Page 17 of In Her Blood
Dante ripped his glare from the screen, a snarl escaping his chest. “Find this fucker. I’ll get extra security on Mom. Have Miguel double-check her digital security. And I’ll talk to Cris about what he remembers from his last trip to Chicago.”
Mikey exhaled roughly, nodded, and snapped the laptop shut. “Think we’ll be making a trip?”
Fire burned in Dante’s chest as the words from the paper replayed in his mind. “If it comes to that.” He stood. “First, we beat them at their game. Once we know what we’re really looking at, we’ll know how best to break them.” He didn’t need to say the rest. No one threatened his family and walked away. But to target a tiny widow in her sixties, presumably because of her sons?
He’d need to have his torches restocked.
Chapter six
Father’s Will
“I’m sorry, Mr. Crawford’sin a meeting—”
Evelina pushed up on her toes in order to lean fully across the reception desk, her every exhale ruffling the other woman’s bottle-blonde hair. “Is. He. On. The. Property?”
Wendy, according to the nameplate, flicked a visibly uncomfortable glance around the small lobby. As if she were hoping someone had magically appeared in the previous two minutes.
They weren’t exactly a bustling office, though.
Evelina smacked her palm onto the counter-like surface separating them. “Answer the question, Wendy, before I forget my manners.”
Wendy’s eyes blew wide and she shrank as far back as her seat would allow. “Y-yes, upstairs. But he really is in a meeting. His schedule is—”
Evelina shoved back and spun toward the stairs. They were technically accessible so that clients could meet with their lawyers, and undoubtedly also so those lawyers could come and go more easily. But they probably should have been behind a door.
“You can’t go up there! You don’t have an appointment!” Wendy called after her.
“Turns out I do!” Evelina snapped back without breaking stride. She didn’t know for sure if Pyotr hadn’t just been bullshitting her. All she had was her instinct to go on, and her instinct said he’d been purposefully rubbing something in her face. That ‘thing’ being his presumed victory.
He always had had a bad habit of celebrating before the final verdict was in.
She turned down the hall at the top of the stairs, slowing her pace in an effort to determine her next destination. If Crawford was in a meeting, would he be in his office or a larger room? Crawford was only one of a few lawyers at the firm, but for whatever reason, he was the one her father had arranged to leave in charge of his estate. That wasn’t a headache she’d wanted anyway, so really, she was just glad Pyotr hadn’t had a way to get his grubby hands into it. Or so she’d thought.
She didn’t have to go far before she found a closed door with the name she knew—Anwar Crawford—on a mounted placard. She’d met the man before, knew he had salt-and-pepper hair with brown eyes and a patch of still-dark hair on his chin, but seeing his name spelled out gave her pause.What nationality is he, anyway?
Not that she cared. It was more that she was surprised her father might have worked with someone of ‘other’ descent. Which in itself was a strange thought, considering … well,her.
Evelina gave herself a sharp headshake and pressed an ear to the door.
Muffled voices carried through the thick wood.
Perfect.
She carefully tried the knob, found it unlocked, then threw the door open as hard as she could in a single motion. Her gaze swept over the room as a pair of women—clearly multi-generational—let out choked shrieks. The younger of the two leaped to her feet as Evelina spotted the man she was looking for. He was hunched forward in a half-standing position behind his desk and staring at her wide-eyed with dawning recognition.
The woman on her feet found her voice. “Wh-who are—”
“We need to have a conversation, Crawford,” Evelina said, ignoring the unfamiliar pair. She stepped properly into the room and kept her glare on her target. “I’m hearing some very displeasing things. Things I should have been hearing fromyou.”
Crawford cleared his throat, straightened to his full height, and smoothed his tie. “Ms. Nikolaev, as you can see, I amwith other clients. Any questions you have can wait until our scheduled meeting this afternoon.”
Evelina stomped forward at the same time as the older woman gasped, but still, she paid them no mind. Frankly, she was doing them a courtesy, revealing what kind of service the surviving family stood to receive by doing business with this ass.
If she let him live.
She pressed her knuckles onto the wood of his desk and leaned forward, not bothering to try matching his height. She knew better than to lean on strengths she didn’t have, after all. “Thank you, Crawford,” she purred, sarcasm dripping from her voice, “for confirming that thereisan appointment today. Since neither you nor anyone else from your entire office could be bothered to call me—your deceased client’s actual legal next-of-kin—and tell me about it.”
“Seriously?” The appalled utterance came from the younger of the two women still behind her.
