“Andrew wants to see truth,” he said. “Truth that isn’t smoke and mirrors.”
“And what would that be?” Gabriel asked.
The question hung in the air, unanswerable. He had built his career, his company, his entire life on precision and calculation. On knowing which move to make, which leverage to apply. This—this nebulous demand for authenticity—was outside his experience.
“I need to speak with her,” he said.
Knox and Gabriel exchanged a look that he couldn’t decipher.
“About that,” Knox began, hesitation in his voice. “She left.”
“Left where?” he asked.
“I don’t know. She walked out,” Gabriel said. “Took her purse and everything. Didn’t say a word to anyone.”
“And no one stopped her?” he asked. His voice had taken on a dangerous edge.
“After what happened?” Knox asked. “Everyone was too stunned to move.”
Ronan turned to look at her desk—the same desk that had been positioned strategically within his line of sight since the day he’d hired her.
It was empty.
Not vacant—empty. The computer remained, but every personal item had vanished. The framed photograph of her grandmother that had sat beside her monitor. The small potted succulent she watered every Monday. The leather organizer embossed with her initials, a gift from the office on her birthday. Even her ridiculous bedazzled sunflower pen was gone from its spot in the ceramic holder.
His gaze dropped to his sunflowers in the trash can beside her desk.
Then a spark of light caught his eye—a small detail reflecting the overhead lighting.
There, in the center of her cleared desk, sat the cheap, gaudy sunflower ring. The fifteen-dollar piece of costume jewelry she’d spun an elaborate story around for the Beauchamps, explaining its sentimental value with such emotion that even he had believed it.
She’d left it.
She was gone.
He looked at the ring again. Cheap. Tacky. Yet seeing it abandoned like it had meant nothing hit harder than he wanted to admit.
“She’s gone,” he said again
Behind him, Knox and Gabriel didn’t say anything.
Ronan stood there, staring at the empty desk.
Chapter 20
The box wasn’t evenheavy.
She sat in the back of the taxi with everything she’d taken from Oath Capital in a small cardboard container resting on her knees.
Though she’d been his employee for six months, the past week had felt like a lifetime. That’s how deeply she was invested—pouring herself into a role that now felt like ruins…
God, Ronan.
She’d never seen him look so blindsided.
The cab slowed.
“That’ll be twenty-two fifty,” the driver said as they pulled up outside of Flour & Honey.
