“Uh, she got a new job.”
I don’t have a good feeling about this.
“A new job doing what?”
“She’s a live-in nanny.”
“For whom?”
“For Governor Hopeful Thaddeus Branson Jr.” I shot off the bed and began pacing my bedroom. “Grant? What’s the matter?”
“She can’t be with him!” I shouted, frustrated that she’d be so reckless.
But I don’t know why I’m surprised. That’s Kiyah’s M.O.
“Oooo, someone caught the jealous bug.”
“I’m not fucking jealous. That man is psychotic, and she needs to get away from him.”
“Yeah, well, things weren’t so copacetic with you. Do you want to know how many holes Ronan, Casey, and I had to patch up in your home?”
I scrubbed my face with my hands before planting myself before him. “Kieran, I’m going to be real with you. Am I upset that my wife—”
“Ex-wife,” he interrupted. I closed my eyes and counted down from ten before resuming.
“Am I upset that my ex-wife has potentially moved on with another man—a thousand times, yes, but it can’t be him. He’s a fucking stalker, I know it. He was always conveniently popping up, and let’s not forget how he showed up at the firm with her phone and flowers. Fuck! I was supposed to buy her a new phone!” I exclaimed, sounding hysterical.
“Okay, Grant. You need to calm down before these people strap your ass down,” he hissed. He grabbed my bicep and dragged me to the balcony like Mom used to do to him when he tried running off in public. “Let’s try this again without you freaking out.”
Over the next few minutes, I clued Kieran in on my suspicions surrounding Branson. “At the restaurant, he revealed things that he shouldn’t have known, and he was so fucking smug about it.”
“What did he know?”
“He knew that Kiyah and I were intimately involved, and he knew I had a drinking problem. How the fuck did he know that?”
Kieran laced his fingers on top of his head and muttered a string of obscenities.
“Maybe Kiyah had told him.”
My eyes narrowed, “Really? You think she told the man running for governor of Texas that she was married to her stepbrother and I’m an alcoholic? Come on, Kieran, you’re smarter than that. I think he hacked her phone.”
He dropped his hands and shoved them back into his pockets. “It’s possible,” he confessed.
“He was challenging me, Kieran. You should’ve seen how enraged he was the night of the bachelorette party at the restaurant when I mentioned I told Kiyah the flowers were from me.”
“I saw it… briefly,” he confessed. “It was so quick that I told myself I was seeing things, but I saw how he was staring daggers at your back when you walked away.”
“I followed him to his car and warned him to stay away from us. Make no mistake that he took that as a challenge. Then his wife died a few hours later? No, I don’t believe in coincidences like this.”
“Okay,” Kieran said, clapping his hands together once to get my attention. “The running theory is that they bump into each other at Emerald Hills, he gets her phone, he hacks it and reads all her shit, stalks her, and waits for the perfect opportunity to offer her employment as his live-in nanny.”
“Don’t forget the part where he killed his wife.”
“Speculation,” Kieran objected.
“Speculation, my ass. She’s not safe with him,” I insisted as I dialed Kiyah’s number. I loudly swore when I received her voicemail.
“Kiyah, it’s me, Grant. Can you please give me a call? It’s urgent.”
