Page 55 of Inflict

Thankfully, his father didn’t argue.

“Something on your mind?” Sean asked as he took a seat in the plush chair behind his desk. “You look … knackered, but in your head, not the rest.”

“Long week.”

Sean didn’t question him on it, instead moving on. “I take it, you don’t have anything new to tell me, seeing as how everyone says you’ve been shut away or working at that shop of yours this past week.”

Connor let the insult brush off his shoulder. “Nothing was happening.”

“For you. I’ve seem to come into more problems with those Russians over the past week.”

He tried not to let his interest show. “Oh?”

“They have something of mine. I need to find out which one of them has it.”

Connor had the distinct feeling his father was talking about Evelyn, but he wasn’t about to open his foolish mouth and offer information as to her whereabouts. If Sean wanted to go on a goddamn rampage where the Russians were concerned, he could go to it.

“Might do you some good to attend some of their events,” Sean added after a moment. “They’ve got another coming up. Don’t get yourself inside a feckin’ cage again, sharing blows with somebody, just talk.”

Connor bit his inner cheek to keep from refusing. “Sounds grand.”

And stupid.

It sounded incredibly stupid.

“Don’t you want to know what it is they have?”

“I figure they’ll make a brag out of the whole thing, won’t they? It’ll be obvious, if they did it on purpose.”

Sean scowled. “Likely.”

Connor mentally patted himself on the back for avoiding being caught in his lie. Now, to distract his father and then get the feck out of there. “I did wonder something, though.”

“About the Russians?”

“No, my mother.”

Sean’s head snapped up, his gaze cutting into Connor with zero remorse or emotion. “Aye, what about her? You’re twenty-six, damn near twenty-seven, lad. What do you want or need to know about your mother that you haven’t had before? She’s been gone your whole life. You’re not missing something you haven’t had, Connor. There isn’t much to tell—she’s dead.”

Yes, that he knew.

But there was still a lot of unknowns.

“Curiosity, I suppose,” Connor said quietly.

Sean let out a heavy sigh laced with irritation. Then, before Connor could even ask something else, his father pulled a chain from around his neck, exposing a key at the very end of it. He unlocked a drawer in the desk, and spent a good five minutes flipping through what sounded like papers or even a heavier paper, like photographs.

“Ah, here it is,” Sean muttered.

A Polaroid photograph landed picture up on the desk in front of Connor, and it took all he had not to reach out and snatch it up. Instead, he contended himself with letting his gaze commit the image of a young, beautiful strawberry-blonde with green eyes, staring into the camera. In her arms, she held a swaddled form wrapped in blue, but something was wrong.

Her body was stiff, and there was no smile on her face. Her gaze, as colorful as her eyes were, seemed dead, as though she wasn’t really there at all. She wore nothing that would signify she was a woman of status in her house, just a loose dress that looked worn.

The physical similarities were impossible to ignore.

Reddish-blonde hair.

Green eyes.