“I know, and would ya keep your voice down?” He patted the air. “Your brother is already in a shite mood. You want my blood all over the walls if he finds out?”
I contemplated a response but decided to get to the point. I was in a bad mood, too. “Where’s Adam?”
He jerked his thumb behind him toward the hall that led to Adam’s office.
Once outside his office, my purse vibrated before I could knock.
A text from Harrison.
Harrison: I’m coming back today instead. I’ll be at the office by 3.
Me: Everything okay?
Harrison: No. See you this afternoon.
“Grand,” I mumbled and deposited my mobile back into my Prada. “Adam, it’s me. Can I come in?” I set my coat and purse on the chair outside the office door.
“Go away,” he called out, his voice deeper than normal.
“We need to talk. Please.” I hated being in a fight with him, and I hadn’t been able to sleep last night thinking about how things ended before he left. I had to make it right. “Adam,” I said with a plea to my voice.
A minute later, the door opened, but it was Anna standing on the other side.
Oh, holy hell, they’d been having sex in his office, hadn’t they? And Les had known and decided it’d be great not to give me a heads-up first.
Anna tucked her strawberry blonde hair behind her ears and smiled before pulling me in for a hug. “I’ll give you two the room.”
I nodded and waited for her to leave, then shut the door and faced my brother.
He folded his arms across his chest and leaned back in the leather chair behind his desk. The angry draw of his lips into a tight line and the crease in his forehead were pretty damn good indicators he thought he had every right to be mad at me, not the other way around.
“You always have sex in here?” I deflected, hoping to ease the tension. No such luck. He didn’t move a muscle. Adam was far more stubborn than me, but he’d never admit it.
I kept my back flush to the door, reluctant to enter his office space. It was fairly small, with only a maple desk in front of the dark painted wall and a floor lamp off to the side.
There was nothing on his desk, not even a pen. Thinking back to the other times I’d been in his office, the desk had been empty then, too. Now I knew why—he made love to his wife in there.
“I don’t want to be in a fight with you.”
His shoulders dropped a touch, but the rest of him didn’t move. And he didn’t seem ready to speak.
“I thought you of all people would understand. At one time, you believed you were bad for Anna. Dangerous. Look how that turned out.” Married with a kid on the way. Never happier.
“There’s a big difference between Sebastian and me.” He stood and dropped his fists to the desk. “And you told me nothing would happen between the two of you. I believed you because I thought you were too smart to let attraction cloud your judgment and your good sense.”
“I don’t always make the best decisions,” I admitted, thinking about my horrible hookup with Les last year. And then I remembered another mistake I’d made. “I did try and offer Anna money to leave you two years ago.”
“You were trying to protect me. And her.” He drew out an exaggerated sigh. “And are you, at least, admitting that sleeping with Sebastian was a bad decision?”
I wasn’t ready to admit to Adam, or myself, that being with Sebastian had been wrong. “I don’t know what will happen. Maybe it was a mistake. Maybe not. I have no idea.” And that was the truth.
“I care about you, Holly. If I somehow brought this on because I mentioned it was obvious that you . . .” He shook his head and gripped his temples, clearly uncomfortable with the idea of Sebastian having sex with his sister.
“I can’t handle any friction between us, Adam.” And then I opened up. Not exactly easy for me. “I need you to trust me, to trust that I’m strong enough to handle the consequences of my decisions. Right or wrong.”
He circled the desk after the silence stretched for a solid minute. “What happened in Limerick that made you change your mind about him? You’ve been spouting your hate for him for months.”
I smiled as I carefully considered my answer, then whispered, “I got to know the man beneath the suit.” When I took a hesitant step closer, he didn’t back away. That was progress. “You let Anna get to know the real you. And once you did, you had no regrets.” I shrugged. “You and Sebastian, you’re both billionaires in suits, but underneath there’s so much more.”
He smirked, and thank God for that. “I’m not a billionaire anymore.”
“Right.” After he and Anna married, Adam signed most of his shares of the company over to Sean and me. And then he’d donated the majority of his fortune to charitable foundations. “You’re a philanthropist.”
He tucked his hands into the pockets of his gray sweats. “Listen, I’m sorry for how I acted last night, but I don’t want to see you get hurt. I’d die before I let anything happen to you.” He reached for my forearm and pulled me in for a hug. “I love you.”
“But?” I murmured against his chest.
He freed me of his embrace. “No conditions.” He closed his eyes, seized hold of a deep breath, then let it go. “But if he ever does hurt you, in any way, I don’t care who he is, I’ll end him.”
Chapter Twenty-One
Holly
“Can I come in?”
I looked up from my laptop to see Harrison standing in the doorway in one of his Tom Ford suits. Navy blue. Crisp white shirt and dark tie beneath the jacket. No smile. His gray eyes cold and hard. I’d been expecting that given his text this morning.
“What’s wrong?”
He shut the door, then eyed the glass wall with a view to the hall. “Can I lower the blinds?”
Yeah, this was going to be a shitty afternoon, wasn’t it? “Of course.” I stood and braced the desk, not ready to leave the safety of the solid structure. Hell, I needed to keep my palms flat to the surface, or I’d probably lose my footing, nerves too tangled.
Once the motorized blinds scrolled down, Harrison moved to the desk and placed a USB drive in front of me. “You need to look at that. It’s information on Renaud.”
I dropped back onto my chair at his words and stared in a daze at the small, black object bearing his initials, HR, on the side.
I wasn’t sure if I was ready to open Pandora’s box, to download the files and let them infect my thoughts about Sebastian. “Harrison, you’re an amazing friend, and I—”
“Fell for the devil instead?” When I looked up, his lips were pressed tight, the look in his eyes still cold. “I think it was obvious I wanted more than friendship, Holly,” he began, then held a hand in the air between us, “but it would never have worked. The distance. The fact that I’m no good at relationships.” He paused for a moment. “But we have become friends, which means I care about you.” He pointed to the USB. “And Renaud is more than dangerous. He’s a killer.”
I blinked at his words, at the harshness of his statement.
Sebastian’s past may be dark, but a killer?
“My sister’s husband—well, his private security company is the best at finding intel on people throughout the world. Believe me when I say what they found out is not only true, but . . .”
“What is it?” My hand went to my chest, a lame attempt to slow my heartbeat.
“Renaud is associated with a very powerful and deadly group known as The Alliance.”
The Alliance? I guess just because I’d never heard of it didn’t mean they didn’t exist.
“The organization is mostly this side of the Atlantic, so the CIA hasn’t had much reason to get involved in pursuing their criminality. But agencies from Interpol to MI6 . . . they’ve tried and failed to take them down.”
I pressed my fingers to both my eyes, a headache blooming.
“You need to stay as far away from Renaud as possible.” The concern in his voice had me
dropping my hands, and I finally reached for the USB.
“I’m surprised my friend didn’t discover this when she looked into him for me.” I stuck the drive into the side of my laptop and downloaded the files.
“This group has more influence than you could possibly imagine. Officials at every level in government who help ensure The Alliance doesn’t go down.”
“Then how’d your brother-in-law’s company make the connection?” I stared at the little blue folder on my computer screen with Renaud’s name beneath it. I couldn’t open it, not yet.
My hand hovered over the mouse, my palm growing sweaty.
“I don’t know. Like I said, they’re the best at this kind of stuff.” He came around behind the desk to stand next to my chair. “Take a look. Please.”
My heart stuttered as I clicked open the folder. “Who is this?” The first image was a blond man with two different-colored eyes. Yeah, he looked like a killer. His hollow gaze void of emotion. No soul.
“Drake Anderson, the CEO and owner of Anderson Industries. He’s one of the three men who have been identified as top-level members, or maybe leaders, of this Alliance organization. There’s believed to be many more, but the reason why I’m sharing his name with you is because he’s the one trying to buy your land in Limerick.”
“What?” I took shallow breaths as I peered over my shoulder at him. “No, Paulson wants the land.”
“A shell company of Anderson’s. And it gets worse, Donovan Hannigan was Drake Anderson’s brother-in-law, the man you said was a crime boss here.”
I shut my eyes, feeling like I’d had one too many whiskeys. My head was fuzzy, and the room was spinning.
At the feel of his hand on my shoulder, I drew in a deep breath to calm down, to get my heart to beat at its normal pace.
“Sean told me Renaud is responsible for pushing the land sale. That can’t be a coincidence.”
Sebastian needed me to sell the land . . . but to Drake Anderson? What in God’s name?
“There’s more you should know about Renaud.” I opened my eyes and watched with trepidation as Harrison took control of the mouse to reveal more of the awful facts he’d discovered.
“This man jumped out of his tenth-floor flat after Renaud paid him a visit.” The screen displayed a photo of a man who looked vaguely familiar, and I quickly remembered hearing about his suicide in the news a few years back. If Harrison was suggesting this was Sebastian’s doing, I refused to believe it. “Holly, Sebastian is capable of such things. This one, however, may scare the shit out of you. The manager of Renaud’s club, here in Dublin, died when his home in Paris was destroyed by a fire. She was the only one inside. Arson.” He paused to let that sink in. “The name of his manager was Josie McClintock, but the dental records matched an Alessia Romano. Heiress to the American billionaire, Anthony Romano.”
Alessia Romano? Why did that sound so familiar? Surely, the death of billionaires made the news, but it felt like more than that.
“Renaud’s net worth matches the amount of money Alessia inherited when her father died. Renaud also buried the truth of who really died in that fire and made sure it never got leaked to the press.”
“No,” I snapped.
“He’s been arrested multiple times in the last few years in different countries,” he continued anyway, “never remained in jail for more than a day. Charges always dropped.”
“Then he’s innocent.”
“Or corrupt,” he countered, the deep timbre of his voice cutting.
“Nothing you’ve said proves he’s guilty. There has to be another explanation.” I lifted my hands and stared at them as they visibly trembled.
“His real name is Sebastian Ryan. His mother died in Paris when he was twelve. He was arrested three times before eighteen, then he disappeared. No known addresses. It was probably when he joined The Alliance. Looks like five years ago, he decided to take on the alias Sebastian Renaud when he became a billionaire.”
He told me he was dangerous, but this? It didn’t add up. “I need to talk to him.” I reached for my mobile, but Harrison covered my hand with his.
“I have to tell Sean. He needs to know the truth about Renaud.”
“This is speculation. Please, wait. Let me talk to Sebastian and see what he says.” I swallowed, forcing down the lump in my throat.
I didn’t make love to a killer. I hadn’t had a murderer’s hands on my body. No, it couldn’t be true.
“I’m trying to protect you.” Harrison’s voice softened, like he was consoling a child.
I stood and faced him, prepared to hold my ground. “I don’t need anyone to keep me safe.” I brought my balled hands to his chest, fighting back tears. I didn’t want to believe Sebastian had managed to manipulate me, but if it was true, I’d never forgive myself for falling for his act.
Harrison gripped my shoulders, then pulled me to his chest and held on to me as I let go and cried.
“It’s gonna be okay,” he promised, and I wished more than anything I could believe him.
* * *
“This stuff really is good.” I hiccupped. Drinking at work wasn’t the best idea, but it was after hours, at least. “Want some?” I held up the bottle of Jameson and leaned across my desk, intending to hand it to Cole, but his gaze was pinned to my laptop.
“I was heading for the airport when Sean called,” he said, a hard grit to his tone. “Is it true?”
“Which part?” I didn’t have a damn clue since Sebastian was currently in Italy and hadn’t answered any of my calls.
“Alessia Romano—she’s really dead?” His eyes were bloodshot as if he’d either been crying or was on the verge of losing his mind with rage.
I set the bottle down as he circled the desk to view my screen. “Wait.” A memory tugged at my mind, and I closed my eyes to latch on to it. “She’s your Alessia? The friend slash neighbor you and Bree used to talk about?” My eyes flashed open, the news sobering me up some.
His mouth tightened briefly, and he nodded.
This was too much. “I’m so sorry.” I pulled up the files Harrison had provided and offered him the laptop.
He lifted it and began pacing the office in front of my desk. “Josie McClintock.”
“I guess Alessia was pretending to be Josie, but I have no idea why.” Or if that was even true. What if Harrison’s brother-in-law got the information wrong?
He slowly closed the laptop and placed it on the desk, the muscles in his jaw locking tight. “I’m gonna kill him. Where is he?”
“Italy,” I said after hiccupping again. “I don’t know when he’ll be back, and I don’t know exactly where he is.” Sean had stormed in and asked. Adam, too. My family was out for blood. And now Cole. And me? I just wanted to hear his side of things. I refused to believe he was a monster.
“Alessia was . . . she was a good person. She didn’t deserve this. She was younger, and I always looked out for her.” His gaze was on the floor, his brow furrowed as if pulling up memories in his mind. “Her dad was never home, and after her mother died, her nanny took care of her. We, umm, became close.”
“Were you more than friends?” I asked softly.
“No,” he said straight away, but I wasn’t so sure. “After her father died, she told me she’d discovered she had a brother, and she wanted to find him. Share the money.”
I remembered now. Bree had said that one day Alessia just vanished from New York. Cole had been so upset. I’d tried to talk to him at the time, but he wouldn’t take my calls, and eventually, he refused to even mention her name.
“Brother?” The effects of the Jameson were wearing off quickly.
“Alessia was a mess after she found out. Desperate to find him. I didn’t think it was a good idea. She finally located him and took off.” His voice was thick with emotion, bringing more of his native brogue into his speech.
“Where’d she go? What happened?”
“I tracked her flight to Italy, and I went after her.”
“Did you find her?” But I already knew the answer, didn’t I?
He shook his head. “I tried, but no luck. Two weeks later, she emailed me. She said she wouldn’t be coming home, and she was sorry, but I wouldn’t hear from her again. I was so bloody angry.”
“And you didn’t want to talk about it, I remember.” I tried to stand once more, my body weak, my senses still dulled by alcohol. “Did she tell you her brother’s name?”
“No, and the email account had been shut down. I hired the best IT people to trace the origin of the email, but the signal had bounced around all over the world.” His eyes became glossy. “I lost her. And to find out she’d been in Dublin at the club, and I . . .”
“If she’s really Sebastian’s sister, you have to believe he’d never be the one to hurt her.”
“This is my fault. I should’ve found her before he got his claws into her.” He looked up at me, fire in his eyes. “Alessia didn’t deserve to die.” He started for the door. “And I’ll do whatever I have to do to get justice for her.”
“You’re not a killer.” I stretched my hand out as if I could stop him.
“If it takes being a killer to take one down,” he said while catching my eyes from over his shoulder, “then that’s exactly what I’ll be.”
Chapter Twenty-Two
Sicily, Italy
Sebastian
League leaders from around Europe and Asia were assembled at Signore Calibrisi’s mansion. Calibrisi had passed away this afternoon. I’d always been closest to him and Moreau, and I’d mourn his loss for quite some time.
Édouard Moreau eased up next to me and offered a glass of whiskey, his gaze surveying the assembled men. A bunch of black suits, with a net worth of seventy billion, filled the study.
During affairs of this sort, as well as League meetings, one leader was randomly selected to stay behind. Similar to the designated survivor protocol in the United States. In case a coordinated attack by our enemies or some other catastrophic event were to happen that wiped out the majority of the leaders, someone would remain to ensure The League's survival. Tonight, the leader of Japan remained in his country.
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