Page 18 of Stolen Temptation (Irish Kings #3)

Rory

I’m not serious when I make the threat, but Kiara goes pale and drops my phone. “Know about what?”

I open my mouth to reassure her, then shut it again, ignoring the pang in my chest.

If she believes I’m serious, she’s more likely to confess, and any information she provides may help us keep our men alive. Besides, she’s less likely to face Finn and Shane’s wrath if she speaks up. If I get her to talk, she’ll be safer.

Another pang strikes my chest. I ignore that one, too, and release her wrist. “Let’s start with Leo. What’s his next plan of attack?”

She shakes her head. “I have no idea. Leo never shared any business information with me.”

“Nothing? You sure? Even the most insignificant piece of information could be useful.”

“I barely ever saw Leo, and he never talked to me about anything except…”

My internal radar pings. “He never talked to you about anything except what?” When she doesn’t answer, I start to rise. “Okay, I guess we’re doing this the hard way. I’ll go grab Finn, and then we’ll see if?—”

“Wait!” She inhales. Exhales. “Art. Leo never talked to me about anything except art.”

Triumph sweeps through me.

Gotcha.

I sit back down in the chair. “Tell me about the painting.”

She slumps, shoulders rounded with defeat. “You were right. It’s one of mine.” She glares at her kneecaps like they betrayed her.

Her dejected posture drains some of my satisfaction. I want her fire and sass…but I also have a task to complete. “How long have you been an art forger for the De Lucas?”

Her head snaps up. “Art forger?”

I cross my arms and smirk at her obvious shock. “Your surprise that I figured it out is almost insulting. Libertas has been painting for over twenty years, so unless you were some wunderkind, there’s no way you’re the original artist.”

The discovery gratifies me because I love solving puzzles. Lately, we’ve all failed in that arena. Especially me, since part of my job is to track down information and decode it to keep our organization thriving. Being stumped for so long makes me feel like a hack with a laptop.

Now, I can follow through on my promise and bring useful intel back to Finn.

No more standing there with nothing while he regards me with disappointment.

He’s fighting a war and trying to find a mole.

Cian’s either glued to his side or out on the front lines.

Darren usually goes back and forth between them, acting as support for their various projects.

And me, what am I good for? Finding impossible information to give us the leg-up on our enemies and help us reverse this losing streak.

We all just want some peace and quiet. If Kiara’s information leads to us crushing Leo like the cockroach he is, then maybe we’ll finally achieve that goal.

“I didn’t expect a guy like you to even know about Libertas,” Kiara grumbles, stalling. “Or art in general.”

Her jab bounces off me. I know a lot of guys like me don’t give a shit about art. I never would have found Libertas either if my mom hadn’t introduced me.

My brain spins. This didn’t occur to me when I was piecing the puzzle together earlier, but if Kiara’s an art forger, does that mean she and Leo were never fucking? I love the idea of that a little too much. But if a lover’s quarrel didn’t send Kiara fleeing from the auction, what did?

Before I can hit her with another question, my phone blares to life.

And not just with any ringtone. With the one I reserve for Finn.

That means my time’s up. I need to go report to him on what I’ve found out from Kiara today. He won’t be expecting any drama like this .

I had a hunch about Kiara’s value, but I never could have guessed she was this deeply entangled with the De Lucas. And my gut insists there’s more to the story.

I stand, answering Finn’s call in the same motion. “I’m on my way up,” I tell him, and the line drops.

“What’s going on?” Kiara climbs off the bed and follows me to the door, a puppy who doesn’t want to be left alone.

Something about that small, unconscious gesture pricks me right in the heart.

This woman. She’s a menace.

“I’ve got work to do, and you need to get your story straight.” I give her a long look. “I want to hear all about it when I get back.”

“You’re leaving?”

One of my eyebrows quirks. “You going to miss me?”

Her face pinches into a scowl. She’s so damn cute that I actually laugh out loud.

She startles and stares for a moment before shaking her head. “What am I supposed to do in here by myself? How long are you planning to keep me here?—”

“If you need something, tell me what it is.”

Kiara blinks up at me, her eyes wide. She glances at the floor, chewing her bottom lip, and then, slowly, she returns her gaze to mine. “Books.”

“What kind of books?”

“Children’s books. Charlotte’s Web . Where the Wild Things Are .”

Her shoulders droop again, like she really is sad to be left alone.

“I’ll have a few titles sent up.” The words are out before I can think them over, but fuck it. I hate seeing her all mopey.

She rears back, eyes wide and stunned. “You will?” Her hands clasp together in front of her. “Thank you,” she breathes.

I try not to frown. She’s acting like I promised her a check for a million dollars, not a couple of dusty old books. “It’s no problem.”

The guard ends the exchange by closing the door between us.

Why do I feel unsatisfied?

It takes everything in me to peel myself away from her doorway and head down the hall and up two flights of stairs to the war room, where Finn’s waiting for me.

Somehow, it takes even more effort to keep myself from pulling up the estate’s internal security cam system to check on her.

What the hell is up with me right now? I really need to get a grip.

To distract myself, I text Harper and Riley about getting some books sent up to our honored guest, drop my phone in my pocket, and pull the doors to the war room open. Finn’s perched at the central table, eyes pouring over a map of the boroughs.

Red pins mark all the places where we’ve lost men in skirmishes and shoot-outs with the De Lucas and their sympathizers.

There are more pins now than there were the last time I was here.

The weight of that on Finn’s shoulders…I can see it the moment I enter the room. When I walk in, he glances up with a dark expression.

I stride toward him until we’re side by side.

“So? Did you find out who she is?”

“Not exactly, but I did learn what she does for the De Lucas.”

Finn grunts at me to continue, so I keep talking. By the time I finish, he’s got the same questions I do.

“So she’s the one who’s been generating the Libertas paintings that the De Lucas have been making millions off of on the black market.”

“Yep.”

Finn folds his arms as he processes this information. “Well, that does explain why a bunch of bastards with no taste have made a fortune in selling art.”

“I don’t know why we didn’t think of it sooner.” I grab my phone and toggle my way onto the secure server where I’ve been saving classified information about the De Lucas. “Money laundering. Shady deals. The black market.”

“They got into the business as smugglers.”

“And then decided to branch out.” I nod. He’s starting to get it.

“Perfect for scumbags like them to enrich themselves millions of times over…” Finn pushes out a breath. “Fuck, Rory, you may have really found it this time. The missing piece.”

The way he says found it this time brings to memory all the failures of my past in one bitter bite of acid reflux.

I set my jaw but don’t say anything.

Finn draws back, startling me.

“What is it?”

“We need to work fast.” The cogs in his brain must be spinning on overdrive. A vein pops in his temple, like something just occurred to him.

Something I missed.

“What do you need me to do?”

“Get on the dark web, analyze the chatter, and find out if anyone knows that we have Kiara. Do it now.” His expression darkens. “We have the upper hand, but not for long. As soon as Leonardo figures out we have his cash cow, he’ll be coming for us.”

“We weren’t spotted leaving with her, but I’ll triple check.”

Relief loosens Finn’s shoulders a little. “The next thing we have to do is figure out what to do with her.”

Tires screech to a halt in my head.

I know what Finn means . He’s planning to use Kiara. Not just for information. Maybe for bait or blackmail.

And for some reason, I don’t like it. At all.

In the past, I never protested the practice of using hostages for the Kings’ personal gain.

I don’t know what’s wrong with me or why the idea of using Kiara offends me in every sense. Only that the thought sends my blood pressure soaring and my fists itching to pummel the person who suggested such a thing into the mush.

Even if that person is my boss.

Every muscle fiber in me rebels over the idea of endangering Kiara. I want to keep her here on the estate, safe and sound.

I just want to keep her, period.

I’m aware that makes me almost as bad as Finn or the De Lucas, who’ve been using her as their own personal art machine to funnel money back into their family.

But I can’t let her go. Not yet.

Maybe never.

For fuck’s sake. Now I feel like Cian with his sociopathic obsessiveness about Harper.

I shake the thought off, forcing myself to tune back into the conversation I’m missing. “We don’t know how best to make use of Kiara yet, but leave that to me.” Finn heads for the door. Once I catch up, he continues. “Start with the chatter. Survey the landscape. Find out how much time we have.”

“Right.”

“We’ll hold off for now and wait until my father makes a decision about our next move,” Finn carries on.

“The real issue here is…Kiara’s been making those assholes money for at least a few years now.

The De Lucas wouldn’t sell off their main money-making operation unless they had something big to replace it with. ”

“I’ll dig into it.”

“Cross-reference your findings with people who were there,” Finn suggests, shoving the doors to the war room open. “The De Lucas probably struck a new business deal or formed a powerful alliance. We need to know what it was and whether kidnapping Kiara slowed anything down.”

Finn’s got my mind racing as we head toward the grand staircase.

“I expect an update by tomorrow morning.” Finn throws the command over his shoulder as we part ways. He’s likely off to his father’s study, while I’m headed down to the security hub.

“Done.”

When I’m back in my natural habitat, surrounded by screens, keyboards, and live sensors, I begin my deep dive into the dark web for word or fallout related to Kiara’s abduction.

I don’t find much of anything. I wish that relieved me, but it doesn’t.

Kiara was the prize auction piece last night. The ‘artist Libertas.’ There’s no way the De Lucas don’t realize she’s missing. They lost a fuck-ton of money when she disappeared.

How did they plan to explain the age discrepancy to whoever bought her? Maybe I overlooked the part of the description that identified her as a fake, much younger Libertas. Not that the average auction guest would give two shits about forgeries. They only care about bringing in money.

If there’s no chatter about her on the dark web, all that means is that they managed to cover up her disappearance and control the bleed of online information.

That leads me to believe the De Lucas are likely moving through the shadows, same as I am, analyzing the guests who were in attendance that night and all the security camera footage to find out what happened to Kiara.

And it won’t take them long to figure out she was with me.

The sun’s gone by the time I power down for the day. I should go to sleep, but part of me wants to check in on Kiara.

Another part of me doesn’t. I don’t want to look her in the eye knowing that Finn is planning to use her in this fight against the De Lucas.

Restlessness devours me. For a while, I just pace the office on my own, trying to comb my tangled thoughts into braids of logical, connected strands of information.

But nothing works. I could head to Madden. Burying myself in a warm body might relax me enough to sleep.

The idea holds no appeal. The only woman I want to bury myself in right now is down the hall. Our temporary prisoner. Someone I need to keep my hands off.

Finally, I break down and consider a compromise.

Instead of going to bed like I should, I pull up the CCTV feed for the areas in and around Kiara’s bedroom. Outside her room, the guard is fast asleep, leaning against the door. I can tell he’s dozing by the drift in his skull.

Moron. Quickly, I pull up the feed from the two cameras inside the room.

The bed is empty. That’s because our little painter is standing by the window, one leg over the ledge.

Like a spy in an action flick, she pulls her other leg over, too, and begins to climb down.

“You’ve got to be fucking kidding me.”

Toggling to the outdoor CCTV feeds, I watch her literally scale the side of the building like fucking Spider-Man. Her feet and hands search the bricks for purchase as she steadily descends.

I was wrong about her. She’s not a forger.

She’s an escape artist.

My pulse skyrockets as I spring to my feet. “Ballsy, ridiculous woman. You’re going to get yourself killed.”

If she thinks I’ll just let her slip away into the night, she’d better think again. And if she falls and cracks open her skull? I’ll chase her into the afterlife just to strangle her.

Right now, she’s our prize. My prize. Nothing and no one is going to take her away before I’m ready.

Not Kiara. Not the De Lucas. Not even death herself.

After one last glance at the monitor, I launch out the door.

Time to teach my little painter a lesson.