Page 109 of Fierce Pursuit

Gregor didn’t want any of this damn attention.

The last thing he needed was a detective, or worse, a journalist, sniffing around asking questions.

If he couldn’t get that shut down, it was going to be my ass on the line.

Damien was a few feet from him, busy bribing the hotel manager to put a cap on absolutely everything else.

The manager would do it, of course, as would the police commissioner.

They really didn’t have a choice in the matter, but still Gregor and Damien offered the bribe as a show of respect. It kept the hostility and complications to a minimum.

They would get this done, and the manager and commissioner would make a fuss about it, but they would be happy enough to take the money. That part was standard operating procedure.

What wasn’t standard was having me sit in the office off of the hotel lobby surrounded by bloody towels, waiting for something, anything, that would give me something to do.

Marina and the dead men who took her never made it to the lobby.

They had just vanished.

Gregor thought maybe they were still in the hotel, but I knew better.

If Marina were here, I would know.

I wasn’t sure how, but I would know.

I would be able to feel her if she was still in the building.

“It’s been handled,” Gregor said as he came into the room, slamming his phone down on the table. “Now tell me what the fuck happened.”

I had already been through everything three fucking times and I did not have the patience or the will to go through it again.

“You know what happened. More importantly I want to know what’s being done to track down Marina.”

“Do not forget who you are speaking to,” Gregor said, slamming both his hands on the table and staring me down. Pinning me in place with a glare that promised intense violence.

The men who spoke of the Ivanov blood going thin after Gregor’s marriage had clearly not faced the man in person.

I bit my tongue, holding back the rage that begged to be unleashed on him and anyone else that stood in my way. It would not do a single fucking thing to help me. I needed Gregor’s help, so pissing him off even further was the last thing I wanted to do.

“Go through it again,” Gregor demanded, and I gritted my teeth. Then sucked in a deep breath through my nose and let it out through my mouth.

I didn’t have time for this, but I also had no idea what the next move would be.

Solovyov had Marina.

There was no telling where the fuck he took her.

If she was still alive, I had absolutely nothing other than the events that had already happened to help me find her. So we went through it again.

“I was going through the bag trying to find what was so important about that money?—”

“Was there anything else in the bag?” Mikhail asked.

“No, it was just the stacks of rubles.”

“But it wasn’t enough money to warrant this kind of reaction?” Gregor asked again, clarifying.

“Correct. It wasn’t even enough money for a halfway decent bribe, or even to pay for a hit. I had thought that there may have been something hiding within the stacks, a microchip or maybe a prototype for printing the rubles?”

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