25. Chapter 25
“Are you going to tell me what’s wrong?” Ryan asked.
“Why would anything be wrong?” Sienna answered before shutting her laptop. She was not talking about what happened last night with John. Or what didn’t happen. Her heart and pride had yet to recover.
Instead of letting it drop, Ryan gave her his cut-the-crap look.
“Let’s see. You told everyone about the keys this morning at breakfast, and then announced that you would be going to the vault facility to ask about the keys and you were not taking a bunch of guards with you.
I thought Marcus would choke on his eggs Benedict. ”
Sienna sighed. “I agreed to the protection when we met Mia, but I can’t go to meetings and other events as clan leader with a muscly entourage.”
Ryan laughed. “Muscly entourage? What an interesting visual.”
She smirked. “Hah! Speaking of, how was your night with Jonas?”
“You mean my night of sitting in his office staring at him working?” he deadpanned.
“You’re seeing him in his natural habitat, right? Figure out how to make your move.”
“Natural habitat? This isn’t Animal Planet.”
“Well, I think you’re making headway. Jonas doesn’t let many in his office, much less near Skippy.” Sienna pursed her lips.
“You’re being ridiculous. Which makes me think you are very much trying to change the subject about your mood. Does this have to do with a certain muscly grump who visited you in the middle of the night?”
She frowned. “He said you told the guards it was okay for him to be at the house.”
“It wasn’t?”
“It was fine.” She was fine. Everything was fine.
Ryan kept staring at her. “You have on your mom’s necklace.”
She rested her fingers on the stone. “I do. It was time.”
“Did John help you come to that conclusion?”
The night before flashed back to her. His arms around her as he helped her with the necklace. And then his hands resting on her shoulders when he stopped her from kissing him. His peck on her forehead like she was a child.
“Let’s get going, Ryan. We have a full schedule today.”
He looked like he was going to argue but instead walked with her to the SUV parked out front and opened the back door. “No arguments. You agreed to be in the back behind the tinted windows as a compromise with Marcus not sending a bunch of guards.”
“Along with the tracker in my shoe.”
“Yes.”
She climbed inside and Ryan shut the door before getting into the driver’s seat. He drove toward the gate and stopped when someone came up to his window. Sienna leaned forward to see who had stopped them, and her stomach dropped when she saw John.
Sienna rolled down her window. “What are you doing?”
“I’m coming with you to the vault,” he announced like it was a done deal.
She looked toward the front and caught Ryan’s wide eyes that more than likely mirrored her own. “You want to go out in public and converse with people?”
He crossed his arms. “I’ll let you do the conversing.”
“I don’t—”
Ryan interrupted her. “It wouldn’t hurt to have some backup.”
She glared at Ryan. “Not you too.”
Ryan unlocked the doors. “Get in.”
Since when had she lost control of the situation?
“Get in the back with Sienna. That way the tinted windows hide you.”
John opened the door, and Sienna scrambled over to the far side. She didn’t want to sit in the back next to him. After last night’s crash-and-burn kiss, she needed to stay far away from him.
John climbed inside. She took a couple of deep breaths to calm herself, which was a mistake since she pulled in his pine scent. But she couldn’t be distracted because something wasn’t adding up.
“Wait. You weren’t at breakfast. How did you know I was going to the vault?”
“I asked Ryan this morning what else he and Jonas had found about the private vault facility, and he mentioned that it appeared to be a legitimate facility and you were going there today.”
She didn’t know how to respond. John was talking to Ryan?
Ryan was talking to John? Had they planned this together?
And more importantly, why didn’t John just ask her himself?
Was last night going to make things awkward between them now?
And that was saying a lot since it wasn’t like they were…
well, what were they? She had thought they were friends and possibly more.
But now they were acquaintances with a common goal. How sad.
“Are you sure you want to go in person rather than call the facility?” John asked.
“I don’t think they’ll tell me anything over the phone. If we have any chance of getting information, it needs to be face-to-face.” Sienna turned to the window, effectively cutting off conversation.
After forty-five minutes of awkward silence, they arrived at the facility, and Ryan parked before twisting around to face her.
“Have you both already decided who’ll be going into the facility with me and who’ll stand guard outside?” Sienna couldn’t get herself to look at John. Ryan’s face barely changed. If he wasn’t her best friend, she probably wouldn’t have seen the slight flare of his eyes. Busted!
“John will go in with you,” Ryan answered, without trying to deny they had planned this.
She reached for the door, and John placed his hand on her arm. “Wait. Come out my side.”
Ryan looked around the lot before nodding.
John opened the door and held out his hand to her as she slid across the seat.
She hesitated for a moment before placing her hand in his and pulling the straps of her bag with her other hand onto her shoulder.
His warm hand dropped away too quickly for her taste as they headed to the building.
John attempted to open the door, but it was locked. A voice came through a communication panel next to the door. “Can I help you?”
Sienna took a step closer. “Yes. I wanted to speak to you about your vaults. I’m trying to find out if my mother had a vault here.”
“We don’t normally release that type of information without authorization. Can I have your mother’s name?”
“Nora Simonson.”
“And you are?”
“Sienna Simonson.”
“Hold on for a moment, please.”
Sienna looked back at Ryan, who was standing next to the SUV watching the parking lot. She nodded at him so that he didn’t come over as well. She didn’t need two bodyguards hovering around her. This whole situation was strange enough as it was.
She jerked when a buzzer sounded and a green light showed above the door handle. “Please come in.”
John opened the door and walked inside, holding it open for her once he had taken in the surroundings. She stepped into a nondescript waiting area with a couple of chairs. Against the wall was a high counter with a man standing behind it. She walked over to him, John at her side.
“Can I please see some identification?” the man asked.
Sienna pulled out her license and showed it to the man. He examined it for a good minute, including checking the 3-D embedded emblem carefully. “Thank you, Ms. Simonson. My name is Charles. I can now confirm for you that your mother, Nora, did have a vault with us.”
Sienna heart skipped. “She did? What happened to it when she passed away?”
“I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to mislead you that it was past tense. We still have the vault. Your mother set it up with us as an inheritance box.”
Sienna’s chest tightened. “And what is that exactly?”
“People can buy boxes and pay for them for years in advance. If they are set up as inheritance boxes, they’re provided to the designated recipient at the time of death or at a specified time in the future.
” He typed on the laptop in front of him.
“In the case of your mother, she stated that you were the beneficiary and we should contact you on your thirtieth birthday or if you came to retrieve it prior to that, we were also authorized to give it to you.”
The explanation made Sienna lightheaded. John stepped closer and placed his hand on the crook of her elbow as if he knew she needed support. His look of understanding helped her wobbly legs as much as his hand did.
She reached into her bag and took out the keys, gripping them tightly. “We need these, right?”
Charles smiled. “Yes. I can take you back now if you’d like?”
“Just a moment.” She typed a quick text to Ryan letting him know about the box and that they would be a while. Then Charles handed her a form that she had to sign acknowledging that she was receiving the inheritance box.
“If you would like to keep the articles in the box here once you’ve seen them, we can reassign the box to you as the owner.”
Sienna nodded and he clicked on a button that released the door in the far wall and it opened slowly. They walked through it and followed him down the hall to a large vault room with walls lined with boxes.
Charles walked around it and checked the numbers on the far wall and then pointed to box 1815. “Here you go.”
Sienna handed one key to John, and she took the other key and placed it against the lock. They both pushed the keys into the locks and they turned successfully. The door opened and Charles pulled the metal box out of the slot. “Follow me, please.”
They walked out of the vault and across the hall to a small room that held a tall table where he set the box.
He then bent down to the bottom shelf of the table and picked up a cardboard box with a removeable lid.
“If you decide to take the contents with you, please feel free to use this box. I can get you a second box if you need as well.”
“Thank you,” Sienna said.
Charles backed toward the door. “Excellent. I’ll leave you to it.”
The man shut the door, and Sienna sucked in a hard breath.
“Are you okay?” John asked.
“I don’t know. I thought this was a long shot. Even if she had a box at some point, I didn’t think they would still have it. And she listed me to receive it. Why?”
“We’ll figure it out.”