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Her head spun.
Diana gasped so loudly she wouldn’t have been surprised if it woke Rafe, but she was too riveted to even notice. She stared back into her father’s eyes, confronted with the face she hadn’t seen in so long. Tears filled her eyes as that awful night came back.
It was one thing to think that Rafe had information about her father’s death, but this was too much, seeing the evidence that he’d studied her father, looked for an opportunity to hurt him. A choked whimper escaped her lips, and she was on the verge of closing the file when something stopped her. She’d come this far and wouldn’t back down now. It was time to find out exactly why Rafe had done this. What had he wanted? Was it politically motivated, or had her father just pissed off the wrong person and paid the price with his life?
Diana took a deep breath and forced herself to start reading. Just like the others, it detailed all her father’s information along with his family at the top. That was the only part that was familiar. As she read, heat flushed her body and her stomach roiled.
What the hell?
Who had written this report? The man they described was not her father. A drug trafficker? Human trafficking? Her stomach protested and bile rose in her throat. Diana clapped a hand over her mouth, afraid she’d vomit right then and there. Her father would have never done those things.
Then she moved to the next page, and her heart sank again as she scrolled through pictures of her father standing with armed men, looking for all the world like he belonged there. Then there was a picture of him with Uncle Boris, and the notation next to his name indicated that he was also a wanted criminal in several countries.
That was when Diana realized that nothing was as it seemed.
Diana closed her eyes. Of course. How naïve she’d been. Her father was one of these men. The men whom people feared.
One line on the page had her frowning. It was the report of an exchange of funds from Boris Klinkov to her father. You don’t have time to go down this rabbit hole. But she couldn’t help herself. She clicked the file name.
Boris Klinkov was a family friend. She’d grown up calling him Uncle Boris. He was involved in these horrible things too? Was anyone who she thought they were? Had her mother known?
Too sick to keep reading and too afraid to not continue, she scanned the page. Boris Klinkov had given her father twenty million dollars. In exchange, on her twenty-fifth birthday, she would be married to him, giving him the Jewel of the Sea.
She couldn’t hold the bile back anymore. She barely made it to the toilet in the hallway bathroom. Even as she emptied the contents of her stomach, her mind reeled. Her father had sold her. To Uncle Boris. The man was older than her father had been.
You can panic later. Time to run.
With shaking fingers, she took out the thumb drive and put it in her pocket. It felt like she was underwater or moving in slow motion. No matter how hard she tried, she couldn’t seem to get her legs to go any faster. All she could see were the horrible things written in that report, and a million questions would start swirling in her brain. Images and memories kept coming back, things that hadn’t made sense before but suddenly had whole new meaning in this context.
Suddenly she felt like she had a target on her back. She shivered at the thought of being at the mercy of men like her father. Rafe wouldn’t be able to protect her from someone like Boris. From what she’d seen of him and on the files, he was no longer an assassin.
You can’t wait for someone to protect you, you need to protect yourself.
This whole time she’d assumed Rafe’s past was the obstacle, but she was the one related to criminals. And she’d brought them right to his doorstep. All the contacts she’d used to get her ready for this mission—her brothers’ contacts. Criminals. Maybe Uncle Boris had even helped. After all, she was soon to be his property.
Diana closed the computer, stowing it in the duffel. Once it was securely zipped, she slung it over her shoulder. Pausing in the doorway to his bedroom, she took one last look at Rafe sleeping on the bed. Her eyes took in his dark hair falling over his brow and the muscular body that was everything dreams were made of. She stared without blinking, hoping to commit the sight to memory, to burn it into her mind so surely that she’d never forget what almost was.
She needed that memory to get her through what was to come.
Chirp. Chirp. Chirp.
Rafe rolled over and tried to hit the annoying bird outside his window. It didn’t stop singing but instead just hopped over to the next windowsill. Frustrated, he tried to reach for it again but couldn’t move his arm. Panic filtered through the soft veil of comfort that he’d been wrapped in and he thrashed, trying to free himself. All he accomplished was rolling over and hitting the ground. Hard.
“Ooomph” was about all he could get out before his head started pounding.
Rafe opened one eye carefully and peered around. The room didn’t look familiar at first until he saw the legs of his dresser across the room. Why was he looking at the legs? He groaned and managed to turn over onto his back, and when the ceiling came into view, that gave him some answers. The room looked unfamiliar because he’d never seen it from the floor before.
Everything hurt, but Rafe kept his lips clamped together. His limbs were still unresponsive, so his best bet was to remain silent until whatever chemical agent that had been used on him wore off. He would examine things more carefully later to figure out how one of his enemies had managed to get so close. Transitioning into a civilian life made men go soft, but he’d been so sure that his security was tight. The idea that someone could actually get close enough to drug him was maddening. Then he remembered that he hadn’t been alone before he fell asleep, and his heart leaped.
Diana. What had they done to Diana?
Strength he didn’t know he had roared through his veins, and he managed to roll over and push up onto his arms. His head swam in a sickening wave, and he panted through his mouth, helpless, battling back dizziness and nausea. He had to fight through. He had to make sure she was safe. But once he was able to move again, he had to concede that he wouldn’t be much help to her as weak as he was, if she was even still there. Nevertheless, he pushed to his knees. It took quite a bit of effort, but he managed to stumble down the hall. Diana’s room was empty. He kept going to his office.
As soon as he walked in, his eyes went to the painting. The safe was wide open.
God. If they’d taken what was in the safe, then there was no doubt this was an ORUS job. Who the hell else would even care about the files he’d kept or go through the extreme security measures to access them? It also meant that Diana was likely already dead. A dull moan slipped from his lips as he struggled to remain upright.
Diana, his poor, sweet Diana, wouldn’t have stood a chance against an ORUS-trained hit man. Despair unlike anything he’d ever known swept through him.
