Chapter 28
Chapter Twenty-Eight
CIARA
I scowl at the two cups of coffee in my hands as I walk down the hall to Ronan’s office. I can’t believe I’ve offered to get it.
When I push the door open with my hip and enter the room, my eyes immediately lock onto Ronan, who’s sitting behind the large mahogany desk, and a rush of warmth spreads through my body.
“So, what am I working on today?” I cross the room and set the coffee down on the desk.
He instantly bristles as he looks at the cup.
“What? It’s black like your soul.”
“I’d appreciate it if you’d use a coaster.” He reaches for what looks like a piece of slate beside his keyboard and sets the steaming mug down on top of it. “This desk is antique.”
I settle into my chair beside him. “Just like you.”
“Hilarious.” He pulls the keyboard closer to him and starts typing.
I lean back in my seat, crossing my legs and sipping on my coffee as I watch the muscles in Ronan’s forearms flex as he types. I swear, he only rolls his sleeves up to tempt me, and to my dismay, it’s working.
For the last two nights, I’ve slept in my own bed, and the absence of Ronan’s body has been almost painful; I was close to sneaking into his room and climbing on top of him just for some relief.
But for some reason, I couldn’t do it. Not because I thought he’d turn me away, but because each time I allow myself to get close to Ronan like that, he takes a little piece of me with him.
My body is so attuned to him that even being in the same room has heat building between my legs, to the point where I’m pretty sure all he’d have to do is say my name and I could climax.
Which is exactly why I need to keep my distance. I can’t allow Ronan Sullivan to have such power over me like that.
“You didn’t answer my question.” I take another sip of my coffee.
“You ask a lot of questions.” He’s still typing away.
“What am I working on today?”
He sighs before leaning over the side of his chair and opening the bottom drawer of the desk.
“I got you this.” He pulls out a brand-new laptop and sets it down.
I bite the inside of my cheek to stop from smiling because not only did Ronan get me a laptop, it’s also rose gold.
“It’s so pretty.” I run my hand over it.
“It’s a work computer.”
“Oh, so I can’t watch porn on it?”
Ronan audibly chokes on his breath, and I laugh as I pull the laptop toward me.
“I’m kidding.”
I sneak a look at Ronan and notice his entire body is rigid, and I smother another grin.
I might want to keep some distance between Ronan and me, but that doesn’t mean I won’t tease him mercilessly, if only for my own entertainment.
“Since you’re obviously capable of a lot more than data entry, you might as well make yourself useful.”
“You really do have a way with words.” I open up the laptop.
A spreadsheet is already open with hundreds of rows and columns that look to be simple payment logs. But I know that nothing about the Sullivan empire is simple.
Ronan leans back in his seat and folds his arms as he spreads his powerful thighs. His biceps look as if they’re about to burst out of his shirt, and my fingers itch to touch the hard muscles.
I need to get a grip before I do something stupid like climb onto his lap and ride him right here in his father’s office.
“There are patterns among these logs.” He snaps me out of my thoughts. “The amounts and dates repeat every month, but not in the way that the other payments do.”
“Encrypted?” I scroll slowly through the entries.
“Yeah, but that’s the thing. My father never encrypted any other payments, especially not personal transfers or business expenses. But these are locked down so tight that even my tech guy can’t seem to make sense of them.”
I can’t help but smirk. “Maybe you need a new tech guy.”
I lift my gaze to meet Ronan’s.
His dark eyes flick to my lips, and heat floods my cheeks under the intensity of his gaze. He looks at me as if he wants to devour me, and knowing what it feels like to have him do just that creates a dull ache between my thighs.
“It’s definitely suspicious.” I lower my eyes back to the screen as I scan through the document.
Sure enough, I see what Ronan means as I spy a familiar pattern of entries on the first of every month, all of which are unnamed.
“Leave it with me, and I’ll see what I can uncover.”
Ronan grunts before getting to his feet. He picks up his coffee and leaves the office without sparing me another glance, though I’m pretty sure I spy him adjusting himself as he leaves.
I dive straight into the task he left me in the hopes that it will distract me from my growing arousal. I move to sit in the enormous leather chair, sighing at the warmth left behind from Ronan’s body, and set up my laptop beside the main monitor so I can work between the two.
I scan the spreadsheets until my eyes sting, making notes of any similarities and repetitions in the entries, no matter how small.
I also cross-reference the amounts and the dates as well as the internal codes attached to each transaction.
Some of them lead to dummy corporations, but most of them lead to nowhere which, in itself, is a kind of lead.
Seamus Sullivan was a clever bastard, I’ll give him that. He was smart enough to hide things in plain sight, and from the looks of it, was paranoid enough to cover his tracks.
“What were you hiding?” I mutter as I take another sip of my coffee and double-click on one of the payment logs.
The regularity of the payments is what intrigues me. They’re too quiet and controlled, and from the looks of it, no bribes were made, which for this world is very unusual. So, there must be something else going on…
I start peeling back the data like layers of an onion, cursing under my breath when I find even more hidden payments buried underneath than even Ronan realized.
All of a sudden, there’s a cluster of them, all for fifteen thousand dollars, paid on the same day of each month.
I double-check the timestamps and cross-reference them against the family’s business calendar as well as old press coverage of Seamus's appearances to try and make sense of them, but nothing lines up.
It’s as if Seamus had a whole other life tucked away neatly into the margins, and it’s up to me to find out why.
But no matter what I do, I can’t seem to get past the encryption.
I know just enough about this kind of thing to realize I’m in over my head, but I’m also too stubborn to stop now.
I told Ronan I could do this, and I’m not about to go crawling back to him and admit I was wrong.
So, I buckle down and work until my neck aches from hunching over my laptop and my eyes are so dry from staring at the screen that the numbers all start to blur together.
When Ronan finally checks up on me, I’m halfway through trying a new decoding script, which I’m having just as little luck with.
“Well?” He stalks over to the desk.
I don’t look up from the screen, though my pulse quickens as his footsteps draw closer to me.
“Well, what?”
“Any progress?”
I force my eyes away from the screen and glower at him. “I’ve been working on this for less than half a day, Ronan. Maybe try giving me the basic courtesy of time before breathing down my neck.”
He frowns, his jaw tightening as he folds his arms over his chest. “My tech guy didn’t get anywhere with it, and he’s the best of the best.”
The hidden meaning in his words has me grinding my teeth.
“And yet, I’ve already found three additional payments he missed.” I turn my laptop to show him the screen. “You’re welcome, by the way.”
He opens his mouth to retort, but I cut him off before he can. “If you think you can do better, be my guest. I’ll be happy to watch you try.”
He narrows his eyes for a second before exhaling and running a hand through his dark hair, disheveling the strands.
“Why the hell are these payments so important, anyway?” My voice comes out sharper than I intended. “They’ve been sitting in this spreadsheet for months, some of them years, so what’s changed? Why the sudden rush to decode them now?”
Ronan hesitates, his jaw flexing again as he moves to perch on the edge of the desk.
I lean back in my chair, watching him internally battle with how much information to share with me.
But maybe he sees something in my face, a mixture of frustration and exhaustion, because this time, he actually gives me a proper answer.
“I think these payments are connected to my father’s murder.”
I stare at him, waiting for the punchline, but it doesn’t come.
“What?”
“I said—”
“I know what you said. I’m just… trying to understand how that makes any sense. Someone was clearly getting regular payments from Seamus, and you think whoever it was decided to kill him? That’s your theory?”
“I know how it sounds.”
“No offense, but it sounds completely insane.”
“But not implausible. I’ve been over it a hundred times, but nothing adds up. There are no enemies we didn’t already know about and no obvious motive. But these payments… They’re the one thing that doesn’t fit the pattern, and I’ve got this gut feeling.”
I raise an eyebrow. “You’re solving murders with gut feelings now?”
He shoots me a look, but I don’t balk.
“If someone was being paid by your father, killing him would mean the payments stop. It’s like burning your own paycheck.”
“Unless the payments were a threat… Or leverage, some kind of insurance.”
I hate that he’s starting to convince me of his theory, but what I hate even more is how genuinely troubled he looks. This time, he’s not playing the brooding asshole just to wind me up. From the look on his face, these payments are eating him alive.
“Maybe your father was hiding something. Something big enough to kill for.”
The moment the words leave my mouth, I know I’ve hit a nerve.
Ronan straightens, and his eyes turn cold as he glares at me. “Not everyone’s father was a lying piece of shit, Ciara.”
I flinch, but it isn’t enough to get Ronan to soften.
The muscle in his jaw ticks as he glowers at me, the silence weighing heavily between us.
“Just keep working on the files.” He pushes himself off the desk. “I need answers.”
And then he’s gone, leaving the room like a storm cloud.
I groan, dragging my hands down my face as I stare at the closed door, wondering how much longer I can put up with his Jekyll and Hyde personality.
My head pounds just from the whiplash of his moods. One minute, he’s confiding in me, and the next, he’s throwing verbal knives at my heart just to see if I bleed.
I thought the point of our truce was that we would start trying our best to get along. But then I dare go and say something that puts a crack in Seamus Sullivan’s legacy, and any connection between us is instantly severed.
I glance back at the screen, which still has the list of encrypted payments loaded up on it, and frown.
Somewhere in this mess, the truth is waiting, and I need to make sure I’m the one who finds it.