about being na?ve. I know her,” she clips.
“You think so? Did you know she’d be capable of killing anyone?”
“Let me talk to her…”
“No,” I stand, “No, fucking, no,” I shake my head at that, “You are not going anywhere near that…”
“Ronan,” she is behind me now, and she does the one thing I wasn’t expecting. She circles her arms around me from behind and drops the side of her face on my back. The action wrings me dry of any more strength to keep arguing with her. “Just let me talk to her, I’m sure we can get more answers. It can’t just be her alone, and we need the person behind the wheel.”
I sigh.
She has always had a way of making me see things more clearly. I am way too impulsive when she’s not around to ground me. It’s like my brain blacks out from the fury I cannot seem to be able to hold back.
Now that I think about it, I wonder what she will think of me when she finds out about the things I’ve done on impulse all these years without her in the picture.
“Fine,” I breathe. “But I’m coming with you,” I pin.
I feel her nod against my back. “Thank you,” she presses a kiss on my back. “Thank you for listening.”
I nod, then gradually turn to her, and she presses her face on my chest.
I wrap my arms around her, not wanting to tell her yet that I was given an ultimatum for this.
I will let her try this first.