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“Your father stole money from the O’Connor organization,” he said. “He had access to our laundering operations and began moving money through accounts that didn’t belong to him. When we discovered what he’d done, we also learned that he was trying to sell information about our operations to rival groups.”

I struggled to process it. “Even if my father betrayed you, why did that mean my entire family had to die? You could have gone after him without hurting my mom.”

“That was supposed to be what happened,” Ronan said. “The order was for Mateo. But by the time the O’Connors acted, some of our people had already died because of the information he’d sold. My younger brother was one of them. His death made the organization demand retaliation, and I was sent to deal with your father.”

“You went there to kill him.”“Yes.”

The simplicity of his answer made my stomach twist.

“The situation became chaotic. The attack was supposed to end with Mateo, but once the violence started, it stopped being controlled. Your mother was killed by one of the men, and the house caught fire. I realized there was still someone upstairs.”

“Me.”

“Yes. I found you hiding inside the closet. You were frightened, and the smoke was already filling the room. I knew that if I left you there, you would die, so I carried you outside.”

I stared at him. “So you saved me. Why?”

Ronan finally turned to face me. “Because I’d already taken enough from your family. Leaving you there would have made me no better than the men who escalated the attack. Saving you was the only decent thing I did that night.”

I felt tears burning my eyes, but I refused to let them fall. “You knew I survived for fifteen years. And you never came looking for me.”

“Yes.” His expression tightened. “I didn’t believe I had the right.”

I looked at the man standing in front of me and felt the hatred I’d carried for fifteen years collide with something I didn’t know how to name.

“I understand why they wanted my father dead,” I said after a long silence. “I understand why the O’Connors considered him a threat, and I understand why you were sent after him. But understanding why it happened doesn’t change that I lost my family.” Ronan didn’t interrupt me, so I continued. “I lost my parents that night. I grew up not knowing why they were both gone, and for fifteen years I carried questions that nobody could answer. You may regret what happened, but your regret doesn’t give me my family back, and it doesn’t mean I can forgive you.”

“I know,” he said. “I’m not asking you to forgive me.”

His answer caught me off guard because there was no argument in it. He didn’t try to justify his actions or tell me that he’d been following orders. He simply accepted what I’d said, and somehow that made the truth harder to carry. I looked toward the window.

“I don’t know what I’m supposed to do with all of this.”

“You don’t have to decide tonight.”

I turned back to him. “There’s something I want to decide.” He waited. “I want to go back to work. I want to return to the café, and I want to continue Buried Saints. I’ve spent too much of my life building that podcast to let everything that happened take it away from me.”

Ronan remained silent for several seconds before answering.

“You can return to work.” I hadn’t expected him to agree so quickly. “But there will be security with you. And you can’t deliberately pursue information that puts you directly in the path of people who want you dead. That’s a condition of keeping you safe.”

“That sounds like another restriction.” I studied him carefully. “So I can continue the podcast, but you decide what investigations I can pursue?”

“No. You decide what you investigate. But I decide how much danger I’m willing to allow into your life.”

“That sounds like the same thing.” I wanted to argue, but for once, he wasn’t telling me what I was allowed to do simply because he could. He was giving me some freedom back while still making it clear that he wouldn’t stop protecting me. It was the first compromise he’d offered since I arrived at the penthouse, and I hated how much that mattered to me.

Later that night, I lay awake beside him while the room remained dark. Ronan was asleep, or at least I thought he was. I stared at the ceiling and tried to understand what the truth had done to me. I’d spent fifteen years believing that the man responsible for my family’s destruction was nothing more than a monster.

Now I knew he was also the man who’d saved me. That didn’t erase what he’d done. It didn’t make my father’s death acceptable, and it certainly didn’t make me forgive him. But it made hating him more difficult. I turned my head and looked at him in the darkness.

The man I’d loved was still there, beneath everything I’d learned. That was the part I couldn’t escape. I’d wanted the truth to make things simple. Instead, it had left me wondering whether the hatred I’d carried for fifteen years was stronger than the love I still felt for Ronan.

CHAPTER EIGHTEEN

Ronan

The abandoned waterfront property smelled of salt and oil. I stepped out of the SUV and looked toward the warehouse where Viktor Sokolov was waiting.