“Maddie?”
Her eyes snapped to mine and she placed her fork on the table, then looked at her mother. “I guess you told him.”
“Told me what?” I asked, looking between Caity and our daughter.
“Not exactly,” Caity said, placing her napkin on the table.
“Told. Me. What?” I asked again, quickly losing my patience.
“I told you about the envelope I received, with the pictures and the recording, and that Maddie had opened it.”
Caity got quiet as she glanced at Maddie. “And?” I asked. Caity startled at the impatient tone in my voice.
“I thought Sinclair sent the photos.” Maddie gasped, and Caity added, “Well, someone who works for him.”
“That’s why you met with him?”
“No.”
Maddie stood and moved to the full-length windows that looked out over the river. She stood with her arms wrapped around her waist.
“Sinclair wants information that is in the files, about his family.”
“Sinclair doesn’t have family,” I stated, my eyes glancing at Maddie briefly before turning back to Caity.
“Rowen, Silas, Gideon, and Dante are his family, Cian. Everyone knows that. He’ll do anything to protect them.” Caity inhaled deep and blew out the breath before she continued, “He wanted to meet me for dinner because he knows I was lying about not finding the files. When we were talking... I don’t know, something made me ask him about the pictures.”
“He sent them?” I asked.
Caity looked over at Maddie who hadn’t moved from the window. She hadn’t said a word since Caity mentioned Sinclair.
“I thought so. But when I told him Maddie opened it, something flashed in his eyes.” She looked at me and lowered her voice. “Something terrifying.”
“He wasn’t behind the pictures being taken; he was still at the Trick Pony then. But I thought maybe he’d gotten ahold of them somehow and sent them. But after seeing that look on his face...”
“What was the recording?”
Caity swallowed hard and glanced at Maddie again. “It was a voice recording from the night Nolan died. When he revealed you were Maddie’s father, and then a gunshot.”
I stood up quickly, my chair falling on the floor. “What the fuck, Caity?! It’s been months—why are you just saying something now?”
“I didn’t know until a few days ago. Maddie was so angry, and I wanted to give her time and space.”
“Maddie, sweetheart.” I walked over to my daughter and settled my hands on her shoulders. I looked at her reflection in the window and tears streamed down her face. “Talk to us, Maddie.”
She shook her head as she tightened her arms around her waist. I turned her to face me, wiping the tears from her cheeks, then pulled her against my chest.
“I need that recording, Caity.”
“It’s in my purse, inside the lining.” I didn’t tell him that the files Sinclair wanted—the ones I’d kept separate—were also in there inside the lining on the opposite side.
“Dammit, Caity.”
I ushered my daughter over to the table and sat her down next to her mother, who wrapped her arms around her, holding her as she cried, before grabbing Caity’s purse from the counter. I ripped open the lining and found the small flash drive.
“I’ll be right back.”
I left them in the kitchen and rushed down to my office. I grabbed a laptop from the closet, one that was used only for situations like this. You couldn’t be too careful with a flash drive, not knowing what was on it.
