Chapter 26
“What are you thinking?” Daniela murmured against Cormac’s chest. She still sometimes thought of him as Connor, but making the shift mentally had been easy enough. Maybe because they were two different men.
Connor had been the lie. Or sort of a lie, because he hadn’t been hiding all of himself. Cormac was the authentic version. And god help her, she wasn’t sure she could walk away from him again. She would have to when the time came for her to break free and start over alone, but it would gut her.
“I can literally hear your brain working,” she said when he didn’t respond. It was about five in the morning. She needed to get up soon, but was enjoying lounging in her bed with a very naked god.
“Not literally,” he muttered.
“I’ll use that word any way I see fit.”
He laughed lightly, but then that tension vibrating off him returned. “I need to tell you something. Something huge.”
His tone alarmed her. She pushed up slightly to look at him. She’d turned on one of her small lamps earlier and could see him well. He had a little scruff from not shaving the last couple days and she liked it. “Is it that your name isn’t really Cormac?”
He gave her a dry look. “No.”
“Then just spit it out.” She sat up and grabbed one of her satin-covered pillows to hold in front of her. She wasn’t going to have what was clearly going to be a serious conversation with everything hanging out there. It made her feel too vulnerable.
He sat up next to her, propped himself against the headboard as she turned to face him. “Don’t hate me for not telling you last night. I wanted one night that was ours.”
His words felt like a confession.
Her gut tightened as she tried to imagine what could be so awful that he’d hidden it from her until now. “Just say whatever it is.”
He paused, looked around her room, then hurried over to his duffel and pulled out a thin manila folder.
She absolutely watched his gorgeous, naked body as he moved. If he was going to blow things up between them, she was going to enjoy the view one last time.
When he sat on the bed, she handed him a pillow. “If you don’t cover up, I won’t be able to think.”
He gave her a startled look, then laughed before sobering. “I don’t know how to say this so I’m just going to put it out there. And for the record, I literally only found this out yesterday while you were at work.”
“What is it? You’re scaring me.”
His green eyes held hers. “Our moms used to be friends, and died on the same day.”
She slow-blinked as she digested what he’d just said, then looked at a picture of… “Mama.”
Unexpected tears sprung to her eyes as she picked up a picture of her mom doing a keg stand. Then another of her in a velvet navy blue dress, combat boots, and her arms around two women. The same women were in all the pictures. It was clear how close they all were, how much they loved each other.
“Which one is your mom… Wait, no.” She pointed to the woman who looked like Krystal Knight. A woman she’d thought looked familiar because Daniela had seen her on the news months ago in relation to a nationwide case about a serial killer.
“That’s her. Yvette.” His voice was soft, sober.
“They were friends?” That was absolutely wild.
“Apparently.” He pointed to one of the other women. “Her name is Pilar and she’s got cancer. She’s dying. She approached Krystal and wanted to talk about my mom’s murder. Originally she said she wanted to solve it but then sort of dragged her feet… She thinks the deaths of our moms are linked.”
“My mom died in a car accident.”
“That’s what your father told you.”
Her gaze snapped to his. “Do you know any different?”
“No.” He shook his head. “But your mom called my mom the morning she was murdered. It could be nothing, but they hadn’t talked in years. I’m just telling you what I know. Did your parents have a good marriage?” His tone was neutral.
“My father was and is an asshole. I don’t know if they had a good marriage, honestly.
I don’t remember my mom smiling a lot with him.
” She looked down at the array of fanned out pictures, plucked another from the pile and smiled.
“She never smiled like this, that’s for sure.
” Mia Ruiz had been a good mom, always there for her.
She’d read to her every night before bed, even when Daniela had told her she was probably too old.
Some of her friends had made fun of her for it, but she was glad her mom hadn’t stopped.
Because some of her last memories were of her and her mom cuddled in bed, poring over a book.
“Do you think Julian would know?”
“He would know more than me,” she murmured, picking up another picture.
It was at a lake and the women—teens, really—were all in bikinis with sunglasses and matching smiles. And cigarettes, which was a shock to see, though she wasn’t sure why.
Her mom had lived through the eighties, had her own friends and a life. Daniela felt like she was seeing her for the first time as a real person and not this woman she’d made up in her head because she simply hadn’t known enough about the woman who’d raised her. Because her father hadn’t done shit.
He’d never shown up for anything. Even after her mom died, Julian had been the one to attend all her cross-country events or school plays. “Huh.”
“What?”
She blinked, looked up at Cormac. “Nothing. I just realized that Julian came to all my sporting events after our mom died. Not my dad. I think he maybe came to one or two, but I wouldn’t swear to it under oath. I don’t remember him being at anything.”
Cormac was quiet for a moment as he looked at another of the pictures. “I have more information about them. They were pretty wild.” His half grin made her stomach flip.
“Tell me everything you know.” She was starving for information about her mom, had been forever.
She listened as he told her about how their moms had apparently robbed drug dealers for fun when they’d been in their late teens and early twenties. How they’d loved going to concerts, had worked on motorcycles, talked about visiting Paris together, but mostly spent their summers at the lake.
“Do you think Pilar would talk to me? Maybe share some more stories?” She could hear the desperation in her voice, couldn’t even attempt to hide it.
“I don’t see why not. Krystal can put you guys in touch. But first we need to figure out some things.”
Holding on to a couple of the photographs, she sat back against the headboard, sighed.
“Thank you for this, Cormac.” Having these scraps of her mom meant everything to her.
And it simultaneously made her even angrier at her father.
He’d had all this information about her mom, had given her nothing.
Not even pictures. He’d tried to erase all of Mia Ruiz.
He swallowed hard, nodded.
“I’m going to talk to Special Agent Lee.
If your brother thinks she’s solid, then I need to talk to her.
” Because now…she wondered if her mother really had been murdered.
It hurt to realize that she wouldn’t be surprised if her father had done it.
And if he had, she would take him down any way she could. Screw waiting.
“How much evidence do you have against your family?”
“I’ve been collecting records for years.
It mostly implicates my father.” She paused, sat up again and lowered her voice even though it was just the two of them.
“I even have a few pictures of him in the same room as some men I’m pretty sure he killed.
Men he swore he didn’t know at all. I don’t really know if that’ll do anything but it at least shows he’s a liar.
” She didn’t want Julian hurt though, wondered how the hell she could avoid it.
Cormac frowned. “I’d like to look over everything first before we hand it over to the Feds. I want to make sure nothing will fall back on you.”
“My father used my gallery to wash his dirty money.” She swore he’d simply wanted to bring her down into the muck like him. Otherwise he could have let her move away, have her own life.
“Anything you did was under duress, threats of violence.”
“Yeah,” she murmured, then she slid into his embrace and settled into him as he leaned back against the headboard. The pictures of their moms and friends were scattered on the bed around them as a rumble of thunder shook the house.
Moments later she heard the patter of rain against the windows and sighed. She had to go to work today, needed to start tying up some things if she was really going to give all she had to the Feds. But more than anything, she wished she could stay here and keep the rest of the world at bay.
“I’m scared about giving the FBI what I have. It makes all this very real,” she whispered. “And it exposes me.”
His arms tightened around her and pulled her back flush to his chest. “I’ve got you.”
Yeah, for now. But that wasn’t a long-term thing and she knew it.
If she ended up having to testify against her father, they’d put her in witness protection, that much she knew.
Forced to start over somewhere new, alone.
And deep down, she didn’t think she could testify against her brother, no matter what she’d said before.
Was that like Stockholm syndrome?
Ugh. She didn’t want to think about anything for a little longer. Especially since Cormac had just dropped a bomb on her that their moms had known each other.
That alone had just ripped apart her reality.
Not in a terrible way, but the ground beneath her felt shakier now.
Would she and Cormac have met if their moms had stayed friends?
She didn’t believe in fate or any of that nonsense but a small part of her liked to think that they would have met in a different timeline.
Her phone buzzed on the nightstand, the sound disrupting the steady soundtrack of the rain. She frowned when she saw the name on the screen.
“Who’s asshole?” Cormac asked, referring to the name on the caller ID.
She snorted. “My father.”
He grunted softly in disgust, then shifted to get up. “I’m going to go make us coffee. If you need to talk to him, we’ll talk after you’re done about what to do from here.”
She didn’t respond as he left, but she let her father’s call go to voicemail.
Screw him.
She wasn’t answering her phone this early in the morning. If it was an emergency, he could text her with the details.
A few seconds later, she read his incoming text. Need to talk. Come by the house today.
Of course it was a demand. Not a request. Never a request from him.
This was because of the way she’d snapped back at him and put him in his place. He wouldn’t be able to abide that, not with his ego. Especially not after she’d called him out about not being in charge anymore.
She didn’t respond to the text. Instead she set her phone down and headed for the en suite. She needed to shower and get ready for the day.
Because she needed to start planning how to extricate herself from her life. Once she did, she was going to take her father down. She wanted him behind bars for the rest of his life, with the knowledge that she’d put him there.
As she mentally catalogued all the files she had on him, she wondered if there had been more to her mom’s car accident. She might ask Julian if he knew. He would have been almost eighteen then.
Julian had loved their mom too, so he wouldn’t have let their father cover up anything. Right?
Darkness twisted inside her at the thought, but she simply couldn’t believe that Julian would have just stood by and let their father get away with that, even at a young age.
If he had been complicit, she’d help take him down too.