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Without saying a word, he sets my empty plate behind his laptop and pushes it away from us. Then he stabs a patty sausage and brings it to his lips. I’m still standing here when he swallows, fork midair and staring at the side of his head. “Eat,” he says, and then goes back to typing and clicking the down arrow on his keyboard.
Scooping a forkful of eggs into my mouth, I get curious, so I flick my eyes to his darkened screen to see what he’s doing. As I continue eating our shared meal, I keep watching him.
It takes approximately three minutes for me to figure out who he’s spying on, whose finances he’s hacked to be precise. Within another two minutes, I realize he’s about to mess up. Without thinking, I drop my fork and snatch his right wrist away from the keys.
“Don’t touch another key,” I say with more bravado than I actually possess around him.
“Excuse me?” He’s shocked by my actions, but I see it in his eyes when that turns to cautiousness.
“You’re about to screw up and reveal yourself,” I try to explain. Glancing down in front of me, I push our plate to the side and then I reach over him to pull his laptop closer in front of me. “It doesn’t matter how much you think you’re going in undetected. You aren’t. Two more clicks andhissecurity will be alerted with your location.”
“That’s impossible,” he spits out. “How do you even know what I’m doing?”
“Until last summer, I had hobbies too,” is all the information I choose to divulge as I back him out of the mess he’s created.
I knew he was into breaking the law. It comes with the lifestyle he was raised in, but I hadn’t realized he was this level of smart. In all honesty, he only would have gotten caught because I’m the one that built the bank’s interface with specific security measurements and traps to ensure it. It’s the only thing my uncle forced me to learn that I actually enjoyed. Everything else school-related was boring. Computers gave me an escape like nothing else. Exploring Dublin and the surrounding areas wasn’t even as exciting as figuring out coding. It was like knowing another language that only a small number of others knew too.
“Liam’s finances won’t tell you anything. He keeps his accounts clean.”
“All right, smarty, where’s the dirt then?”
“He only accepts cash. He keeps it in two locations: his house in Ireland and somewhere in the States. If I had to guess, his brother would likely be the source of that location. He wouldn’t trust anyone else,” I admit, having overheard several of their conversations over the years. When a man believes he owns another person and has forced the fear of God into them, he’s less worried about them spilling his secrets. Plus, there’s his ego. My uncle got off on my facial reaction to the things he’s done to other people over the years.
“So . . .” Ren’s voice being in close proximity breaks my eye contact with Domenico. Glancing to the other side of the island, close to the sink, I see Ren watching his brother. “She can cook, and she’s better at computers than you. Damn, bro, I think you may have met your match.”
Chuckling, Domenico’s brother turns away from us and places his and Sasha’s plates in the sink.
Sliding Domenico’s laptop back in front of him, I grip the edge of our plate and pull it over to me, then I lift my fork and stab the other sausage patty, bringing it to my lips.
“Explain why youthinkI—”
“How Iknow,you mean?” I interrupt Domenico, my tone snarky. I step backward with the intention of getting something to drink when he snatches my elbow and pulls me close. “I’m thirsty.”
Loosening his grip, he grabs his coffee mug with his other hand and holds it out for me to take.
Reluctantly, I take it from him, lift the mug to my lips and then take a small sip. It’s cooled down. I wasn’t expecting the black liquid to taste sweet. It’s actually good, so I swallow more.
“Explain, Ciera,” he demands, but his tone isn’t hard like it usually is. It’s more curious than anything else.
“At my uncle’s request, I programmed a trap that would notify him if anyone tried snooping around his business,” I say.
“How do you even have the knowledge to do something that . . .” He trails off like he isn’t sure he wants to finish his sentence.
“Sophisticated?” I offer. “Ingenious, perhaps?”
“Tell me what I want to know, smartass.”
“My uncle blackmailed a man into teaching me everything he knew,” I divulge. “It started when I was nine. By the time I was fifteen, I’d surpassed his abilities.”
“So now you’re O’Donovan’s little spy?” His nostrils flare, but he doesn’t give me time to answer him, or maybe his question was rhetorical. “Why would he send you home then, allow you to be sold to Santo first and then be given to my father? What’s his agenda?”
Something dark in his eyes changes, almost like someone else is coming to the surface. I can feel the energy in his posture morph, the muscles in his limbs being pulled taut. Before he can tighten his hold on my elbow, I step back, snatching my arm from his grasp.
“I don’t—” I start to tell him that I don’t have any idea what my uncle has planned, if anything, that involves the Caputos. I’m not privy to that type of information. But I also doubt Liam O’Donovan even knows I’m here or knows anything about my stay in New Orleans. He sent me to New York for college. There is no doubt in my mind that he has plans for me. He sent my father back to New York to run a criminal organization. He sent his younger brother to the States to infiltrate law enforcement in the city so that whatever he has my father doing could be covered up.
“Miss me, bitches?” Sienna’s interruption is welcomed.
Domenico’s wrath falls away as relief washes over me. Wherever his thoughts were headed wasn’t good, at least not for me.
