“I have said too much. It isn’t my story to tell.”
“Please.” The answer seemed closer than it appeared, and Catriona wasn’t letting it slip through her fingers.
Deva looked back at the door, as if Liam would materialize mid confession. “I’m speaking out of turn here, but if it shakes that thick-headed Irishman and sets him straight, I’ll do it. He was deeply traumatized by his mother from what I gathered.”
Catriona nodded. “Yes, he’s hinted about it several times.
Deva blinked in surprise. “Well, Liam must trust you a lot to even mention his mother. As I said, from what I could gather, they all had terrible childhoods, but I think Liam’s was the worst of them all, being a child of rape. But I believe that Liam’s mother’s reaction is what destroyed his soul.”
The information felt like a slap, and Catriona’s heart squeezed, remembering the emotions in Liam’s voice. “I feel for the kid he was, but I can imagine how his mother could survive it, forced to carry a child of abuse. All of her dreams of love and family destroyed because of Finch.”
“You could say that. However, her happily-ever-after isn’t the one you’d expect. Miss Harker was raped a week before taking her final vows in a convent.”
This time, it was as if she’d been sucker-punched, and in a twisted, evil way, Catriona now understood some of Liam’s reactions toward her. Did he see his own mother when he looked at her? Did he feel guilt touching her because of that tragic memory?
After the initial shock, she felt cold and lost, like a ship without a rudder at sea under a clouded sky. Where did she go from here?
Deva squeezed her arm one last time before stepping back. “Sorry to have bombarded you with dark information.”
“No, no... I needed to know. And there’s so much to consider.”
“To think or to pray about?”
The question made her smile. “Maybe a little bit of both.”
“Aleksei told me that he doesn’t mind going to church with you if you need him to.” As she went for the door, Deva paused before asking her a question. “I didn’t know there was a chapel so close to our home. What’s its name?”
“St. Philomena, if I remember well.”
“I heard that each saint is the patron of something. What’s hers?”
Catriona raked her brain. “If I’m not mistaken it’s prisoners, virgins, and desperate causes.”
Another smile bloomed on Deva’s face. “Well, I think that sums up your relationship with Liam, don’t you think?”
And on that note, the fascinating woman closed the door on Catriona’s stunned face.
* * *
Time passedlike sand through her fingers as Catriona poured over columns and columns of numbers. Apart from praying, it was the only thing that brought her this deep steadiness, a certainty that everything would be all right if she accomplished her task to the best of her ability.
It had been a challenge to keep her mind empty of anything else but the numbers, especially when her eyes went to the door countless times, and Liam was nowhere to be seen.
And yet again, the man had insinuated himself once more in her thoughts.
The papers were now in neat piles on the kitchen table of the small apartment. Although there was still a lot of work to be done, it was clear that a pattern emerged. The money moved around a lot, way too much, even for an investor. Most accounts, the official ones at least, had been seized by the police. It was evident that they only acted as fronts, or most probably as a place where the “clean” money showed. Jamieson Finch had several official sources of revenue; building, funds, companies... but it didn’t take a genius to see that it was only the tip of the iceberg. Catriona had seen Finch’s file, including the several upscale homes he owned around the world, and that income was far from enough to keep everything afloat.
That kind of money she searched for was like a virus; not visible to human eyes, or so intricately woven, it may never be possible to find. Deep down, there was that possibility, but she wouldn’t be satisfied until she got to the bottom of it. It was clear that the brothers had suffered too much to fail. Would that cloud over Liam’s heart be lifted at that moment?
Once more, his face filled her mind and she winced, pushing the image aside and pouring over the data again, but her memory slid toward Finch. How could a man be so evil, want so much power he destroyed women and cursed his own children? And even more surprising, how had that evil not seeped into those broken boys.
With that lingering thought in her mind and with an ear for the door, she reexamined every scrap of information looking for any hint that would tell her she had a lead.
Eyes gritty, but her body pumping with an increasing dose of adrenaline, every cell of her brain saw each little thread like a faint pulsing light in the dark, a twinkling light.
Through all the opened files, account numbers appeared again and again, partly hidden through a mashup of names and hordes of banks and her skin tingled.
It took a trained eye to see that kind of pattern, but once it started, it was the hook she was looking for, the very clue and why she’d agreed to Gabrielle’s request to help the brothers.
