Page 76 of Double Edged Hearts
He’s here. They came. They all came. They came to a place they weren’t supposed to know about.
“How did you find me?” I ask.
“We picked you up on the CCTV of one of the shops you went in yesterday. You know Gibbs. He has his ways,” he says. “We searched around the area. We figured once we saw the dead bodies in the forest, your house couldn’t be too far.” He smirks.
“Didn’t think I was worth all that trouble.”
“Bastard prick,” he scuffs, shaking his head. “You know you are, and I shouldn’t have given you the ultimatum to choose. I shouldn’t have been an ass. There’s no choice. You are like a brother to me, and I’m not letting you leave us. I apologize for allowing you to.”
“You were right. The situation is shit. Thanks for coming, but they have her, and I have to find her.”
“Gibbs has a way of finding things, finding people. I pray with everything inside me he finds her. We should have been here to back you up. It shouldn’t have come to this.”
“Claudius,” I say weakly, “you can’t be blamed for wanting to protect your family. It’s the promise we make to our women when they become ours.”
“I hear you, but somebody should have been here, and I’m afraid the situation is worse than what you think.”
“What? Why?”
“We did our own digging. It was Richard who led the operation to kill you and get Cora,” he answers.
I’m so shocked and enraged I tense, wanting to grab my guns and shoot something. That motherfucking bastard.
“No…”
“Yeah. He’s working with Matvey. He’s leading the show, running it, and has links to a terrorist group in Russia who are notorious for arms trafficking.”
“Jesus Christ, what the hell are you saying to me?” I gasp.
“He uses his position in the FBI to get certain things done. They run a billion-dollar operation. People like Matvey work for them and do the dirty work. Richard is an enabler. It looked like the plan was running smoothly until the feds picked up Matvey’s presence in Chicago.”
“He’s here to steal weapons and sell them to people in Sierra Leone,” I say.
“Well, that makes sense about why he’s here.” He nods.
“Cora trusted Richard. The bastard will die when I find him,” I vow.
Claudius looks hesitant. It’s a look that’s rare on him. “Alex… there’s something else…”
“What the fuck more could there be?”
“He’s Cora’s father. Richard is her real father,” he informs me and my mouth falls open.
“You’ve got to be kidding me.”
“I wish I was. Cora never knew. Gibbs found some stuff. A letter written to her mother,” Claudius explains.
Fucking hell. What a twist of shit.
“Richard told Cora her father killed her mother.”
“After all I’ve seen, I don’t think that story went that way.”
What way could it have gone? Jesus.
“He has my girl, Claudius. I don’t know if he’ll kill her or not.”
“I know, that’s the worry. Would he kill his own daughter? That bastard seems like he’ll do anything.”
