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I’d spent twenty-two years believing I understood Maria’s motive. Apparently, I’d only understood the part involving me. I never considered that she’d been stealing long before she met me. Whatever she did to her own family came first. I was simply the man with more money and another opportunity for her to take it.

Nash keeps working through the files while I read over his shoulder. After her parents died, Alina went through everything they left behind—accounts, property records, old correspondence and anything else connected to Maria. When she found no hidden money, she started tracing the cousin her parents had spent years blaming for what they lost. Eventually, that search brought her to Philadelphia.

“She found you.” Nash scrolls through a list of searches and dates. “Your name and Murphy Enterprises start showing up with everything else. She kept digging until she figured out where Maria went and who she married.”

“Then she came here looking for whatever she believed Maria had.”

“Looks that way. And she didn’t rush it.” Nash hands me the phone. “By the time she got into your social circle, she already knew exactly who you were.”

I think back over every interaction I had with Alina before Nash walked into my office. She never pushed for information about the company or my finances, never asked enough questions to make me suspicious. She made herself available, accepted the limits I placed on our arrangement, and waited for an opportunity to get closer.

Nash takes his phone back and scrolls farther. “Zee also confirmed Daniela Norris was a real person. Employment records, leases, credit history, utilities. She had a normal life until a little over five years ago, then everything stops. She leaves her job, her accounts close, and a few months later Alina starts using her identity.”

I take the phone and look through the timeline. There’s no death certificate for Daniela and no record of her leaving the country. Her life simply stops around the same time Ion and Elena are killed, and a few months later, Alina has her name.

Nash sends Zee another message before opening the information on Dare. “He still hasn’t identified him, but he went back through everything I got from Alina’s room. Dare has been in her life for years, long before she ever came near you.”

I move closer so we can both see the screen. The messages between Alina and Dare aren’t the kind of exchanges she’d have with someone she hired. They argue, make plans, and refer to people and places without explaining any of it because they both already understand the context. There’s history between them, enough that whoever Dare is, he’s been part of this for a long time.

Nash works backward through the dates. “She contacted him after you ended your arrangement, and that’s when I start coming up a lot more. After you ended things with her, she started digging into who I was and why I was suddenly important enough for you to walk away from whatever the two of you had.”

I remember Alina’s questions about Nash, and how she reacted when I ended our arrangement. I dismissed it as jealousy and irritation because there had never been enough between us for me to consider anything else. Now I can see it for what it was. She’d spent years working her way toward me, and Nash showed up just as she thought she was getting somewhere.

“You weren’t simply the reason I ended the arrangement. You became the reason everything she’d been working toward stopped.”

Nash looks at me. “And she decided I needed to go.”

I don’t like knowing Alina was discussing Nash with a man we still can’t identify, especially after seeing how their conversations changed once she started digging into him. Getting pissed off about it won’t tell me who Dare is, though, and Nash is already forwarding everything Zee found to Ronan.

“I asked Zee to stay on Daniela and Dare,” Nash says. “If Dare was already with Alina when Daniela disappeared, there might be something connecting him to her before Philadelphia.”

“Then Ronan can work from the same direction instead of digging through the entire Rusu family history.”

Nash nods as he finishes sending the files. “We know what happened to Ion and Elena and why Alina came here. Now we need to figure out what happened to Daniela and who the fuck Dare is.”

By the time we shower and make our way downstairs, Ronan is already going through everything Nash sent him. Nash takes his laptop and coffee to the island while I start breakfast, and when Ronan calls, I put him on speaker.

“I verified the death records and most of the police file Zee found. I’m still working through the financial records, but enough of the transfers match to support what he found about Maria taking money from the family.” I hear Ronan typing in the background before he goes quiet for a few seconds. “Nash, who the fuck is Zee?”

Nash looks up from his laptop. “We’ve been over this. He’s a friend.”

“That tells me nothing. I want to know how your friend got Romanian police records, private financial information and correspondence between Alina and her parents before I could.”

“Maybe he’s better than you.”

Ronan doesn’t respond immediately, and Nash’s mouth twitches.

“Don’t poke him,” I say as I set a plate in front of Nash.

“I’m not poking him. I’m answering his question.”

“No, you aren’t,” Ronan says. “How long have you known him?”

“Three years, give or take.”

“And let me guess, you’ve never met him?”

Nash shakes his head before apparently remembering Ronan can’t see him. “No. We’ve never met in person. I don’t know his real name, where he lives, or what he looks like. He found me online when I was trying to track down my first target and decided I was going to get myself caught if somebody didn’t help me.”