The Mafia Heiress They Could Never Find novel · Chapter 2 of 24

Chapter 2: The Search

Conor and Declan search her room and take her phone and laptop because someone in the house is talking to the FBI; Maeve refuses to say where she goes, and her mother puts their father's watch in her hand and tells her to go.

Conor didn't knock on my door on Sunday morning.

He walked in with Declan behind him and two of our guards in the hallway.

I was sitting on the edge of my bed, tying my boots, and I stayed there.

"Hands where I can see them, Mae," Declan said.

"They're holding my laces."

"Put them down."

I put them down.

Conor stood in the middle of my room and looked at it for the first time in years.

He looked at the gun cabinet, the drafting table, and the sketches pinned over the desk.

"Someone in this house has been talking to the FBI," he said. "For three months. Every shipment we move, they know a day before."

Behind the guards, Finn leaned in the doorway with a coffee.

Ciara stood a step behind him, with her cardigan sleeves pulled over her hands.

I stared at Conor.

"And you're searching my room."

"I'm searching everyone's room," Conor said. "Yours is first because the trail runs through your laptop."

"My laptop."

"It's been logging into an outside server on Tuesday nights since August."

"That's the university's network. I take a class on Tuesdays."

"You haven't taken a class on Tuesdays since August," Declan said. "I called the registrar."

My face went hot, and I kept my voice flat.

"You called my registrar."

"Where do you go on Tuesday nights, Mae?" Conor asked.

I knew the answer, and I couldn't say it.

My professor had been taking me to the federal lab in the suburbs every Tuesday to test the program's equipment, and a signed secrecy form said I would lose the placement if I told anyone.

"It's not what you think it is," I said.

"Then tell me what it is."

"No."

The word sat in the room.

Declan opened my closet and started pulling things off the shelf onto the floor.

A guard went through my desk drawers, then my gun cabinet, then the drafting table.

Finn tried to help.

"I once hid a pony under a mattress," he said. "It's the first place anyone looks."

Nobody laughed, and he drank his coffee.

Declan found the laptop on the desk, closed, still plugged in.

Ciara had put it back there herself, the night before, around midnight, with a note that said thank you.

Declan opened it, and the screen asked for my password.

"Give it to me," he said.

I gave it to him.

I watched him scroll through my files for ten minutes.

He found my drawings, my class notes, a half-finished letter to Mom.

He found nothing else.

I watched Conor watch him find nothing.

"The phone," Conor said.

I handed over my phone, and Conor put it in his jacket pocket next to the laptop.

"You get both back after dinner tomorrow."

"What dinner?"

"Mom's welcome dinner for Ciara. Six o'clock. You'll be sitting at the table."

At six o'clock tomorrow a federal car would be at the gate.

I kept my face still.

"I'll be there," I said.

Ciara came forward and touched Conor's sleeve.

"Please don't take her things," she said. "Maeve didn't do this. Search mine first, if you have to search someone."

She held out her own phone to him, and her own laptop, and Conor didn't take them.

"You're family," he told her. "I'm not searching you."

"But she's family too."

"Then she'll understand."

He looked at me for a second longer than he needed to.

I waited for him to say sorry.

He said, "Don't leave the grounds without a guard."

They left, and the guard stayed in the hallway outside my door.

I picked my clothes up off the floor and folded them and put them back one by one.

The part of me that had always waited for Conor to say sorry was gone.

Close to noon, Mom knocked.

She was fifty-eight and still wore her wedding band on the right hand, where she had moved it after Dad died.

She shut the door behind her and didn't sit down.

"They searched your room," she said.

"They did."

"Conor means well. He's been so frightened since your father died."

"Mom."

"I'm not asking where you've been going."

She took something from the pocket of her cardigan and pushed it into my hand.

It was Dad's pocket watch, the old brass one with the dent on the lid.

It was warm from her pocket.

"I found your professor's number in your coat three weeks ago," she said. "I never told anyone."

My throat closed.

She curled my fingers around the watch.

"Your father would have hated what they did to you last night. Wherever you're going, Maeve, go."

← Chapter 1 · All chapters · Chapter 3 →

Want to keep talking to characters like these? Chat with AI romance characters: AI Boyfriend · AI Girlfriend · Dark Romance · Fantasy Romance · BL (Boys’ Love) · Billionaire Boyfriend · Mafia Boyfriend · Possessive Boyfriend · Hockey Boyfriend · Older Boyfriend · K-Drama Boyfriend · Anime Boyfriend · Vampire Boyfriend · Werewolf Boyfriend · Demon Boyfriend · Fae Romance · GL (Girls’ Love) · Anime Girlfriend · Goth & Alt Girlfriend · Gamer Girlfriend · Tsundere Girlfriend · Fantasy Girlfriend