Page 19 of In Her Blood
Evelina did smile at that. “And tell them what? That a grieving daughter came into your office, outrageously demanding she actually be treated like the next-of-kin contact she’s listed as, and went a little crazy when you confessed to backstabbing her in favor of her cousin? That you then ordered multiple big, muscle-bound rent-a-cops to put hands on that girl, who responded by … standing still?” She indicated Otto. “You can check your exterior cameras, if they even work. I didn’t bring him with me. So this is entirely on you, you scheming, disreputable, backstabbing bastard.”
Crawford sucked in a hard breath, his nostrils flaring again and his shoulders rising. A different kind of nerves passed through his eyes.
“Bozhe moy,” Evelina breathed, incredulity joining the rush of feelings in her chest. “Your cameras really don’t work, do they?”
He finally looked away from both of them.
“Even in the lobby?”
Otto snorted.
Crawford clenched his fists. “It’s for client privacy!”
Evelina rolled her eyes. “Cheap-ass firm. No wonder you don’t have any loyalty.”
He sneered at her. “You b—”
“Watch it,” Otto warned. He didn’t so much as twitch, but Crawford clamped his mouth shut.
Evelina glanced around, then carefully picked her way to the nearest chair and perched on the edge. “I’ll wait. After all, I’m supposed to be here later today, anyway, isn’t that right? So, I could wait until then, even. If you make me.” She still actually had no idea what time that was, but she meant what she said. She would absolutely wait if he tried to make her.
She’d long since lost her uneasiness around dead bodies.
“Psychos, both of you,” Crawford muttered after a beat, turning toward the tall filing cabinet behind him. “Fine. I’ll give you the digital copy. It has everything except my signature, because I only signed the printed version, obviously. Is that sufficient?”
“It is.” She’d go over it herself, and probably she would eventually seek out an independent tech geek to analyze the file. It would be much easier to find another lawyer if she needed actual signatures to enforce a will. What mattered more to her was getting the damn thing.
Silence held, as did Otto’s gun, while Crawford opened a drawer and extracted a file folder. He flipped it open and slipped out a flash drive barely the size of her thumb. He put the rest away, then tucked the drive into a small manila folder and tossed it at her, obviously unwilling to step any closer.
Evelina snatched it easily out of the air and shook the drive into her palm. The device was sleek and black, with a nearlyinvisible separation indicating which portion was meant to slide backward to reveal the USB plug. Confident she could attach it to her laptop, she slid it closed again and dropped it back into the envelope, then that into her purse, before standing and looking once more at Crawford. “I trust you understand that if this isn’t what you’ve promised, or if I find it’s been tampered with, we’ll have to have another conversation.”
He glared at her, lips tightly shut.
She made her way back to Otto and patted his arm. “And of course, should anything require us to have a secondary conversation, that time Iwillbring my bodyguard with me.” She smiled before turning away. It was trickier making her way to the door without stepping in the still-expanding pools of blood, but fortunately for her, half of Crawford’s office was carpeted. Over her shoulder, she offered one final parting warning in the guise of a faux-kind gesture. “Oh, don’t worry, I know someone for this.” She made a lazy gesture around the room. “Just lock up for the afternoon, and if anyone asks, we talked things out, hm?”
Otto followed her out the door, not tucking his gun away until they were starting down the stairs.
Evelina expected to find a quiet lobby, and probably a petrified Wendy. She was not prepared to also see two more men standing within and mostly consuming the space, guns drawn and bodies positioned to leave no potential path of travel past the lobby out of sight. The younger male she couldn’t name, though she was sure she’d seen his face. But the older one she knew, if not well, because she had met all of her father’s highest ranked men.
The older man, already turning to face her and lowering his weapon, was Artem Chaykovsky. In his early forties, six-feet exactly, with a jagged scar that sliced into the side of his copper-toned hairline and always a hardened edge in his green eyes, Artem was an established brigadier within the Nikolaev clan. He didn’t spend a lot of time at the main house, often choosing instead to work alongside his troops. Evelina couldn’t remember if they’d ever once spoken, or even if Artem had met her eyes at either of her parents’ funerals.
What the hell is going on?
Even as she tensed up, worried they’d just managed to walk into a trap, Otto pressed his fingers against the small of her back.
“Are you hurt, Ms. Nikolaev?” Artem asked, barely glancing past her before settling his stare on hers.
Evelina held herself still, confusion rocking through her. “No,” she said after a moment.
Otto spared her from needing to add more. “You have cleaners you can trust?”
Artem nodded. “I’ll handle it.”
Wendy whimpered.
The other guy in the room swept his gun toward her.
“Wait,” Artem barked with barely a sideways glance. He returned his focus to Evelina. “What would you have us do with this one, ma’am?”
