Chapter 42
Chapter Forty-Two
CIARA
I can’t decide whether to throw up or scream. Though at this point, I’m not sure either one will make me feel better. Not when my best friend is missing and her brother is dead just hours after I left his apartment.
I slide off the desk, needing to put some distance between Ronan and me, as my heart thunders in my chest. “Why are you finding this out before me? Why am I the last to be told, again?”
His jaw ticks. “Ciara—”
“No! You had someone following me, didn’t you? That’s how you knew I was with Max.”
Ronan’s eyes darken as he looks at me. “So, you admit it, then?”
I clench my fists at my sides, the betrayal cutting deeper than I expected.
I thought it was bad enough that Ronan insisted on keeping a tracker on my phone, but now he has men following me too?
I thought he trusted me.
I thought…a lot of things…
“I was with Max because he was helping me, Ronan. He was helping me decode the payment trail. He figured out the accounts weren’t just linked to my family, but to Callum specifically.” I can barely believe I’m saying it out loud. It still doesn’t feel real.
Ronan folds his arms across his chest as he scowls at me. “You lied to my face.”
“Is this a contest now? Who betrayed who the most?” I laugh bitterly. “You had someone following me, remember?”
“That’s not the point.”
“Then what is?”
When he doesn’t answer, I let out a sigh as I run my fingers through my tangled hair.
“You didn’t even give me a chance to explain before you stormed in here and marked your territory like a caveman.”
“You were at another man’s house, Ciara, and you lied about it. What was I supposed to think?”
“That there must have been a very good reason!”
A long silence stretches between us until finally Ronan exhales as he runs a hand over his face.
“None of this matters right now. We need to find Callum.”
I blink. “What?”
He looks at me, his expression grim.
“Everything points to him, Ciara. Not only is the mystery account in his name, but now Max is dead and Mila’s missing. You can’t tell me that’s all just a coincidence.”
My knees almost buckle beneath me at what Ronan is implying. “You think my brother’s involved?”
“I know he is.”
“No, you don’t understand. He was with me the day the account was created. Max checked the timestamps.”
“Even so, the fact that someone used his identity makes him a lead.”
“This is completely ridiculous. There’s no way he would have hurt Max or Mila. He’s not capable of—”
Ronan’s phone rings again, and I swallow a cry as he picks it up and answers, once again cutting me off.
I want to scream at him, but instead I stand and watch him as he mutters into his phone.
“I need to go.” He stuffs his phone in his pocket and pushes off the desk.
Is he seriously leaving right now?
“Ronan!” I grab at the sleeve of his shirt as he passes me, and to my surprise, he halts in his tracks.
“I’ve got men coming to keep an eye on things.” He looks down at me with an almost pained expression. “They’ll keep you safe.”
“Please. Just… listen to me.” My eyes start to sting with tears of both sadness and rage, and they finally spill down my cheeks when Ronan reaches out to cup my face in his calloused hands.
He wipes away my tears. “I know you don’t want to believe Callum has played a part in this. Especially, after everything you learned about your father.”
“Callum isn’t my father.”
Something like pity flashes in Ronan’s eyes, and I can almost read the thoughts playing in his mind.
I thought I knew who my father was, and I turned out to be wrong.
What if I turn out to be wrong about Callum, too? But in this case I have proof he wasn’t there. Why can’t he just listen to me?
“I’ll do everything I can to find Mila, Tine Bhaeg.” He bends down to press a soft kiss to my forehead. “I promise.”
Then he walks out of the study, leaving me with nothing but a hollow ache in my chest.
I sit on the edge of the couch, my legs bouncing as I stare blankly at the opposite wall. My hands are clenched into fists in my lap, but I can barely feel the sting of my nails as they dig into my palms.
I’m completely numb, and the silence in the room feels suffocating.
I should be doing something, anything, to find Mila. But instead, I’m just sitting in this gilded cage because Ronan thinks he knows best.
But he’s wrong, and not just about what I need, but about Callum.
There’s no way in hell my brother played any part in Max’s death or taking Mila. He knows that she’s more than just my best friend. She’s like a sister to me.
Callum and I might have our differences, but he would never want to hurt me by taking her.
I screw my eyes shut as I try not to let Ronan’s misconceptions about Callum creep into my head.
I know my brother. He’s far from perfect, but he isn’t a murderer. There has to be something else going on here, something that Ronan and his brothers aren’t seeing.
Or maybe they just don’t want to see it…
My phone buzzes on the couch beside me, and I jump at the sound as it cuts through the silence.
Ignoring my racing pulse, I snatch it up, and my stomach bottoms out at the name on the screen.
Mila.
My fingers shake as I open the message.
Ciara, please. Help me.
My heart pounds as I dial her number. I’ve already tried calling at least twenty times since Ronan left, but each time it rang out.
I’d begun to lose hope that she even had her phone with her, but this message is real.
I know deep in my bones that she was the one who wrote it, so I won’t stop calling until she answers.
“Come on.”
My thumb trembles as I hit redial, but this time it doesn’t even ring.
“Oh, god.” I could have just made everything worse.
Sure, her phone could have died in the seconds between calls, but it’s more likely that whoever took her heard the call and realized that she had a phone on her, a link to the outside world.
And because of me, she doesn’t anymore.
It feels as if someone is sitting on my chest as I stare at my phone, trying to fight the panic rising inside me.
There’s no time for me to fall apart.
I need to think.
I need to move because sitting on this couch waiting for news from Ronan is no longer an option.
I get to my feet and hurry out of the lounge and down the hall to Ronan’s office. If I have any chance of leaving this house and going to find Mila, I need to make sure there’s no way that Ronan or any of his cronies, who have currently taken up residence in the kitchen, can track me.
The door to the office is still open from when Ronan left and expected me to sit around and obey his orders without question. If I wasn’t so scared about losing Mila, I’d be insulted at how little he seems to know me.
I slip inside the office and close the door softly behind me. It’s almost completely dark outside, so I switch on one of the small lamps on the table beside the couch before heading over to the desk and opening the second drawer on the left-hand side.
Sure enough, the burner phones are still in there, tucked away under some old files and a handful of spare handgun magazines.
I grab one of the phones and quickly power it on so I can copy Mila’s number over to it as well as Ronan’s, just in case I need it, before tossing my own phone in the drawer and closing it softly.
“I’m sorry I have to do this, Ronan. But I can’t just sit by and do nothing.”
When I get downstairs, the men have vacated the kitchen, their break clearly over, and have once more taken up their posts outside the front of the house.
I move quietly across the foyer and through the kitchen before ducking inside the adjoining garage where half a dozen cars are lined up.
As much as I’d love to be able to get behind the wheel and simply drive into the city, life is not that simple, especially when you’re married to a man like Ronan.
So, I have to create a distraction, and what better way than to set off a few alarms?
Using the keys from the lockbox, I trigger as many remote alarms as I can, grab the key to the Range Rover for the gate access, and then run to the back door.
Just as the cold outside air hits my face, thundering footsteps and muffled cursing come from the front door.
I have maybe thirty seconds before Ronan’s watchdogs realize what’s happened, so without looking back, I take off at a sprint and hope to god I’m fast enough to reach the end of the driveway before they catch up to me.
My lungs start to burn as my feet pound over the gravel, but I don’t care. I need to get the hell away from this house if I have any chance of finding my best friend.
She’s counting on me to help her, and I won’t let her down, even if it costs me everything in the process.
As soon as the main gates come into view, I pull up the fob on the set of car keys and wave it at the sensor.
“Come on.” I glance over my shoulder.
The second the gates open enough for me to slip through, I’m gone, taking off to try to put as much distance between me and Ronan’s cronies as possible.
But as my heartbeat races at an almost painful rate, so do my thoughts, playing the worst-case scenarios on a loop in my mind as I run.
What if I’m already too late?
But that’s not the only thought eating away at me. I can’t deny there’s also something else gnawing at me, lingering underneath the panic and the fear.
Max is dead, and I’m starting to think it’s because of me.
It’s too much of a coincidence that mere hours after I asked him to help me decode a set of encrypted payments, he’s found dead in his apartment.
Did I do this?
Did I kill Mila’s brother?
I have to find my best friend and make it up to her.
This is all my fault.
I swallow past the lump in my throat as I try to push the thoughts away. I can’t afford to waste my energy, not when Mila is depending on me.
I just have to hope that I can find her and call Ronan to help me get to her in time, before they decide to silence her too.