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Something about the way she said it hit me, twisting my heart. In that moment, I knew I needed to tell her what I’d slowly been accepting since before Thanksgiving.
I caught her chin and tilted her head up to meet my gaze. “I meant every word. This isn’t just me sleeping with you. I don’t know when it happened, only that it did.” I brushed a soft kiss across her lips. “I love you, Sienna.”
The surprised joy that lit up her face flooded me with a happiness I hadn’t thought could be any more intense.
Until she spoke.
“I love you, too.”
The intensity of the emotion swelling within me was almost overwhelming, and I did the only thing I could do.
I kissed her again.
CHAPTER THIRTY-ONE
Fury
I’d never been fond of having people invade my space, despite being a social person in my day-to-day life. I’d always attributed it to the transition from having my own room and sharing a house with just my parents, one brother, and one sister, to suddenly living in a house with more than a dozen people. Sure, I had my own room there too, but I never truly felt like I had much in the way of alone time.
So when I finally secured my place in Palo Alto, I discovered I preferred spending time with others anywhere but my apartment.
Yet here I was, sitting in my home office, a smile creeping across my face because Sienna was sleeping down the hall, curled up in my bed as if she’d always belonged there. And this wasn’t just a one-night thing. After the whole mess with Ralf, I had convinced her to stay with me. Having two separate people threatening her safety had been enough to sway her. Well, that and my promise not to mention Ralf to Gavin unless the idiot showed up at Club Privé.
According to Sienna, she could handle only one overprotective man at a time, and since she loved me, she preferred it to be me rather than her boss.
That thought made me chuckle softly. She loved me. I loved her. It felt like some sort of dream. I hadn’t been searching for it, nor had I really wanted it, but I found I couldn’t stop it.
For the first time, I truly understood everything the paired-off members of my family had been raving about over the past couple of years, and I braced myself for the inevitable harassment when they found out. Technically, my family in New York already knew I was involved with Sienna, and I assumed that meant everyone else had at least heard of her. But once they learned that this was serious, I knew it would be a while before I heard the end of it.
While I was thrilled to have Sienna here with me, her safety weighed heavily on my mind. I couldn’t do anything about Ralf at the moment, but I convinced Sienna to accompany me to the police station to file a complaint against him, hoping it would reach the same people investigating Lulu’s assault. Assuming they were still looking into it, anyway. If nothing came of it, I might consult Drake to see whom he thought I should approach about it. After all, if the cops weren’t willing to take a known pimp off the streets just because they looked down on his victims, who the hell would they arrest?
I sighed and shook my head. I was doing it again. Even knowing she was perfectly safe and content, Sienna was a distraction—one I was more than happy to have, but I still needed to focus.
An alert flashed on my computer screen, yanking my attention back to my work.
Days had passed, and neither Gavin nor I had unearthed anything about Arthur Dalton that we could use to bring him down. Since neither of us liked the idea of Sienna reaching out to her connections, she hadn’t found anything either. He was the one problem I should tackle, and yet here I was, unable to do a damn thing.
That was why I was trying something different.
Yesterday, I had exhausted my legal resources. I’d called in favors, reached out to old classmates, and even had Cory asking around back in California, but I was coming up empty. So finally, I decided it was time to take a risk. Break the law a little.
I’d asked Jules if she knew anyone who could help us dig deeper into Arthur’s finances. As luck would have it, she’d gone to college with a computer wiz, Gianni, who was also freelancing as a competent hacker. After a brief conversation and a substantial payment, Gianni agreed to help us out, no questions asked.
The alert on my screen was from him. I opened the encrypted message, my heart racing as I read through the information he’d uncovered.
Considering all the shady dealings Arthur had been involved in for years, it was a little embarrassing how easily Gianni had accessed his accounts. Arthur had chosen one of the least secure banks in the city, an institution I’d barely heard of and didn’t think existed outside of New York State, but I supposed he assumed that a bigger bank would scrutinize his transactions too closely.
Like the two large electronic payments made the day before, and the day after, the club was vandalized. And he hadn’t done it with a check he could claim was stolen and forged; no, it was right there as an electronic transfer completed from an unsecure computer. Gianni had traced the IP back to an address that belonged to Arthur.
Idiot.
It didn’t take Gianni much longer to access the account that received those payments and confirm not only that the two large ones originated from Arthur but also that a series of smaller payments had as well. Once he did that, he searched for the account’s owner.
Dodd Espenson.
Finding that name explained a lot. Getting into my building wouldn’t have been easy, but all someone had needed to do was bribe a person who worked there. Club Privé was a different story. As I’d seen when employees showed up to help clean, Gavin’s people were fiercely loyal to him. At one point, I would have claimed they all were, but the name in front of me proved otherwise.
It wasn’t a surprise once I thought about it.
