“Fergus?” Oran says, with a little curl in his upper lip. “He’s as conniving as they come.”

“Maybe you and I don’t have the same definition of conniving,” I say.

Uncle Oran drains his glass and sets it gently down on the desk.

“Perhaps not,” he says.

I’m studying his face, wondering how I could have misread it so long. I don’t always express myself as I’d like, but I’m usually good at reading others.

I always saw so much affection there. Now I think it was calculation, instead.

“Shame about Josh,” I say.

“How so?” Uncle Oran raises one eyebrow. “I thought you despised each other.”

“We did. But it was very inconvenient of him to blow his head off before Dante and Callum could talk to him.”

“Or before we could recover the money he took,” Uncle Oran says, smoothly. “How much did you say it was? Twenty million?”

“Why don’t you tell me?” I ask him.

Uncle Oran smiles, thinly. “You’re the forensic accountant. I’m just the man humiliated by the fact that all that money disappeared on my watch.”

“My father will be very angry about that,” I say. “But not as angry as he’ll be when he finds out that his own brother’s been stealing from him.”

Oran’s face darkens. It’s like watching clear water grow cloudy—his real emotions muddying his smooth facade.

“That’s a very serious accusation, Riona,” he says. “Especially from my own niece. What evidence do you have?”

That’s what he really wants to find out. That’s the point of this game—to discover what I know.

“It never made sense that Josh hired the Djinn,” I say. “He only found out that I was working on the purchase agreements that afternoon. But you knew long before—with more than enough time to put out a hit. And you knew better than Josh what time I swim laps every night. You even saw how late I was working that particular evening. You told me I should go home . . . but I stayed. Did you have to wait down on the street, watching for my light to go out? I’m sure that was annoying.”

My uncle’s eyelid twitches, and I’m sure I guessed right. He really must have stood down there on the cold street, cursing my attention span.

“You took the purchase agreements off my desk. You put them in Josh’s office. But I went in and grabbed them again. And I took them home with me.

“Of course, that wouldn’t have mattered if I’d drowned. That’s why it had to look like an accident—so no one would come looking for the killer, or even wonder why I’d been killed.

“I’m assuming the Djinn took my phone so you could check my emails and calls. See if I’d tipped anyone off about the properties. You thought I already knew . . . but that’s the irony, Uncle Oran. I had no fucking idea. I hadn’t figured it out. You thought I kept taking those purchase agreements because I was already on to you . . . but that wasn’t it at all. I just wanted to impress you! I just wanted the partnership.”