Even though she was a classic redhead, with richly colored hair and alabaster skin—except for the smattering of freckles across her nose—she always seemed vibrant. Now, she was wan, and it was wrong. Fiona should be filled with life, not slumped with defeat. I was tempted to tease her just to put some color back in her cheeks, but she’d had a tough day already. She didn’t need me to behave like an ass.
“Go on,” I said gently.
She looked at me with surprise but then nodded. “Um, so you all know the story behind what happened before I came to work here.”
“You were accused of stealing three paintings from the gallery where you worked,” Ronan said. “The paintings were replaced with forged copies so no one could be sure exactly when they were taken, but yours was the only key card used outside of normal working hours, and your credit card had recently been used to buy canvases of that size, as well as paints and other supplies from a local store.”
Fiona cleared her throat. “Yeah, that’s about it. I swear I didn’t do it, though.”
“We know,” Ronan said. “Do you think I would have hired you if I thought you were a thief?”
I noticed some of the tension ease from her shoulders.
“So, what we need to know is, what actually happened?” Kade asked. “Ronan never pressed at the time he hired you. He was satisfied with the report by the private detective we hired, which concluded the same thing the police did: that there wasn’t enough evidence to press charges. Given the state of your finances and your lack of contact with any known fences, he thought it was unlikely you were behind the thefts.”
Fiona’s cheeks flushed red, and I felt a pang of sympathy.It was never nice to talk about being broke—especially to people who had plenty of money in the bank.
“It’s actually really simple,” she said, her voice unwavering. “My ex-boyfriend screwed me over.”
My gut flipped. Whatever I’d expected her to say, it wasn’t that. My fingers curled into fists. “What did he do?”
Her eyes flicked to me and then lowered to the tabletop as if it was easier to get the words out that way. “I was an artist in addition to being assistant to the gallery manager,” she said. “That’s why they were so suspicious of the purchases. They thought I could have painted the forgeries. I wasn’t that talented. Not that they believed me.” She intertwined her slender fingers and stared down at them. “My boyfriend was skilled enough to have forged them, though. I was financially supporting Bergen while he worked on his art. He was good, and I thought he had a chance of making it big one day.” She sighed. “Keep in mind that I don’t know any of this for certain, but my guess is that Bergen painted the forgeries, then took my key card while I was sleeping and swapped the forgeries out for the originals.” Her mouth curled downward. “All I know for sure is that when I got back from being questioned by the police, he was gone from the apartment, my credit cards had been maxed out, and he’d emptied our joint bank account.”
“Son of a bitch,” Kade growled. The former soldier had a chip on his shoulder when it came to men hurting or taking advantage of women. Often, I teased him for having a white knight complex, but this time, I wholeheartedly agreed.
“What the fuck kind of name is ‘Bergen’ anyway?” I asked.
Fiona rolled her eyes. “I thought it was unique. I was stupid.”
I wanted to argue that she hadn’t been stupid. I knew how much a betrayal could come out of the blue. I’d trustedmy team at the secretive government agency I used to work for, first as a cyber specialist and then as an undercover operative, until I’d been set up to look like a traitor and subjected to their “advanced interrogation techniques”—AKA torture. For an instant, the memory made it difficult to draw a breath. My vision darkened and I inhaled sharply, but then, thankfully, the sensation stopped.
“Did the police find any evidence to connect him to the theft?” I asked.
“No.” She shook her head in disgust. “He supposedly had an alibi. He claimed to have been spending the nights with another woman. I don’t know who it was, but she backed him up. They both said he and I had already been broken up for a while and that I was trying to pin it on him out of spite because he left me for someone else.”
My nostrils flared. “He thought a lot of himself, didn’t he?”
I could tell from the way she looked like she’d tasted something sour that it pissed her off to have to admit this to us. I got it. Not only did it make her look like a vindictive ex-girlfriend, but a woman like Fiona wouldn’t be used to men leaving her. She was gorgeous, smart-mouthed, and intelligent. Hell, if I had a chance to taste her fire, I’d never let her get away.
“They believed him,” she said. “They didn’t have enough to charge me, but I lost pretty much everything anyway.”
