I pocketed the cigarette butt and stared into the trees.
Exactly how deep were Braden and Catherine Montgomery into this shit?
How deep were we?
44
CASSIE
I wantedto ask questions when Hawk and Vigo stepped outside, but I didn’t want to spook Anna. I was finally here, talking to someone who’d known my parents.
I might not get another chance to learn more about what they’d been investigating when they’d died.
“You were assigned to Kensington Trust?” I asked, my tea long forgotten.
“That’s what happens when you leave Aventine.” Her Russian accent was getting more pronounced as we spoke. “The family sends you where you’ll be most useful.”
“How could you be useful at Kensington?” Jagger asked.
She turned her attention on him. “You must know. You wouldn’t be here if you were stupid.”
“You transferred money for the Bratva,” he said.
“Why did you ask if you already knew?”
He shrugged.
“The money could have been transferred without me,” she continued. “Kensington is a private bank. Discretion is their primary ethos. But it helps to have someone on the inside, someone who can assure money is smoothly ushered from oneaccount to another, who can change details on the paperwork when required, feed information to the family about other money that’s being transferred to and fro.”
“So you were like… a spy?” I asked. “For the Bratva?”
She frowned. “You make it sound exciting. It wasn’t. Most of my days were spent sitting at a computer terminal, typing account numbers and processing paperwork. And every now and then, the Bratva would ask something of me. I would do it and go about my day.”
“Except something must have happened,” I said. “Something that made you leave Kensington.”
She studied me. “Are you sure you want to ask these questions? Sure you want the answers?”
“My parents were mixed up in something,” I said. “I think they were killed because of it. How can I turn my back on that?”
“Would it make a difference if I told you it’s my belief your parents wouldn’t want you to ask these questions? That they didn’t leave those papers for you to find but simply because they assumed they’d have time to see through their suspicions before they ever left you and your brother?”
Her words echoed in my mind. What if my parentswouldwant me to leave it alone? What if they’d want Bram and me to live a normal life and forget all about Kensington Trust and Dimitri Kaprolov?
I thought about Bram. His anger and distance.
The violence that ran like an underground river in his veins.
Would leaving this alone — walking away from Irina Sokolov and everything we’d discovered so far — change any of that? And what about the missing girls? Did we walk away from them too?
“I think it’s too late for that,” I said. “Our lives were changed because of what happened to our parents.Wewere changed. If there’s a universe where that didn’t happen, where Bram and I can live simple, normal lives, it’s not this one.” I paused. “Andalso, we’re not the only ones impacted by what was happening — what I think’s still happening — in Blackwell Falls.”
Anna’s shoulders sagged in resignation but she didn’t seem surprised. “You’re talking about the girls.”
The front door opened and Hawk and Vigo returned. I wondered if it was my imagination that they both looked grim, but I didn’t want to ask in front of Anna.
Hawk returned to his post at the window, and this time, Vigo didn’t sit either. I could tell from their body language that they were agitated, and I was pretty sure Vigo was sweating in spite of the cool temperatures outside.
I tried to focus on Anna, on getting the information I needed while I was in front of her.
