Page 117 of Shadow

Ripley chuckled when he came in behind her and saw what she was doing. “Your pussy looks amazing after a good fucking,” he said, peeking in the mirror over her shoulder.

She giggled. “Thanks, I guess? You’re going to regret letting Sabrina fuck me like that when I can’t have sex for another week.”

“Silly girl. Pussies heal fast. You’ll be back to begging for Daddy’s cock in twenty-four hours. And hey, if you’re not, I’ll still fuck you. You’ve got two more places for me to choose from, don’t you, Liv?”

She blushed but nodded. “Yes, Daddy. My body is yours. My heart is yours, too. I’m sorry if I hurt you by not trusting you to come home eventually.” Her conversation with Tyson at dinner came rushing back, and suddenly she was desperate to talk about everything.

But Ripley put a finger to her lips. “Shh. You have nothing to be sorry for. I’m the one who’s sorry, baby girl.”

He pressed a kiss to her bare shoulder. “Let’s get you dressed so we can get out of here. I still need to tell you what I found tonight, and I’m not looking forward to that conversation.”

Chapter 31

“WHATdidyoufind?”

Olivia and Ripley sat facing each other on the bed in their hotel suite. At first, Ripley was going to have the conversation at Serendipity, but Olivia was floating high in subspace. So, he’d just held her and let her come down while they visited quietly with Tyson for another hour after finishing their intense scene.

Now, unfortunately, it was time to fill her in.

“We found evidence that my old supervisor Brian Doran got in touch with Mario DeBarr just a week before the two of you first met in his restaurant.”

Olivia frowned. “Right. You told me that before you left the restaurant with Samuel. I’m asking what you found at Mario’s house.”

He closed his eyes. It wasn’t pretty.

“You don’t need to hear all that, baby.”

She folded her arms and glared. “If it’s about me, I can take it, Ripley. He was not a nice man. That became abundantly clear about two seconds after we said our vows.”

“He had pictures of you.”

Her eyes grew wide. “What kind of pictures? Like revenge-porn?”

Ripley nodded. “Something like that. A lot are of you sleeping. Some appear to be stills from videos he took of the two of you together. My guess is before Peter and Gage and the others got involved, he was planning to use them to get what he wanted from you in the divorce.”

She buried her face in her hands. “And you looked at them? That is so embarrassing.”

He reached for her hand. “There’s nothing for you to be embarrassed by. Lance is making sure they disappear forever. He didn’t open them, by the way. The photos were stored in a file that looked like it hadn’t been accessed in a while, so he’s not even going to miss them unless he goes looking for them. And by then it will be too late.”

“That’s not all you found, though, is it?”

Ripley shook his head. “No. We found videos of multiple women. And we found much more solid connections between Brian and Mario. Emails, texts, all of it confirms what Lance initially found. Brian has been trying to push me out of the agency for several years. He started by using tradecraft and when that didn’t work, he came after me personally. What I don’t understand is why he’s still coming after me.”

Olivia shifted and laid on her side. “Why did he want you out so bad?”

“I have some compromising evidence against him on a mission we both worked on when we were new to the organization. He fucked up big time. At the time, it seemed right to keep it quiet. We protect each other when we can, and what he did was a major fuck-up for sure, but nobody innocent got hurt. I kept the evidence, though. When he got put on the fast-track for a leadership role, he started harassing me to get rid of the evidence. I told him not to worry about it. He was obsessed. But I think when he really started to hate me was when I took Corbit Upwood down.”

“And he was the former CIA Director you busted for human trafficking, right?”

Ripley nodded. “That’s the one. Brian was working directly under Upwood, and saw my going to work for the NSA to take him down as a betrayal to the CIA. The alphabet organizations don’t always get along. He’s been trying to talk me out of testifying against him during the appeals process and when I wouldn’t agree is when he really ramped up his efforts to push me into retirement.”

Lines marred Olivia’s forehead as she frowned, and he knew what she was going to ask next. “I don’t understand how Fiona fits into any of this.”

Ripley grimaced. “It’s kind of sinister when you really look at it. Brian has been using people his entire career. Fiona was one of them. He’s highly skilled at picking apart crime scenes and investigations. It turns out, he spotted Fiona’s blog and obsession with me long before it was ever on my radar. I’m talking years. And he used that to his advantage. Started dating her to see what she might know. Once he dug into my life and realized I cared deeply about you, he sent her to your bar when she was looking for another job.”

“What would he have done if I didn’t hire her?”

Ripley shrugged. “It’s hard to say. My guess is he would have ended the relationship.”

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