earlier.
I punched the button that would return me to the office level then flung the pass card at his feet, leaving him alone on the roof.
By the time I reached the conference room, Riona had returned.
"Sweet sister, you look a mess," she said, concern warming her gaze. "I was hoping the two of you were off reconciling your differences."
I gave an angry shake of my head but said nothing else. I didn't have time to sort the thoughts racing through my head and talk to Riona before Dylan returned.
He looked completely nonplussed. Not a hair out of place, perfectly composed. He slid his jacket off and returned to the stack of folders. I followed suit, trying to find some normalcy that would soothe my nerves and distract my mind from what had just happened up on the roof.
The bastard had called me "love" -- after acting like a callous jerk to the point I fainted.
I fucking fainted! First time ever. Because of him.
Snapping open the guest folder, I looked at the first page again and immediately noticed what I had missed before. Dylan was picking up a highlighter and I snatched it out of his hand. I drew a fat yellow line across the entry that had caught my attention, flipped through the remaining pages and marked each recurrence then handed the folder to him.
He studied it, brows crinkling. Leaving the folder open to one of the highlighted entries, he picked up a second folder, scanned through it and highlighted several charge columns.
"Okay, what the hell are you two looking at?" Riona asked, all the relationship drama pushed aside for the moment.
"The hotel doesn't have a floor marked as thirteen," Dylan answered.
Riona rolled her eyes like Dylan and I were idiotic twins. "Because people are superstitious fools," she snorted.
"The names..." I started, drawing Dylan's attention to me. "What region are they from?"
"Mishka can confirm, but I think they are Russian and Eastern European."
I cut a side glance to Riona. "There are bookings for suites that would be on the thirteenth floor if the hotel, like practically every other hotel in western countries, didn't skip from the twelfth to the fourteenth. And isn't Eastern Europe and Russia supposed to be more superstitious than most?"
"Exactly," Dylan answered and tapped a finger against the charge columns. "We need to look into these guests. There are a lot of 'entertainment' charges to them, unspecified and very high dollar."
Standing, he grabbed his briefcase and the two folders. "Find Mishka and send him up to my room...please."
I nodded, ignoring for the moment that he'd just given me an order as if I were still his assistant. However mixed my emotions were regarding Dylan, the medical examiner's report had me motivated to take King out. I would play Dylan's assistant if necessary to get the job done.
"I'll message him," Riona said after Dylan left the room. Pausing as she pulled her phone out, she nodded at my rough appearance. "There's a ladies room at the end of the hall. Or, hell, go to your room for a couple of hours. No one is going to fault you, sweetie. And if anyone tries, I'll kick them in the balls."
"The bathroom will be fine," I answered and pushed my chair away from the table. "The faster we figure this out, the sooner we'll be back in America and thousands of miles away from your brother."
Her face broke wistful for a moment and then she nodded. Turning, I left the room. I didn't want to analyze Riona's expression. Maybe she was thinking about someone in the States and not about my desire to be as far away from Dylan as possible. Maybe she was totally thinking about me and Dylan -- which would only start me thinking about the same thing and I didn't need that painful and often embarrassing distraction.
Finding the bathroom, I washed my knee. There was mouthwash and I poured a little onto a paper towel and dabbed it on my scrape for its antiseptic properties. Next I futzed with my hair and dipped into the stall for a pee.
The state of my panties