Page 53 of Devil's Retribution

No. It has to be a coincidence.

“What is it?” Alexei asked, noticing the shift in my expression.

“What if the blackmailer couldn’t reach Graves once he ran? What if he found out who was responsible for Graves running and wanted revenge?”

I was thinking of Igor. I was thinking of his gloating, dangling supposed secrets about Leon’s murder in front of me. I was thinking of his sudden, apparently unprovoked attempt on my life. The timing was right.

“Find out who is sending those blackmail letters,” I said sharply.

“You think it’s Igor, don’t you?” As usual Alexei caught on fast. He was young, not stupid.

Mila was crying and scratching at his leg. He scooped the blonde bundle up and petted her soothingly until she stopped wiggling and laid her head on his chest.

“I do,” I muttered. “And if that is true, then Igor is just as responsible for my brother’s murder as Graves is.”

Chapter 20

Emma

I waited up for Viktor. I shouldn’t have and I knew it, by the time that I heard the beep of the card reader as he let himself in, it was three in the morning and I felt almost completely wrung out. But something kept me awake no matter how long I lay down, closed my eyes and waited.

I got up from the couch as he came into the room, and one look at his face told me I had been right to worry. He didn’t look injured or even that stressed, but he moved a little too slowly, held his back a little too stiffly. And he did not greet me, only turned mutely to the closet beside the door.

“What is it?” I asked him, approaching as he took off his jacket and holsters and put them away.

He sighed, giving me that look again—half worried, half very, very tired. “I’m not certain how to tell this to you. But we have some additional information on your uncle.”

“I- all right.” I went back to the couch and sat down, my legs starting to tremble. What could it be?

He came over and sat next to me, putting a warm hand on my shoulder. His grip was light and kind, and somehow that scared me even more.

“Your uncle was being blackmailed when he disappeared,” he started, and I blinked at him. Even more complications. But then he went on, “by either an assassin who did a job for him, or the man who gives that assassin their orders.”

“An assassin? When did this happen?”

“Twenty years ago.”

Twenty years ago, my parents died in a car crash. I looked at him, my heartbeat picking up, my eyes locked on his face. His eyes flicked from my face and away again. “Emma...” he started.

“Who did he hire an assassin for, Viktor?” I asked, my voice dry and ragged. I wanted to know, yet at the same time I didn’t. Because if what I suspected was correct, everything I had ever believed was a lie.

“Your parents. He had someone sabotage their car.”

I felt all the air leave me, all the warmth, my lungs suddenly aching like I had been thrust into deep, cold water. “That can’t be right.”

I stared at him, unable to blink, unable to move.

He looked down at his hands. “I am sorry, Emma. But he’s been paying blackmail money to the killer since you were a little girl. I have seen his messages—”

My throat almost closed as the reality of it hit me like a sledgehammer. “Oh God,” I choked out, bending forward and dropping my face into my hands. “Oh God.”

He growled something in Russian in a frustrated tone, but it was under his breath, and then he was scooping me up and lifting me onto my lap. He did it so neatly that if I hadn’t been distracted with horror it would have shocked me. Instead, I just threw my arms around his neck and clung to him.

He held me tight while I buried my face in his neck. I wasn’t crying. I didn’t even fully understand why I was so upset after everything else I had learned about my former guardian. But somehow it hit so hard that I couldn’t quite take it.

I had never expected that my uncle was as selfish and cowardly as he had turned out to be. I had never expected him to be as greedy as he had turned out to be. But now I knew that he was just plain evil.

And I didn’t know how to feel.