Page 165 of Devious Knight

She never did give me an answer for that. And I knew she never would.

I just hope she doesn’t do anything stupid. Parker won’t take being followed lightly.

I need to check in with him at some point this week and maybe give him the courtesy of telling him I saw him with Lana.

In no way do I condone what he’s doing if he’s doing anything with her, but he’s had my back more times than I can count.

I’m just returning the favor. Parker will be under a lot of scrutiny because Chancellor Potalov was so damn good at his job. There’s no point shooting himself in the foot before he’s truly begun.

I don’t suppose he’ll tell me anything about Lana, but I’m sure he’ll agree that if I saw him, then someone else who’s more influential can catch him, too.

Someone like Aleksander Ivanov.

Or Isabelle.

God, I miss her so fucking much. She’d be right next to me now if she were here.

It’s strange how you spend most of your life sleeping by yourself, then you meet the girl of your dreams and can’t imagine sleeping without her.

I fall asleep with Isabelle marching through my head. It seems like I just closed my eyes when I’m woken by the ringing of my phone.

I open my eyes to find that it’s morning. I retrieve the phone from the nightstand and answer it. It’s Alek.

It’s just past five. He’d only be calling me at this hour if he had something important to tell me.

“Hey, man,” I say, my voice groggy with sleep.

“Hey, sorry to call so early. I know you have training with Thorne, so I wanted to catch you before you head out if possible. It’s urgent.”

I sit up quickly, knocking the pillows to the floor. “What’s going on?”

“I can’t talk on the phone. It’s best I see you. I found some stuff that you wanted me to look at. And then some.”

Shit. That sounds serious. “I’m on my way.”

I sit on Alek’s sofa and he presents me with a Manilla envelope. He hasn’t said anything since I got down to his apartment, but the firm look on his face is enough to tell me that I’m about to launch myself into more shit.

It took me two minutes to get my ass down here. I didn’t allow suspense to drive me mad.

Alek sits next to me and pulls out some documents from the envelope. I don’t like that he’s not talking.

He hands me the document on the top and I take it. It’s an email print out from Tatiana Kolyav and Parker. It’s a business email from the New York Art gallery where Parker used to work. I see here that Tatiana worked there too.

The email is discussing paintings that were in transit but never got to where they were supposed to go.

“I assume you asked me to look into this because of Isabelle, not her mother per se,” Alek finally speaks.

I meet his heady gaze. “Yes, but at the time I didn’t know my godfather worked with her mother.” When I spoke to Parker about Isabelle he acted like she was just another student. Like he never had a connection to her or her family.

“There’s a lot about your godfather you don’t know.”

“Tell me. I don’t have time to read.” Or the fucking capacity.

“Isabelle’s mother worked with him for years. It seems that she suspected foul play when a some antiquities and Renaissance paintings went missing. From what I can see here in the records of text messages and emails. She seemed to think he had something to do with it.” He lifts some more documents. “He was the last person she spoke to before she died and he’s been heavily investigated by the Knights for her murder. All this is here is records of Isabelle stating that she thinks she heard him at the crime scene telling the shooter to kill her mother.”

I stand and glare at him in disbelief, my skin suddenly hot and my throat dry. “You’re fucking with me.”

“I wish I were. I found this information in the secret squad files so not even Parker knows about them.”