With This Secret

Well Maxim, that card up your sleeve had better be good.

44

Bianca

“Can you believe this?” I asked in disbelief. “Can you see all the things they’re charging him with?”

Aldie turned away from the large TV screen in Levan’s room we had been camped in front of for the whole day. Once I’d learned that Levan had switched the Internet service back on, we had both ignored everything around us. We spent all our time scouring the internet for every scrap of news on his arraignment and updates on his now case.

I couldn’t believe he had left for something as serious as this, and hadn’t told me but I guess giving me access to the Internet meant, he knew I would find out anyway. Why the hell didn’t he just tell me? I could have dealt with it. “He said he would be back in a day or two,” I said to her. “He keeps lying to me.” I sunk deeper into the covers and tried to breathe in Levan’s scent.

She rubbed my shoulder in sympathy. “I told you before you should trust Levan and if not Levan, then definitely his father and brother. They are not going to let Levan end up in prison.”

I picked up my phone again for the umpteenth time in the last hour, and looked at it silent, completely void of any contact from the man I most needed to speak to. I thought of calling Maxim, but I had no clue of how to reach him, short of hounding the guards in the villa for his number, and I doubted they would give it to me anyway. Moreover, would he even be willing to speak to me? I knew he held me responsible for the storm that was brewing, threatening to destroy his world.

Then I called my father. Maybe he would know something about where Bogdan could be hiding. Maybe I could help Levan that way. But it was no use because my father was still in hiding and did not answer his phone. Then I suddenly realized that because I had caused so many problems when I overreacted the last time when Aldie was taken, the best I could do for everyone now was to be calm.

I somehow managed to fall asleep and when I awoke, it was past midnight.

Aldie was still fast asleep beside me. I hadn’t cared to eat anything all day and it felt as if my stomach was about to cave into my skeleton from sheer hunger. Without waking her up I rose, and began to make my way to the ground floor kitchen.

Scary was an understatement for traipsing about in such a massive house, unaccompanied, and at such an hour of the night. But I braved it and switched on the light of the kitchen. I seated myself at the island with my laptop, a bowl of cereal, and my gaze on the update of Levan’s case from CNN’s international website.

My phone suddenly began to ring and when I saw it was from an unidentified number, I immediately picked it up, thinking it would be Levan. “Hello? Levan,” I said eagerly into the receiver and held my breath for the response.

When no reply came through, a cold chill began to crawl up my skin. I dared not even breathe as I held the phone tightly against my ear.

For a few more fearful moments, there was no response, then I heard the voice that I could recognize in a heartbeat, distant, but unmistakable. It was my father. “Bianca,” he called pitifully.

I swung into action. “Where are you right now? Do you know where Bogdan might be?”

There was another pause.

“Dad,” I called. “Dad?”

I heard the laughter in the background then and the spoon clattered from my fingers to the floor. I shut my eyes as my heart sank.

This was trouble, very big trouble and the days from here on, would only get darker.

“I don’t think I need to introduce myself to you, do I my angel?” Bogdan said into the speaker.

It felt like worms were crawling under my flesh. “What are you doing with my father?”

“You don’t get to ask the questions,” he said. “I hear you’re in Spain, whisked away by that bloody fool. You chose the wrong man, my angel.”

“Bogdan, what the fuck do you want with my father?” I growled into the phone, now on my feet, and pacing restlessly up and down the cold granite floor.

“I want nothing with him,” he responded. “All I want is with you, so listen very carefully. You have twenty-four hours. Get back here in time, or the next message I send to you will be where you can retrieve your father’s corpse from.”

“Don’t come!” I heard my dad yell out in the background. “Don’t you come here, Bianca. Do you hear me—”

He cut the call then, and with a scream of frustration and horror, I flung the phone away from me. It smashed into a wall and shattered to the ground. I stared at the destroyed pieces, my chest heaving dangerously.