I don’t have a good poker face, and the guilt that is eating me alive makes me want to spill every thought inside my brain. But I have a feeling if I tell Stephen what I’m hiding upstairs in my room, this will be one secret he won’t want to keep from Ronan.
“I thought Mila was staying longer?”
“Oh, uh… She wasn’t feeling well.”
“I thought that was you throwing up earlier?”
Shit.
This time, I do wince.
If he overheard Mila throwing up, does that mean he heard the video footage too?
“Do you have supersonic hearing or something?”
“Something like that.” Stephen shrugs. “But if Mila is sick, you should get checked out by a doctor. A stomach bug could be bad for the baby.”
“I’m sure I’ll be fine.” I start to head for the stairs.
“Ciara…”
“I know.” I sigh, waving a hand. “I’ll tell him soon.”
I rush up the rest of the stairs and lock myself back in my room before Stephen has a chance to lecture me about my dishonesty. But the sight of Max’s laptop on the bed tightens my chest.
The image of his bruised cheek flashes in my mind, and I frown.
Something doesn’t sit right with me about the timeline of his injuries. When I left his apartment, he was completely fine. There was no sign of a bruise on his face when I was with him, and yet they were present before his killer arrived.
What the hell happened in between?
I climb back onto the bed and pull the laptop onto my lap, opening up the video file once more. I slide the time bar back a few hours, squinting as I watch Max move about his apartment at double speed.
A huge figure eventually appears in the frame, his hands wrapped around Max’s throat as he holds him against the wall.
“What the hell?”
I recognize the figure all too well.
Ronan.
My heart feels like it’s about to explode out of my chest as I watch him throw Max to the ground. His face is a mask of undiluted rage, one I’ve seen before, the night he walked in on Stephen and me watching a movie.
He’s seeing red, and if I didn’t already know that he wasn’t the one who put the bullet in Max’s head, I would have thought he was about to from the look in his eyes.
I watch in silent horror as Ronan hauls Max to his feet and punches him again, snapping Max’s head to the side as his fist collides with his cheek. But he doesn’t stop there. His anger is relentless as his knee connects with Max’s ribs, and Max instantly goes down.
Ronan towers over him, an unyielding and unforgiving force of solid muscle, before he storms out of sight, leaving Max broken and bleeding on the ground.
I know from the timeline of the footage that he’s alive, but not for much longer.
My throat burns as tears blur my vision.
I’m going to be sick.
Ronan beat Max just hours before he was murdered, practically giving his killer a helping hand by wounding him badly enough that he couldn’t fight back.
All this time, Ronan knew this, and he never told me. I think of all the times he looked me in the eye since Max died, the way he held me when I cried over the loss of my friend, and he never said a single word.
