Chapter 23
Nick
RENAT HAD ASKED TOmeet me at this cafe at ten thirty for three reasons: good enough coffee, bad enough location that you didn’t risk running into anyone, and the breakfast crowd had already cleared out, but the lunch hadn’t started.
I walked in, making the bell ding, and Renat raised his eyes just long enough to clock me before going back to his laptop.He looked the same as ever in his leather jacket and neck thick as a sewer pipe.He looked more like a mobster than the guy locking them up, but that was what made him perfect for undercover work.
I set the manila envelope on the table and slid it over to him as I sat down.
“You’re early,” he said in a mild accent, giving away his good mood.
“I was in the area,” I said.
He smirked, which for him was more of a muscular tick than an actual smile.He flicked the envelope open with two fingers and scanned the first page.“You didn’t make a copy?”
I shrugged.“I did for myself.Figured you’d need the original for your case more than I would for mine.”
He flipped through the pages, lips pressed so hard they went white.His eyes stayed flat, but every now and again, the tendons in his hand would stand out, pale against the table edge.Yeah, I knew the feeling, and that was how I could tell Renat was one of the good guys.
When Renat finished reading, he set the papers down and looked up at me.
“This is thorough,” he said.“But you don’t have anything from her adoption?”
I had expected this question.“She was young.You want details, talk to Vera.She’s the oldest.”
He leaned back, taking my measure.The leather creaked, and he cracked his knuckles with a sound like breaking branches.“I’ll give her a call, but Nadya was old enough to remember something.Never know what she saw during the adoption that her sisters didn’t.”
Or she didn’t know anything, and it would only send her into another spiral.
“I already asked her.The only thing she remembers was that they didn’t go to the courthouse,” I answered instead of telling him to stay the fuck away from my girl.
“Protective,” he said, and let the word hang there.
“She has the most trauma out of all the sisters,” I said.“You want to get information, get it from someone less traumatized.”
With the same poker face he’d worn the entire meeting, he asked, “Are you fucking her?”
“No.”Not since that one night.The night I desperately wanted to repeat.Often.
He let a single eyebrow go up, then took out his phone and started typing.Probably adding a note to the file:Santana might be compromised.Proceed with caution.
