Page 34 of Mistletoe in the Mafia

How the hell did he find out all that? Damn.

“You’re still reaching, Dominic,” I say, although what he’s saying doesn’t sound like a conspiracy theory anymore.

He might be right. Holy shit, he might be right.

“Which leaves me with only one other option. Money. If we can find a paper trail that connects Reyes with someone at the university, we’ll have enough evidence to reopen the case,” heexplains. “He has to have had help from someone there in order to abduct the kids in the first place.”

I swallow. That actually makes a lot of sense. “So you want to look through the accounts of at least a dozen people from eight years ago?”

That will take forever.

“Yeah. You can do it, right?”

I scowl. He smirks. Asshole.

“Of course you can. Get to it, Madelyn. I’ll check back in at lunch so you can eat,” he informs me.

I roll my eyes. Again with the concern about my meals. He gets to his feet to leave, but I stop him.

“Hey, Dominic,” I call. “Why do you care so much? The kids are almost certainly already dead. They can’t come back.”

“I’m not doing it for them,” he replies, turning around and facing the door. “I’m doing it for the people still waiting for them. Their families. They deserve to know who’s responsible for their deaths. They deserve closure,” he states. And then he’s walking out of my office.

His words resonate deep within me. So deep it hurts. Dominic might not be as robotic or unfeeling as I thought he was.

Maybe deep down, he has an actual human heart.

Thanks to him, the case is cracked wide open with fresh investigations. Emily Raines and the rest of the kids step forward with new statements that lead us on a trail to a professor at the school—the one who had been in charge of the SyTech project. Apparently, he helped with the cover up. He confesses soon enough that the kids were abducted and killed because theystumbled upon illegal human trials at the company’s laboratory. Kevin Reyes is also implicated and it’s found out that he orchestrated the whole thing.

The entire story is national news two days later, with the perpetrators brought to justice. The kids’ murderers are apprehended and their families are finally able to get some peace.

And it’s all because of Dominic. If he’d never tried to get to the bottom of it all, none of this would have happened. I walk through his open office door holding a potted plant fitted with a red bow. Dominic raises an eyebrow in question.

“Hey, superstar,” I greet.

He’s become pretty popular in the office after the whole SyTech thing. I’m pretty sure he hates all the attention, but he did something truly amazing. And while I’m almost certain half the things he did to get to solve the case weren’t exactly legal, I’m glad he succeeded.

“I can’t believe you’re walking into my office of your own free will,” he drawls before nodding toward the plant in my hand. “What’s that supposed to be?”

I grin and place the pot on a corner of his desk, directly in the sunlight.

“It’s a cactus and a gift.” I announce proudly. “They’re pretty easy to take care of so you don’t need to worry about it. Just water it sometimes and it’ll grow. They’re pretty resilient.”

He watches me intently, studying me like he can see into my head. “And what have I done to deserve thisgift?”

“It’s a peace offering. I’ve come to realize there’s more than enough room for two intelligence analysts on the team. And you’ve proven yourself to be useful, so I figured we could start over.”

“There was nothing wrong with how we began in the first place,” he interjects.

My cheeks heat as I remember exactly how we began and what it entailed.

“The point is, I want to put it all behind us. Could we just be friends?”

“Friends, huh?” he asks, seemingly amused.

“Yep.”

He’d be a friend I fantasize about every night before bed and every morning when I wake up. But a friend nonetheless.

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