“I know this is hard,” he said. “But we’ll figure it out together, okay?”
I nodded and held back my words of frustration. I knew that in Dante’s head, together meant on his terms. If I waited for together, I’d be stuck doing nothing, feeling helpless as hell. I had tried leaving this situation to Dante, but it was only getting worse, and his family positively hated my father.
Enough was enough. My brain was going haywire, screaming at me to act. We didn’t have the full story on my father’s betrayal, and Dante didn’t seem to be the least interested in finding out. I had waited patiently for a long time now.
And I was getting sick and tired of it. So if answers existed, I had to find them on my own.
A stab of guilt hit me as I stood up to kiss him softly. He was only trying to help, but I planned to throw dirt in his eyes tonight. But when I did, I only hoped he would understand that this was something I had to do for myself.
“I know,” I whispered against his lips. “I think I’m going to rest for a bit.”
“Of course,” he kissed me on my forehead again and let me go.
I left him in his office, and the minute I reached the corner of the hallway, I pulled out my phone and called for a cab a hundred metres from Dante’s compound.
It was too dangerous to call one straight through the gates. Dante and his bodyguards wouldn’t let me go once they discovered my plans.
Twenty minutes later, I slipped out through an unguarded side gate I’d discovered during my wanderings around the grounds. The cab was waiting at the end of the street outside Dante’s, just out of sight of the security cameras.
***
I asked the cab driver to drop me a block from my father’s house, and decided to walk the rest of the way. When I reached near it, I stopped for a moment, just to look up at the quaint property I once called home.
God, I used to love this place. Of course I visited often in college, and even after, when I moved out to my own apartment. But on weekends when I didn’t have much work at the marketing agency I freelanced with, I’d come back here often.
How much had changed, I thought to myself. I no longer worked. I was married to Dante Lebedev. My father wasn’t the man I thought he was.
But the house was the same as it always had been—a large, colonial structure with perfect hedges and a beautiful lawn.
The home of a respected federal prosecutor.
How many secrets were hidden behind those walls?
I would only know if I managed to get in there, unseen. I knew I had to sneak in, because I couldn’t exactly walk in there and demand answers from my father now, could I?
If he saw me, I feared he might not let me leave. Feared he’d take me straight to the Pavlovs. I had to know what the Pavlovs had on him, and then I would take that back to Dante until we found a solution for my father to get out of this mess.
So I could finally get those vultures off my back.
I circled around to the back, thanking the stars that I’d never returned the spare key I kept on my keychain. I slipped into the kitchen and was hit immediately by the familiar smell of lemon polish.
For a moment, I was the same old Alisa again, coming home for a weekend to hang out with Papa. The memory hurt more than I expected.
I took quiet steps through the dark house, not wanting to wake my father since I knew he was probably asleep. At last, I made it to his office at the end of the hall up the stairs.
The door, as I expected, was unlocked. I slipped in and closed it behind me, then turned on the small desk lamp.
Not wanting to waste time, I went straight for the filing cabinet behind his desk. The top drawer was locked, but I knew where he kept the key—taped to the underside of the middle desk drawer.
The files inside were labeled meticulously, organized by year. I pulled out the most recent ones and began to read.
What I found made me sick.
Right before me were case after case of violent men left to roam free, while attached behind the file was a list of names of innocent people framed for crimes they never committed. Therewere detailed notes on judges who could be bribed, witnesses that could be intimidated, and what evidence was “lost” and where one could find them.
There were bank statements to an offshore account holding millions. All the money in it came straight from the Pavlovs.
With trembling hands, I put aside the file and searched for the why amongst the others. And then, I had to sit down.
