Page 193 of Ruthless Claim

The afternoon light is the particular gold of late summer, the kind that makes everything look like it was arranged specifically to be looked at, and the garden is full of people who have no idea I’m watching them.

Cillian Brennan stands near the fountain with his daughter in his arms.

The baby is in white lace, an enormous bow on her head. She’s already asleep against her father’s shoulder.

Her blonde hair moves gently in the breeze and Brennan gently moves it out of her face.

His wife, Valentina, is beside him, her hand on his back, laughing at something someone said. The way he looks at her when she laughs⁠—

I look away.

Across the lawn, a small dark-haired toddler in a white dress is making a waddling break for the rose beds while her father, Leo Santoro, lunges after her.

“Seraphina!” He catches her around the middle and hoists her up. She shrieks with delight, kicking her small legs, absolutely thrilled with herself. I study the Santoro heir.

The resemblance to Leo is extraordinary.

Emma Brennan’s genes, apparently, did not even attempt to show up.

This child is Leo Santoro in miniature, down to the stubborn expression she’s currently wearing.

Santoro places a kiss on the child’s cheek before he sets her down and takes her hand.

She immediately pulls toward the roses again.

“We’re going this way,” Santoro tells her, steering her firmly in the opposite direction, shaking his head as he tries to corral his toddler. Seraphina looks up at him with his own eyes and his own expression and appears to be weighing her options.

Then she spots something else across the lawn and takes off toward it, dragging her father behind her.

Santoro goes, because apparently that’s what they do to you.

I look away.

Children. Unity. Peace.

Irrelevant sentimentalities.

“Ty gotov?” Nikolai asks in Russian, as he silently appears at my shoulder.

I don’t look at him, still watching Seraphina Santoro. “Almost.”

“Almost?” My brother asks, raising a brow.

“I’m close to finding the source.” I keep my voice low, letting the string quartet someone has inexplicably hired for a baby’s christening drown out our conversation to any eavesdroppers. “The irregularities in our accounts. The shell companies. All of it leads back to one person.”

Nikolai is quiet for a moment. “The traitor.”

I incline my head. “Da.”

“And the woman?”

I watch Seraphina make another break for the roses. Santoro catches her easily and marches her back toward Brennan and his wife, where Santoro’s wife stands as well. “I found her.”

Eight years of dead ends and false leads and wrong names and cold trails. Eight years. “She witnessed something eight years ago; she ran before I could reach her.”

Nikolai stills. “She knows who’s behind it?”

“She knows enough.” My jaw tightens. “She has answers I’ve been looking for a long time.”