And then he’s gone, leaving the room like a storm cloud.
I groan, dragging my hands down my face as I stare at the closed door, wondering how much longer I can put up with his Jekyll and Hyde personality.
My head pounds just from the whiplash of his moods. One minute, he’s confiding in me, and the next, he’s throwing verbal knives at my heart just to see if I bleed.
I thought the point of our truce was that we would start trying our best to get along. But then I dare go and saysomething that puts a crack in Seamus Sullivan’s legacy, and any connection between us is instantly severed.
I glance back at the screen, which still has the list of encrypted payments loaded up on it, and frown.
Somewhere in this mess, the truth is waiting, and I need to make sure I’m the one who finds it.
Chapter Twenty-Nine
RONAN
I gripthe steering wheel hard enough to turn my knuckles white as I tear down the driveway, my anger clouding me as I push the gas pedal to the floor.
I should have apologized for snapping at Ciara the moment the words left my mouth, but of course, I didn’t. She should know by now that apologies don’t come easy to me. Besides, I’m too focused on the fact that she might be right about the fact my father most likely had been hiding something that led to his death, and that thought pisses me off more than anything.
I don’t want her to be right.
I want these payments to be nothing more than just that, payments made by a paranoid old bastard who liked hiding things for the sake of hiding them.
But the fact the transactions are encrypted makes me think it’s not just my father being paranoid. They’re intentional and way too specific to not cause suspicion. It’s crystal fucking clear that he went to a lot of effort to make sure they were buried deep enough so no one would find them. Not even me, and that’s the part I can’t get past.
Seamus didn’t hide things from his family, especially not like this. At least, I didn’t think he did. But maybe I didn’t know my father as well as I thought I did. Maybe these encrypted payments are only scratching the surface of the secrets my father took with him to the grave.
I tap the screen on the dash and call Tommy, my private investigator. I hate that I’m even considering asking him to look into my father but at this point, I have no other choice. If he was wrapped up in some tangled web that landed him with a bullet in his skull, I sure as hell need to know about it.
Tommy answers on the second ring, his strong Irish accent instantly filling the car. “Got somethin’ for me, Sullivan?”
“I need you to look into my father. Specifically, the weeks leading up to his death.”
“Doyehave anythin’ specificye’re lookin’ for?”
“I need you to look at everything. Where he went, who he met with. If anything looks suspicious, I want to know about it.”
There’s a pause on the other end of the line.
“Yethink his death was more than what it looked like?”
“I think he was hiding something. And I think someone killed him because of it.”
“All right.Ye’ll hear from me tomorrow.”
I hang up the call without another word.
My stomach churns with a mixture of guilt and doubt for not questioning my father sooner. Perhaps if I had, he would still be alive.
By the time I pull up outsideThe Hollow Man, my jaw aches from clenching it so hard.
From the messages that came through on my dash, all three of my brothers are already inside, waiting for me, which only adds to my darkening mood.
Right now, I don’t have the energy to be the bufferbetween Cormac and Kieran. Not when our entire empire could potentially be on the verge of collapse.
I park my Mercedes out front and kill the engine, taking one last deep breath before stepping out into the cold, city air.
The Hollow Manis an old Irish pub tucked between a boarded-up deli and a pawn shop in Hell’s Kitchen. The smoked windows are impossible to see through, and there is nothing but an old brass plaque on the door with the name of the place etched in cursive.
