Page 48 of Devil's Retribution

“What is it?”

“This handwriting. It’s familiar. It discusses continued compensation, which sounds suspiciously like bribe money.”

“Uncle Charles was being blackmailed by someone?” I asked.

“Yes, it appears so. And they are absolutely determined to keep getting their money no matter where he moves to.”

“I see.” I shook my head. “Every time I turn around it seems like Uncle Charles is into something else. I really didn’t know him at all—for God’s sake, I didn’t even know he knew Russian!”

“The man’s been putting on an act for you since you were a child.”

I nodded slowly, and looked down at the letters in his hand. “Whoever sent these is older,” I said. “They may be computer literate, but it isn’t their preference. Do you know anyone like that?”

He hummed again, eyes thoughtful. “Maybe a few. One of whom is already a suspect in the things going on. I’m going to take these correspondences and compare them against some documents of mine. See if my suspicion is true.”

“What is your suspicion?”

“A former friend of mine. A man named Igor. He is older, and though not exactly a Luddite, he used to send me physical letters all the time. Said he didn’t trust computers so much—too easy to hack.”

“I guess he didn’t figure on his mail being intercepted.” I felt a little too self-satisfied for managing to do so.

He laughed. “No, I don’t imagine he did. And neither did your uncle think of the possibility. Good work, Emma. Have you had anything to eat since breakfast?”

“We had sandwiches before Nick’s nap. I need to get started on dinner soon, though.”

“I’ll order in. You made breakfast.” The twinkle was back in his eyes, and the sight of it relieved me.

“Okay.” One less thing to deal with when I had a million of them.

“How in the world did you convince your uncle’s people to let you handle payroll matters?”

“I’m his next of kin and I told them he was hospitalized. Comatose.”

His eyebrows went up. “Really. Just like that?”

“Nobody questioned me, plus I wasn’t authorizing new payments, only ones that came out of his accounts monthly. His doctor, though, may be a bit trickier. While doctors are allowed to treat family members in an emergency, and I could think up reasons why I would need to know about his medications to avoid the whole confidentiality issue, I’m not sure if I want to draw that kind of attention to myself. Especially if Uncle Charles is involved in something that could impact me and Nick.”

“That’s true,” Viktor muttered as he sent a message on his phone. Always busy—just like me, in a way. He looked up from his phone, “I know how to handle it.” He appeared so untroubled that I was immediately curious.

“How?”

“I have an associate who is a police officer. If he shows up with us with an official-looking court order in his hands, we can get the information that we need, no need to directly involve you at all.”

He’s friends with a cop? Then I realized, he was friends with a dirty cop. Everyone knew that the LAPD had corruption problems. Not as bad as up north in Oakland, but still bad. But this was the first time I’d ever thought of police corruption as a benefit—in this situation, anyway.

“What about his money?”

He looked back at me sharply. “What about it?”

I showed him the bank statements. “Between this and what’s on his computer, we could very well find a way to get into his accounts. He’s only transferred a small fraction of his accounts to Barbados so far. We could get the rest. We could even get the rest of it back, if we’re clever enough and you have the right resources.”

He was staring at me in astonishment. A smile played on his lips. “So you aim to pull his fortune out from under him?”

I hesitated. Was this me? Was this what I became when someone wronged me?

But then my heart hardened. That’s my goddamned money anyway. And anything above that is asshole tax.

I nodded. “If anything in the world is going to draw Uncle Charles back to the States, it will be losing access to his funds.”