Page 27 of Nolan (The Doherty Mafia)
I looked over at Nolan while he slept soundly beside me. I’d slipped out of his bed once and I figured I’d be able to do it one more time.
As quietly as possible, I slipped off the bed and put on my clothes. I didn’t have a plan, but I knew I had to take this opportunity to explore the house. I knew there were cameras around, security men with weapons too…but now that they’d seen me with Nolan and probably guessed we had sex in his room—my only hope was they’d leave me alone. Giving me an opportunity to snoop around.
Nolan hadn’t shown me around his home the previous night, and the house was large, filled with lots of hallways and rooms. The winding staircase was imposing and confusing. I didn’t exactly know where I was going when I decided to snoop.
It was very early in the morning and I tried to be as quiet as possible in the hopes that I wouldn’t encounter someone from the family. The problem was—I didn’t even know what I was looking for.
Some files? Papers? A blueprint?
Aldo hadn’t given me any helpful clues and I highly doubted the Dohertys had written up and filed a detailed plan of attack on Aldo. But I was curious nonetheless and hoped to find something that’d help further my mission.
I was shoeless as I roamed around the quiet house, while I assumed everyone else slept. I peeped through the windows to look outside at the beautiful garden, which looked even more glorious now in the daytime. I was worried about opening a door and finding someone on the other side—someone I didn’t want to meet.
Even though I hadn’t seen any of the armed guards inside the house, I knew they were watching me. They were outside patrolling the estate. It would look extremely suspicious if they caught me on camera, snooping through important documents. Not that I had come across any, yet.
So I pretended to just have lost my way. I figured if I found my way to the kitchen, at least I could get a drink of water and pretend that was why I’d left Nolan’s room in the first place.
I went down the stairs and peeped at the empty rooms. There wasn’t anything here I could use. No information I could go back to Aldo with. Once again, that dreadful feeling of being a failure settled on me. I’d have to leave this place empty handed.
I strode into the kitchen, assuming it would be empty just like all the other rooms in the house. However, I gasped when I found someone standing at the kitchen counter.
It was a woman, with her back turned to me. When she heard me gasp, she turned around.
“Who are you?” she shrieked. She had a big knife in her hand that she held up in a self-defense stance.
I held up both my hands to show her I wasn’t armed.
Whoever she was, she was definitely jumpy.
“It’s okay. I’m with Nolan. I’m Amelia,” I said.
She glared at me suspiciously, then lowered her knife and put it down on the counter again.
“You’re a friend of Nolan’s?” she asked, looking me over closely.
“Y…yes, kinda. We’re…yeah…he brought me here last night. I wanted to see the garden.”
She looked through the kitchen window at the garden and nodded.
“Yeah, it’s a pretty neat garden. Definitely worth coming here all the way to see,” she said.
My heart raced. I was worried she was being sarcastic and she’d figured out exactly who I was. But then she smiled suddenly at me and came forward.
“It’s nice to meet you, Amelia. I’m Reese. Reese Doherty. Nolan’s brother, Killian’s wife,” she said.
Reese returned to her meal-prep after we were done with our initial introductions. It looked like she was preparing the fillings for several Spanish frittatas.
“It’s my turn to cook our big family breakfast, so I wanted to get here early and start on it,” she explained.
I knew she trusted me because she turned her back to me again.
I poured myself a glass of water and sipped it, standing close to her.
“Big family breakfasts? Is this something Nolan is invited to?” I asked. I couldn’t keep the bitterness from my voice. I’d put the pieces together.
Reese looked over her shoulder at me. “So he’s told you about the current tensions between him and his brothers.”
“He’s told me how he’s made to feel like an outsider most of the time, and he definitely didn’t tell me about a big family breakfast that he’d been invited to.”
Reese sighed and wiped her hands on the apron she’d tied at her waist.
“Of course Nolan is invited to the family breakfasts. We have it every Saturday morning…well, we’ve had it for the past month. But he never shows up. Maybe he just forgets.”
I rolled my eyes and looked away. Reese came towards me again.
