Chapter 4 - Interrogation Behind Closed Doors
Twenty minutes later, I sat across a massive mahogany desk in Ronan Cain’s private study. The room smelled of old leather, expensive bourbon, and ozone.
On the desk sat an open manila folder. Without needing to look closely, I knew what was inside: my entire fabricated life. Twenty-eight years old, single mother, clean credit score, clean police record, no outstanding debts, not even a parking ticket.
Ronan stood by the floor-to-ceiling window, looking out over the manicured gravel gardens of Raven Hill while swirling a glass of dark amber liquid.
"A record this clean," he said without turning around, "looks less like a life and more like a carefully edited manuscript. People in your tax bracket don't have zero debt in Ashport unless someone is paying lawyers to scrub the ledger."
He turned slowly, resting his hip against the edge of the heavy desk, his dark eyes boring straight through me. "Who taught you the Silent Ledger dialect? Only three people in this entire state knew that sign language: my father, myself, and my younger brother, Julian—who died in a fiery car wreck four years ago."
My heart hammered against my ribs like a trapped bird. Julian. The golden-haired, rebellious youngest Cain who had refused to take over the family's illicit shipping lanes, choosing instead to disappear into the underground night.
"I learned it from a deaf patient when I was working at a clinic downtown," I lied smoothly, having rehearsed this exact fabrication for years. "Hand signs are universal if you spend enough hours studying rehabilitation manuals."
Ronan stared at me in absolute, piercing silence for ten full seconds. It was a psychological torture tactic designed to make the suspect crack under the weight of their own breath. He didn't know my secret yet—he didn't know I had been in the passenger seat of that burning car four years ago, or that Julian had shoved me out just before impact with a dying gasp and a secret packet pressed into my palm—but he knew with bone-deep certainty that I was hiding something catastrophic.
Then, to my utter shock, the corner of his mouth twitched upward into a humorless, dangerous smirk.
"A compelling story," Ronan murmured, setting his glass down with a soft clack. "My mother hasn't responded to a single nurse or doctor in four years. Yet the moment you walked into her room, she not only took her medicine from your hands, but she tried to speak to you in a code that is technically extinct."
He leaned forward, resting his palms on the desk, closing the distance between us until I could feel the heat radiating off him.
"You're not leaving Raven Hill, Miss Callaway. Not today, not next week."
My breath caught. "You're firing me?"
"I'm promoting you," Ronan corrected smoothly. "Triple your agency salary. You will become my mother's exclusive, twenty-four-hour personal caregiver. You will remain under my security detail's direct observation inside this estate at all times—with one specific exception."
May you like
He paused, letting the silence build.
"Every evening between five and seven o'clock, my personal driver will take you home to your apartment, wait downstairs, and bring you back the next morning. Because I am well aware that you have a six-year-old daughter named Poppy waiting for dinner."
