Page 71 of His Forced Irish Mafia Bride

“No assumptions.”

A short exhale. “Understood.”

I leaned back, waiting. This was the beginning of the end.

CHAPTER NINETEEN

Maeve

Two days was enough time for a lie to stop feeling like a lie, but it wasn’t enough time for it to disappear. Sean and I hadn’t spoken properly since that night. It wasn’t because there was nothing to say; it was because there was too much. So I stayed away from his office corridor. I took different routes through the building.I kept an eye on his schedule just so I wouldn’t have to accidentally cross paths with him. My thoughts followed me anyway, in punishing fragments. I couldn’t stop remembering the sound of his voice when he told me to stop talking like I already knew the answer. The look he gave me when I walked out. The silence after. Worse than all of it was the fact that nothing about him had changed afterward. That was what unsettled me most.

He continued living like nothing happened, as if I hadn’t disrupted anything at all. I saw him once in the kitchen. It was brief.

I tried my best to be normal. I said something about the coffee being terrible. He said it was the same as always. Then I started talking about the weather and the troubles in the Middle East…silly me! That should have made things easier, but it hadn’t. There’d been a pause after that that felt too deliberate to ignore, so I left before it could stretch into something else. That was the pattern now, distance managed in seconds and moments cut short before they became questions. I told myself that was fine. Whatever was happening between us wasn’t something I could afford to examine closely.

I turned my attention to where it was supposed to be, the investigation. That was the one thing I could control without needing to interpret my feelings. At least, that was the idea. But even that had started to change. I was past just looking atinformation. I was looking for the patterns that didn’t want to be seen.

I started with the notes I’d already gathered, then went back further than I wanted to. I reviewed earlier movements and conversations. I saw inconsistencies I’d written off as coincidence because I didn’t have enough reason to question them at the time. Now I did.

I didn’t tell Sean what I’d found yet. It didn’t feel like secrecy; it felt like a necessity. The deeper I went, the more the edges of things stopped aligning cleanly.

There were always small delays in communication. Reports that arrived too neatly summarized. Information that seemed to reach the right place too quickly, without visible routing.

It was nothing concrete. But it was good enough that I started reading everything twice. Then three times, until I wasn’t sure anymore whether I was seeing a pattern or building one in my head.

Still, I kept going, because the alternative was stopping. And stopping meant going back to thinking about him and the shit between us that we pretended hadn’t happened.

***

I found Teresa in the same storage room again. Same steady movement. The cloth in her hand moved across the surface like it had its own rhythm. Nothing rushed. Nothing new. It felt like the penthouse itself had habits, and Teresa was one of them.

I didn’t stay at the door this time. I stepped in fully and closed it behind me. Teresa noticed but didn’t say anything right away. She just looked up for a second, then went back to what she was doing.

I leaned against the wall nearby, watching her work. “You’re always here,” I said.

She didn’t stop cleaning. “And you’re always walking around like you’re looking for something,” she replied.

I released a small breath that almost counted as a laugh. “Maybe I am.”

That made her glance at me briefly, but her face stayed the same. Calm. Neutral.

A short silence followed. It didn’t feel heavy anymore, just normal. I shifted my weight slightly.

“I didn’t sleep last night,” I said.

Her hand slowed a little. “Bad bed?” she asked.

I shook my head. “Not the bed.”

She hummed softly, like she understood but didn’t need more details. I looked around the room while I spoke again.

“It’s strange,” I said. “This place is too quiet sometimes. It makes your mind too loud.”

Teresa finally stopped for a moment and set the cloth down. “Quiet isn’t the problem,” she said. “What people do with it is.”

For a second, neither of us spoke. Then she picked the cloth back up and continued working like she hadn’t said anything important at all.

I stayed where I was for a moment, letting the silence settle again. It was easier now between us, less like I was an outsider standing in her space. When I spoke again, my voice was softer.