Page 18 of Marcellus: House of Drakos
Tyla laughed. “Okay okay, don’t bite my head off. I’m just saying.”
Then she exhaled. She could see the real stress on Savannah’s anxious face. How she could still be man-less was the mystery of the universe to Tyla. “So nobody’s heard from him in two weeks and you think that’s unusual?”
“It’s highly unusual that I haven’t heard from him in two weeks. That’s what I’m saying, yes.”
“Wait a minute. Instead of saying nobody has heard from him in two weeks, you said you haven’t. Which implies to me that somebody has. Am I right?”
Savannah hesitated. She knew that wasn’t going to help her case. “His older brother received a couple text messages from him, yes, and a couple phone calls too.”
“Texts and phone calls from Niko? What did he say?”
“I don’t know. Olivier, that’s his brother, would only tell me that he sounded fine to him.”
“He sounded fine? Then what’s the problem if his own brother says he sounded fine?”
“Because they aren’t brothers in the traditional sense. They don’t get all involved in each other’s business like that. Niko said he could go months without hearing from any of his siblings. They all have different mothers and were never raised together. They only come together once a month for their father’s family dinner. But that’s usually to discuss their father’s corporation. And as you know, Niko doesn’t work for his father like his siblings do.”
“And all they discuss is business?”
“That’s what Niko said. I don’t know though. Niko’s always been guarded and too contradictory about his father. One minute he’s talking about him as if he’s his role model and just a wonderful father to all of his siblings and that he can do no wrong in his eyes. Then the next minute he talks about him as if he’s the most despicable human being on the face of the planet.”
“But back to his brother. The one that heard from him. You said his name was Oliver?”
“Not Oliver. O-Li-Vee-A. Like Lawrence Olivier.”
Tyla frowned. “Who’s Lawrence Olivier?”
Savannah shook her head. “An actor, Ty.”
“But if Niko’s brother is saying Niko’s okay, then again what’s the problem?”
“Something’s wrong, that’s the problem. I can’t describe it, but I can feel it. I call him. I text him. I get nothing. That’s not like Niko.”
“It’s not like his company to fire you either. You’ve been his devoted secretary from the very beginning just like you said. You helped him build up his company. But guess what? Your ass got fired. No matter how you slice it, you’re fired.”
“I was fired two weeks ago. I’ve been trying to reach him for days before I got fired. I haven’t seen him or heard from him in two weeks now when he used to call me at all hours of the day and night confessing his sins and asking for my advice like it truly mattered to him. And to go from all of that to now nothing?” Savannah took a swath of her thick, bouncy hair and flung it back. “I don’t care what you say. I don’t care what Olivier says. That’s not like Niko.”
“I still say you have blinders on when it comes to that white boy, whom I heard is gorgeous by the way.”
Savannah frowned. “What does that have to do with it?”
“Be that as it may,” Tyla said, “what about his other siblings? I heard his father was a hoe of the first order. Doesn’t he have fifty more siblings or something like that?”
“You need to quit. You know that boy don’t have no fifty siblings. He has three brothers and one sister.”
“Okay then. What about them? Have you told them about your concerns?”
“I called each one of them.”
“What did they say?”
“None of them returned my calls. They don’t know me like that. Olivier doesn’t really know me either, but he’s at least been to Niko’s office a couple times and met me. So I called Olivier again. He said Niko is just being Niko and taking sometime away. He told me he does it all the time. He told me to let it go.”
“But you can’t. Or you won’t?”
“I won’t. Niko has taken time off many times in the years I’ve worked for him. Many, many times. Olivier is right about that. But he always kept in touch with me. Always. And if I called or text him, he always took my calls and answered my texts. Something’s wrong, Ty. I don’t care what anybody says. Something’s not right.”
“So what are you going to do about it?”
