“You need to get control of yourself.” His voice was low and he tried to remain emotionless, but I was losing the battle so he would as well.
There was an intense ache behind my eyes. This was getting out of hand and I was losing my shit. Anyone could see that including me.
I sat back against the couch, fingering the weapon that never left my side. In my other hand was a drink. Yeah, at this point I deserved to have one. “How do you suggest I do that, Mikhail? Huh?”
I’d been forbidden from going back to my house. Not because it was an active crime scene any longer, but because the house still smelled like Lainey and reminded me of Selena. The majority of my daughter’s things were in her room including fifty unopened birthday presents.
A birthday that had been interrupted by violence.
A trip to paradise turning into a nightmare.
The memories were all there. Nice. Neat. Tidy. And my entire family had labeled me too distraught to return.
Maybe I was. I laughed softly as I brought the glass to my lips, trying to make sense of anything.
Vissarian sat down opposite me on the chair, his glare as harsh as everyone else’s had been since my return. Which I barely remembered. If it hadn’t been for Bernie, fuck, I might have walked into the goddamn ocean. He’d picked my ass up, made arrangements with the pilot to get our jet back, and had taken pictures of everything, even dusting for fingerprints so we wouldn’t need to get the police involved.
It wasn’t their fight.
Five days had passed without a single word. Not one. No one had any idea who’d kidnapped Lainey and my daughter.
There were no notes, no threats, and after carefully going over everything there was no forensic evidence. Not a single fingerprint. Even the gun used to kill Tony had been his own. He’d been hit on the head, his gun ripped away, and he’d been shot between the eyes. Evidently they hadn’t expected Bernie to return, the only reason he was alive.
It pointed to trained assassins, but certainly nothing that would pinpoint the persons responsible. When my brother opened his mouth to say something, I bristled and held up my hand. “Don’t say it, Viss. Don’t you dare say that we’ll find them. What if we don’t? We don’t know a goddamn thing about what happened.”
“That’s not entirely true,” Mikhail interrupted. “We know your instinct about something watching you was correct. We know from Bernie finding the open window that they managed to bypass the security, get into the house, spike the open bottle of wine, your vodka, and even the milk that Nina drank. A powerful sleeping agent, but not deadly. They reengaged the system and walked away waiting for the drug to take effect.”
I lifted my head, staring at him. I’d never seen him so pale or so distraught. The blatant act had highlighted yet another weakness on his watch.
He took my silence as an opportunity to continue. “We do know there was a flight that left St. Lucia at midnight.”
This I hadn’t heard. I jerked up, sloshing the drink and loathing myself for the personal weakness. That was the moment I vowed not to touch anther drop until my girls were returned.
My girls.
Fuck.
Fuck.
“Why the fuck am I just hearing this?” I barked out the question, taking long strides toward him.
Alexsey got in my way before I could do anything rash. “Back down, Sasha. Take a breath.”
“A breath. I’m supposed to take a breath when Lainey and my daughter are somewhere in this world. God knows where. And with all the technology at our fingertips, the sources worldwide of people, and favors that we can call in from law enforcement agencies both here in the United States and throughout the world, we can’t find a single clue. You bet I’m upset. I’m angry. I’m enraged that my wife’s murder was never solved. Now we have unknown assailants who were in this city, our city, harassing me and everyone in this family to push our buttons. They took a little girl and a woman who wanted nothing to do with this world as what, collateral? A payment for something? An old vendetta? What the hell is going on with the O’Shaughnessys? What? Why don’t you have them locked up somewhere so we can interrogate them? Why?”
“Because we have no proof they’re involved.” Mikhail chose to answer that one of all the shit I tossed out.
I stared at him, finally looking away. “Where did the plane go when it left St. Lucia?”
“We don’t know,” Kazimir answered. “The plane was on route to New York then suddenly disappeared out of the sky.”
Now I burst into laughter. “Of course it did. Always one step ahead of us.” I grabbed my car keys from the table, heading toward the door. The last place I wanted to be was in Mikhail’s house.
It certainly didn’t feel like home.
“Where are you going, son?” my dad asked.
Stopping short, I knew better than to lash out. They weren’t to blame, although I’d had nagging thoughts for all five days since I’d returned.
