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“Brat,”he answers solemnly. “I’m sorry it’s taken so long to get back to you. We’ve had some… trouble up here.”
“Anything I can help with?” I ask. Matthias sighs over the other end of the line.
“I’m afraid you have your own shitpile to deal with,” he tells me. “You’re not going to like what I tell you.”
I snort. “It can’t get any worse than it is already,” I assure him. “My future bride was sniped at, and the lies my dead wife left behind are ever-growing.”
“A sniper?” His tone becomes more alert. “Is she safe?”
“She’s good, brother,” I tell him. “We caught the bastard. He’s awaiting judgment at the warehouse.” Matthias breathes a sigh of relief.
“That’s good,” he says. “You’re going to want to keep him alive for questioning.”
“I assumed.” I don’t have to tell him how hard it has been not to go and kill the motherfucker.
“You don’t understand,” he says urgently. “This man… this killer, there’s more to it than you think. He’s not just any hired gun. Bridgett had a hard time finding his kills because there is nothing on record in our assassins’ database.”
I’d wondered that myself. Taking the heads of the victims was extreme. Vanya had also mentioned that he planned on raping her. A true hired assassin would never compromise his job for a taste of flesh.
“I was starting to wonder about that myself,” I admit.
“This man, he’s a fanatic. A serial killer. Bridgett found victims all over the world with this exact same MO,” he relays. “His name is Luan Osmani, he’s the cousin of Armir Bregu, the leader of the Albanian mafia. He’s known as the Albanian Butcher.”
“Osmani,” I whisper. “I recognize that last name.”
“You should,” Matthias says. “It was Ada’s mother’s maiden name.”
That can’t be.
“I ran a check on her myself,” I growl. “Her mother’s maiden name was Greek.”
“How deep did you look, brother?” he asks. “It took Bridgett days to sift through the information at the top to reach the sediment underneath.”
Therein lies the issue. I didn’t look all that deep. I took everything at face value when it came to Ada. I’d been blind to everything.
“I’m sorry, Adrian,” Matthias murmurs.
Shaking my head, I let out a long breath. “You have nothing to be sorry for,brat,” I assure him. “This is a result of my carelessness. It won’t happen again.”
“What can I do?”
Nothing. This is my mess to clean up. “Can you send over everything Bridgett has gathered?”
“Already done.”
“Speciba.”
“Vsegda.”
Twenty-Seven
Adrik.
His name. Even with the morning fog rolling around in my brain, I remember. I had begun to suspect who he was when he’d first called melittle lionessin Russian. It was the same term of endearment in my letters. Not that it was enough for me to say for sure that he was the one.
I lay awake, staring at the ceiling above me, one hand tossed above my head, the comforter cocooned around me as I think about everything I know about my soon-to-be husband and the one I’d written letters to.
On the surface, they appear to be polar opposites. Adrian is commanding and cold while Adrik had been warm and comforting. His words of encouragement over the years brought me solace that had never existed in my life before.
