Page 210 of Marrying the Savage

Mikhail looks at me once.

He knows. Not about Sofia. About whatever this is.

I shut the door behind me. “Talk.”

“We have been chasing leads on the mercenary attack on our warehouse,” Kirill says, dropping a thick file on my desk. “Sergei moved a considerable amount of money into an offshore account just days before the plan was carried out.”

I frown. “Do we know what they were there for?”

“That’s not clear yet,” Kirill says. “But I’m sure we’ll get to the bottom of that.”

“And that’s not all.” Grigori goes to the desk but doesn’t sit. “The truth is I’ve been doing my own investigation. Her disappearance didn’t sit right with me, something about it kept bugging me.”

My face hardens. “What do you mean?”

“A lot of things didn’t add up,” Grigori says. “At first, I thought we were looking at Dmitri, Sergei, or someone they were using as proxy to take her. The fight at the gallery still points in that direction, but not everything makes sense. And I guess things haven’t for a while…not since the wedding.”

He picks up one of the papers. “But then I remembered something from before the wedding. You wanted to know who couriered you the invitation.”

I go still. The wedding invitation. Sofia sent it. That was the story. A bold, reckless move from a woman trapped in an arranged marriage and angry enough to drag me into the church with everyone watching.

“Who?” I ask.

Grigori looks at Mikhail.

Mikhail doesn’t blink. “Arman Chekonov.”

I look at the evidence bag on my desk.

Inside is the envelope Sofia sent me before the wedding.

Grigori says, “We traced the courier company first. The name on paper was fake. My question is why go through so much trouble to get it to you. Wasn’t it just a silly act of rebellion against her uncle?”

I think about what she told me at the church. I was her way to escape. It had been clear as day. Was that not true? Had she lied to me about her intentions?

“Go on,” I say.

Grigori’s mouth tightens. “That is not all.”

Kirill steps forward and places another paper on the desk. “Arman Chekonov is Anya’s cousin.”

Then Lev says, “Confirmed through her mother’s side. Different surname, old family connection, not public, but not hidden if you know where to look.”

Anya’s lies from the club come back to me. Nothing about what she told me about the events that had transpired after Sofia vanished made sense, but I hadn’t examined them too closely. I was just relieved my wife was okay. I was an idiot.

“And you know who funded his business when he started? Sergei Antonov. He owes him big time,” Grigori says.

“What are you saying?” I ask.

Grigori exhales once, slow. “I believe this may be Sergei’s game against you. And it was all planned from the very beginning, before you even walked into the church.”

He looks at me as if he’s trying to gauge my reaction.

“Spit it out,” I say calmly.

He looks down at the evidence, then back at me. “Sofia may not have known all of it,” he says. “But it’s too much of a coincidence to ignore. She sends you a wedding invitation through Arman’s network—Anya’s cousin—so they had plenty of time to scheme. She wanted you to be there, don’t you see? She wanted you where you could be hurt. The invitation was just bait.”

At this point he’s talking more to himself. “Don’t you see? They were supposed to finish you at the church, and when they failed, when you chose her as a bride instead and surprised everyone, they changed tactics. You take her from Sergei and Dmitri in public. She enters your house. She gets close to you. Then you’re ambushed twice—first at your own warehouse and then at the shopping she insisted on going on knowing fully well you would follow. And when it didn’t work out the way she wanted, she got spooked and ran. Her uncle didn’t want her babbling, so he wanted to take her out, preferably before you got to her. And it almost happened, but you found her.”