Page 184 of Ruthless Claim

He clamps a hand over my mouth and I lick it. Jerking back, he stares at me in disbelief.

I wink at him. “I’m just saying she wasn’t wrong⁠—”

He tackles me then, pinning me to the couch and covering my mouth with his to shut up my shrieks of laughter. But even as we kiss, I can’t help but think about how this is another dead end.

A few days after that call, I still can’t stop thinking about it.

The woman posing as Claire Murphy had vanished like she never existed.

The boy, Finn, was presumably with her, though I really do wonder if he’d even been her real son or if that whole part was staged too.

Someone out there had tried to destroy my marriage and had nearly succeeded. And I had no idea who or why.

Were they still watching?

Planning another attack? Were they waiting for the baby to be born so they could strike when the Brennans and Santoros were at their most vulnerable?

The thought of that keeps me up at night and wakes me up from deep sleeps. Cillian pulls me back in every time without me having to say anything, his arm finding me in the dark. I let him because I’ve learned to let him.

Now, we tell each other everything. His fears about the baby, the dead-end investigation, the details of Connor’s business that I probably shouldn’t know.

In return, I stop performing. No more Santoro composure held together with expensive clothes and sheer will.

Being pregnant and pissed off and scared stripped most of that away whether I wanted it to or not, and somewhere in the wreckage of the last few months I stopped trying to put it back together.

I cry more now. I yell more.

Last week I cried at a dog food commercial, and Cillian, to his enormous credit, said nothing and handed me a tissue.

Somehow, we are a team. Stronger for having survived the attempt to tear us apart.

Tonight I have made us a lovely dinner at home.

And by “making us a lovely dinner,” I mean I ordered from my favorite Italian restaurant and I plate everything carefully, lighting a candle on the table. I survey my work. It looks extremely convincing, like I spent my afternoon slaving in the kitchen instead of lying in bed, watching true crime documentaries.

Cillian comes home at seven and he stops short when he sees the dining table.

“Dinner’s ready,” I tell him, as he turns to me in surprise. “Go wash up. I made us something.”

He raises an eyebrow. “You cooked.”

I lift my chin. “I did. Now go wash up.”

But he doesn’t heed my direction. His eyes dart from the table to me before he shakes his head. “You—Valentina Santoro Brennan—actually put on an apron and made food?”

“I don’t know why that’s surprising,” I sniff, standing up. “I cook.”

He looks at me like I’ve grown two heads. “Since when?”

Dammit, he’s got me there, but I’m not about to let him know that. “When you’re not around.” I’m not sure if reheating food or making myself tuna fish counts, but it does to me. “Go wash your hands, Cillian, and meet me in the dining room. I’m starving.”

He finally listens to me and disappears to wash his hands. He enters the dining room slowly, staring at the plates of food.

We sit down and dig into our meal, and I sigh with delight as I take a first bite of pasta bolognese.

God, Carmine’s is so good.

Cillian leans back in his chair, one eyebrow raised. “You ordered this.”