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He gave me a small smile. “Not in this world, kiddo. If something happens to me, you must destroy it. I trust you with it because, like I said, no one knows I have a daughter, and no one would ever suspect you.”
I parted my lips, wanting to say something... anything to dissuade him from this madness, but a buzzing from his pockets distracted him. He pulled out his cell phone and a stern look crossed his face. He lifted a finger and stood up from his chair.
“I’ll be right back,” he said and excused himself.
His absence gave me more time to think about whether I should do him the favor or not.
A strange feeling ran through me: was I now being drawn into the mafia business? The clock
ticked as I sat there waiting for him to return. I glanced at my watch. Twenty minutes had passed, and that was a lot of time. I got up and went to look for him when I heard a loud gunshot outside.
I hid the envelope and my breathing quickened as I ran out of the building as fast as I could. Frightened people screamed and scurried away.
I reached the back of Clooney’s and my heart pounded in my throat as I saw Conner’s lifeless body at the feet of a tall man holding a silver gun tightly in his grip.
Our gazes met and his blue eyes pierced my soul, but before I could study any more of his striking features, my vision blurred through hot tears, and I fell to my knees.
“Father,” I cried, cradling his head in my lap. It hurt so much to know that I had lost something I had only just found. Anger boiled up inside me and a string of curses piled up on the tip of my tongue that I wanted to release.
But before I could utter them, I received a sharp blow to the head and a warm trickle flowed down my throat. Then everything around me went dark.
Chapter 4 - Igor
I’ll be damned. Fucking Connor had a secret daughter and a very beautiful one at that. I stared in awe at the young woman lying unconscious on the ground next to Connor’s corpse. Her luscious blonde hair covered her face and fell to her shoulders, and her slender but athletic body captivated me for a moment. The soft, angelic face and her full, pink lips were so enticing that a warm feeling spread through me.
She was wearing a casual white shirt that had one too many buttons undone for my liking, revealing a glimpse of her small, perky breasts, and a pair of high-waisted skinny jeans. I bent my head down and tilted it; she looked somehow familiar as if I had seen her before. I struggled to remember, and then it clicked. Andrei’s wedding.
I remembered seeing her in the crowd and asking who she was.
“That’s my wife’s friend,” Andrei said. “Her name is Grace... She does know how to putup a fight, she can be feisty.”
A grin formed on my lips, and I straightened. She was still unconscious, and the thought of her waking up and looking into my eyes for the first time made my cock leap. Alexei stepped to my side, his eyes scrutinizing me and the young woman.
“Boss, what do we do with the girl?”
I slowly turned around and walked to the car while Alexei strutted along beside me. I thought about why she wanted to meet her father in this area. Connor would never have bothered to invite her to the old bar if he didn’t need her for something, and I was one hundred percent sure it had something to do with the special USB drive.
“We'll have to keep her alive until she tells me where the envelope is.”
Alexei’s brow twitched and furrowed. “We don’t know if the girl knows anything.”
“I am sure,” I said firmly. “Since the old man is dead, she's the only lead we have. It’s no coincidence that she was with him. Connor was a smart man; he wanted to use her to hide it. Too bad she’s here now. He's dead and she's the only one who knows what we're looking for and where we can find it.”
“Boss, are you sure you don’t want us to retrace Connor’s steps before he got here to remove all doubt? Just to be on the safe side. The old man might have come here for a genuine reconciliation.”
I rubbed my temple with a sigh and shifted my weight from one leg to the other. “What is your concern, Alexei?”
He bowed his head briefly. “I’m sorry, boss,” he said, looking up at me. “But if the girl turns out to be innocent, it's a very big risk to take her to the house.”
“Risk, Alexei?” I asked, stepping forward with clenched fists. “If the girl turns out to be innocent, we'll fucking kill her anyway. Whether you retrace Connor’s steps or not, the girl’s fate remains the same, do you understand?”
He nodded curtly and switched on the engine. In Russian, he ordered some men to carry the girl and Connor away from the crime scene.
The drive home was quick and quiet. I asked Alexei to take her to the dark room and keep her father’s body in a private mortuary while I went to my room to take a hot bath.
With a warm towel around my waist and water dripping over my tattooed back and torso, I walked to my wardrobe. I slipped a finger under the fluffy fabric and let it fall at my feet. Dusk moved quickly across the sky and without haste, I dressed and stared at my reflection. Not a bad physique for a forty-two-year-old man.
A few shimmering drops of water rolled down my damp hair onto the back of my neck and I wiped them away. Then I ran a finger lightly over the parallel, faint scars on my jaw and pushed away the horrible memory that threatened to resurface.
