Page 17 of Nemesis
He didn’t respond. Something haunting lined his expression. Silence stretched between us, but I decided not to press him further. I needed him to hand me the information willingly, something I believed he wasn’t accustomed to from the look on his face. While I waited for him to answer, I scanned through the other notes—more threats with the same scribbling.
Wait, I thought it was just one note, but there are at least a dozen here.
I met his gaze again and he blew out a breath, surveying our surroundings. “The fire that killed my wife wasn’t accidental,” he confessed. “She was murdered.”
There was a pause. “It started out the same with just the letters until it escalated one night and they came after her. The other letters you have in your hands are all the ones I got before they took my Elena from me.”
They? Who’s they?
Perplexed by his revelation, I glanced back and forth between him and the papers I was holding. Putting them down, my brows creased in the middle before I relayed the information I’d gathered from his wife’s autopsy report. “The police report showed that your wife had died in her sleep from smoke inhalation and dehydration from her severe burns. The fire department claimed the fire had been an extremely unlucky occurrence where a faulty wire jumped, causing the electrical fire.”
Morales hesitated, quickly glancing around us once more before shifting in his seat.
“Because my men made it look that way. After we received the first note threatening Elena’s life, I asked them not to alert the police because I was certain it was simply from a competitor using it as a distraction since we were working on expanding.”
This wasn’t surprising since corrupt men like him always had at least one person in the police department working for them. But despite his transparency, I didn’t trust him.
There had to be more to the story, because why would he lie about his wife’s death? Why would he cover it up, only to have to deal with this all over again with his latest wife?
He breathed out a dark chuckle, running a hand through his hair. “It wasn’t like that had never happened before, but they’d always been empty threats.”
After a pause, he swallowed. “At least they were, until I got a call from the chief of police informing me of my wife’s death.”
He rose to his feet and looked in the direction of his house. “Olivia doesn’t know the truth about Elena’s death and the other letters.” He turned his attention back to me, picking up the notes from the table to put them back inside his pocket.
Looming over me in what I assumed was a threatening stance, he clasped a firm hand on my shoulder. “I would like to keep it that way.”
We locked eyes, annoyance churning my insides at his challenging command. This wasn’t a suggestion. It was an order.
I swallowed down my annoyance. “Very well, sir,” I finally said, pushing my chair back to get up, its legs grating against the stoned slabs.
“Good. Now, I’ll have Jaxon show you around.”
I started following behind him when a silhouette caught my eye, appearing behind the curtains of a window that overlooked the garden.
I hadn’t been able to protect Sofia, but I would protecther.
CHAPTER7
SOFIA
Cold rain lashed my face as I sprinted away from the house, pulling my hoodie tighter over my head. My feet seeped through the wet ground, but I kept pushing through, running faster.
Every once in a while, I looked over my shoulder, making sure I wasn't being followed. Although I knew Victor was fast asleep and the night team wouldn’t do another round until morning came, one could never be too careful.
If there was one thing I’d learned, it was that anyone could be hiding in the shadows.
The lights from the house slowly faded away, plunging me into the thick darkness of the woods lining the back of the house. The ground was barely visible and its unevenness, combined with the gnarled roots sprouting out, made running in these woods a fucking hassle.
But since I’d spent hours exploring them and memorizing the satellite pictures of the property and the lands surrounding it, I already knew the way out.
With only shadows of moonlight seeping through the thick canopy of trees, I made my way to the other side of the land.
Sneaking a sleeping pill inmy husband’sdrink had been a bit of a challenge since his paranoia surfaced after the little delivery we got last week, but I had to make sure he wouldn’t startle when I left in the middle of the night.
Once he had been sound asleep, I’d sneaked out the bedroom’s window, using the vines down the side of the house. I’d crept along the wall of the premises, staying out of the security cameras’ scope, blending in with the shadows to keep me out of sight.
When I’d hit the corner, I’d peered around it to look for any movement in the garden before making my way to the only blind spot on the property and had taken off sprinting into the woods.
