Page 80 of Ruin Me

I crushed her to me. The last time my daughter hugged me like this, she was moving to D.C. to conquer the world. It was the first time I realized she didn’t need me to fight her battles. I was at a loss because Lola’s passing was still fresh and my daughter would be half a country away.

“Dad, I can’t breathe.”

“Sorry.” I loosened my hold.

Quarren strode toward us, and Ife sidled beside me. I held my hand out to Madison and pulled her to my other side. Despite the fuckery, I relished having my love and my daughter standing beside me. It gave me hope for the day Ife and Madison would reconcile and make more moments of us coming together like this the norm rather than as a result of tragic circumstances.

“Kent, I found a room. You have an hour.” Quarren nodded toward a closed door across the hall.

As soon as the door closed behind us, Madison charged toward the desk while extracting a blue folder from her bag.“Since we only have an hour, we need to go through these files for clues.” She withdrew another folder, this one was pink. “Ife and I read through several documents already and started digging into some of these LLCs and cross-referencing them with the list of shareholders Omar sent over. However, Hal had a lot of contracts and other documents we still need to get through.” The last folder she removed was purple.

“What do you mean Hal had a lot of contracts? And how exactly did you obtain these files?” My voice was strained as I picked up the purple folder.

Madison didn’t… couldn’t mean to imply she had an active role in gathering this information.

She folded her arms and glared. “Kent, would you rather argue about my methods or find the asshole trying to steal your company? I know what my priority is, but maybe you need a refresher?”

Ife’s eyes widened at our confrontation, however she wisely bit her lip and shuffled through the pink folder.

I stood over Madison, uncaring of my imposing stance. “No, little bunny. You need the reminder.” I grabbed her chin and matched her glower. “You are my priority. Your health. Your safety. Your life. Everything else takes second chair.”

She lowered her lashes, hiding the brilliant brown eyes I loved to lose myself in.

I jerked her head up. “Whatever shit you did to get these files, don’t do it again.”

She nodded and I punished her for her recklessness with a fierce kiss. I was just getting started when Quarren cleared his throat.

“Do I have to remind you we have a time limit?”

I separated from Madison with one last peck on an un-pigmented spot on her cheek. “Let’s get to this.”

Quarren and Ife brought out their laptops, making the research into some LLCs go faster, but Madison had collected a lot of information. When I checked the time, twenty minutes had passed and I was still researching the first LLC.

“This is odd,” Madison said.

We all raised our heads, curious about what caused her outburst.

“Hal has a contract for the sale of an LLC but the buyer and dates are blank.”

“Why’s that odd? If he’s the owner of the LLC, he could be using the contract as a template,” Quarren said without looking up from his pile of documents.

“Mmm, I’m not sure. I feel like I ran across the name of the LLC before and it’s not one of his.”

“Let me see. It could belong to Luxe Locations.” I reached for the contract.

My company owned a lot of LLCs. Although I didn’t have them all memorized, if it belonged to me, the name should look familiar.

The name of the LLC did look familiar, but not for the reason I’d hoped. I rifled through the papers I’d spent the last twenty minutes skimming. “I need a laptop.” I snapped my fingers.

Ife reached me first.

There were a few windows up. As I minimized them, one struck me. It was an image of file folders. One had my surname on it as well as a couple others. Although I found it strange, I minimized the window to open a search engine to find what I needed. I keyed in the name of the LLC and followed the clues until I got to a person. I clenched my fists as rage filled me.

“Dad, you found something?”

I was about to answer her when a knock interrupted me.

Quarren rose and answered the door. “Kemp? What are?—”