AllFreeNovel
Share Us
“I have some good news. Your father made contact,” he said in a hushed tone, checking over his shoulder to ensure the door was closed.
“The Colonel?”
He shook his head. “No, Viktor. He used a hacker named Maverick to send a video of your grandfather to Drake.”
“What was on it?”
“Your grandfather talking to a man. His head was turned away from the camera. But Drake is doing his best to get a match using his artificial intelligence software.”
“Well, what did the man say?”
“He was blackmailing Fitzy, forcing him to sign papers that made you the beneficiary of his estate.”
“But why?”
Cole released a deep breath. “We don’t know yet. But I think Viktor is giving us breadcrumbs that lead back to Fitzy because he wants us to know why the old man has kept you around.”
Laying across the bed on my stomach beside him, I put my hand over his. “I can’t do this anymore.” I curled my fingers around his wrist, shaking so hard that I needed to hold onto him for support. “If this summer has taught me anything, I want to live. I’m sick of hiding. Maybe I should come out to the world as Katarina, so my father will stop chasing me. Maybe he can save me from this marriage.”
“No.” Cole was in my face, his mouth so close we could have kissed. “You don’t have to sacrifice yourself. Let me figure this out.”
A tear slid down my cheek, and I let it fall. “I’m a pawn in a rich man’s game and don’t know how to play it. My entire life has been spent running from a ghost I barely remember.”
“Drake thinks your father has something on Fitzy,” he confessed. “You’re the heir to the Adams fortune, not Bash. This tape proves it. We’ll contact Viktor again and see if he can tell us more.”
My heart hammered in my chest as I considered everything I knew about my father and grandfather. And until Alex Wellington got kidnapped, I had forgotten all about my cousin Bastian and the key.
“I have an old key,” I told Cole. “Bastian gave it to me when I was a little girl. He handed it to me under the table at dinner when our grandfather wasn’t looking and said to hold onto it for him.”
“Did he say anything else?”
I closed my eyes and focused on the night Bastian came to my grandfather’s house, allowing my mind to drift to that moment.
I’m close to ten years old and excited about meeting a relative for the first time. No one ever comes to the house for dinner. It’s always the staff and me. And on rare occasions, I eat with my grandfather at the opposite end of the banquet table fit for a king.
He doesn’t talk.
He never looks at me.
I exist, but I don’t.
I’m like wallpaper.
Bastian strolls into the great room, dressed in a black suit, his caramel hair styled off his forehead. His gray eyes are so striking I notice them immediately. He carries himself like an adult, not a teenager.
My grandfather hasn’t come downstairs yet. He’s still in his office on a business call.
Bastian offers his hand to me. “I’m Bastian Salvatore. Your cousin. Our mothers were sisters.”
Before they died…
I smile and shake his hand. “Nice to meet you, Bastian. I’m Katarina.”
His expression mirrors mine. “That’s a pretty name. You know, you look like your mother. The two of you could have been twins.”
I hear my grandfather clear his throat, and I turn my head to see him standing in the entryway. He looks polished and expensive, the kind of man who demands to be noticed. The type of man you can’t help but wonder if he’s a god.
He looks at least twenty years younger than his age and with no gray hair. Never without a suit, my grandfather wears it like armor.
