Page 18 of Possessive Mafia Vows

Accessing adoption records is more cumbersome, for obvious reasons, but if there’s one thing that I’ve learned from the casino’s resident IT programmer, it’s that nothing is impossible. No system is infallible. You simply need to find another way in, by thinking like a cypherpunk, by thinking like someone who understands how to protect information.

I lose track of time. The jug in the coffee machine empties, and I refill it with bottled water. My mouth is dry. My palms are sweaty. The muscles in the back of my neck are burning from sitting in one position for too long, but I’ve come too far to give up now.

When I finally find a way into the system I need, I fist-pump the air.

The sky outside the windows is still black, but swathes of violet and mauve are bleeding upwards from the horizon. My eyes are gritty with tiredness. And I still have a long way to go.

I pace my office to get the blood circulating through my limbs.

Then, rolling up my sleeves, I resume my seat, and start scrolling through every adoption record for the relevant date.

I’m so close. I sense it in the heavy rhythm of my heartbeat.

I told Mateo Dragonetti that I was hoping to find a motive. Evidence that Nick Morris isn’t just a cosmetic surgeon attracted to a patient. Proof that dating Sienna Walker will benefit him in some way aside from the obvious.

Nothing could’ve prepared me for what I eventually discover as the city is waking up and the streets fill with noise.

Nick Morris entered the care system in Chicago when he was eleven months old. He was discovered in a rundown apartment when a neighbor alerted the police department to the baby that had been screaming for hours. According to his records, his mom’s body was found on the bed beside the baby’s crib—she had been beaten to death.

The temperature in my office feels as though it has dropped a couple of degrees, and I rub my hands together to keep them warm.

I open an image of the birth certificate. Nick Morris was given his mother’s maiden name at birth: Scanlan. The line reserved for the father’s name is blank.

My gut clenches. I could leave it here. Nick Morris had the kind of start in life that reads like something from a horror movie, potentially witnessing his mom being brutally murdered while he screamed from inside his crib. His recollection may have been buried beneath the vivid autobiographical memories that children start to form as they grow older, but that bloody scene will have scarred his psyche for life.

The panic trying to beat its way out of my chest goes way deeper than Nick Morris’s trauma though. This hits too close to home. Chicago. His mom bludgeoned to death. The child abandoned.

Ignoring the message from Lauren, the PA that I share with Caleb, letting me know that she’s in the office, I search for the court records regarding the case.

This time, I know what I’m going to find. It doesn’t stop the bile from rising in my throat when I read the name of the prime suspect in the murder investigation.

Caelan O’Reilly.

The police launched a nationwide investigation to find Sally Scanlan’s killer, with no success. They followed leads that had them scurrying like insects from Canada to Mexico. While Caelan O’Reilly, having changed his name to Caelan Murray, was worming his way into the life of a young woman named Moira. A young woman he would almost kill seven years later. An attempted homicide for which he is currently serving a life sentence.

My brothers and I share the same biological father as Nick Morris.

Coincidence?

The voice inside my head is shrieking at me that there’s no such thing as coincidence.

Nick Morris is here for a reason. Now I need to figure out exactly how Sienna fits into the puzzle.

5

SIENNA

Shortly after Iarrive at the gallery the following morning, I receive a delivery of flowers. A hundred white roses. The card reads simply:Kyle.

I take them through to the office, place them on my desk, and sit back in my seat. The fragrance fills the room, and I find myself turning the card round and around between my fingers. They’re beautiful. Pure and innocent and delicate.

But I wish he hadn’t sent them.

I don’t want flowers. I cover my face with my hands and press my palms into my eyes making them burst with firework displays of color.

I don’t know what I want but sending me flowers isn’t going to change anything or help me to make up my mind.

Is he trying to buy me? I mean, isn’t that what people like the Murrays do, buy whatever they want, including people? Do they ever stop to consider that there are people out there who want different things? People who maybe don’t want to live in a glass tower and eat Michelin-starred food every night and getphotographed by the paparazzi every time they step foot on the sidewalk?

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