With This Secret

I turned to him in despair. “Now that he knows, he’ll get to my dad, and Aldie, won’t he?”

“On the contrary,’ he said. “They are safer. Now that he knows your father had nothing to do with it, he will be safe for a while. At least, while he has the value of being a bargaining chip. Same with Aldie, we have a lot of eyes on her. We don’t want to pull her out from her workplace, so that he will think this whole thing is business related. But at the tinniest sign of danger, we’ll move in to protect her. I promise you.”

I tried to find reassurance in his words, but life had a way of kicking me in the teeth when I least expected it.

9

Levan

I sat at my desk, but my swivel chair was turned towards the window as I stared blankly out of it. I laboriously and meticulously went over all the steps in my plan. I kept trying to foresee and imagine every possible mishap that could happen along the way. I cursed silently when Yuri interrupted my contemplation by slipping into my study.

“What is it?” I asked, turning around to face him.

“He’s kidnapped Sarah Dale and one of her grandchildren and he’s requesting a meeting,” he announced.

I went still. Shit. I hadn’t expected the situation to deteriorate so quickly. That Bogdan would dare to take us on in this way was incredible. There was only one conclusion. I was dealing with a mad man. “He’s taken the Solicitor General?”

Yuri nodded in response.

Folding my arms, I leaned into the leather chair. I knew Bogdan bordered on insane, but it was clear now that years of debauchery and brutality had made him completely crazy. “Which one of her grandchildren did he kidnap?”

“The boy,” he replied. “He just turned nine.”

“When and where does he want to meet?”

“Today at 6pm, under the Davenport Brighton Bridge.”

“Right,” I said, my mind whirling.

“What do you want us to do, boss?”

“Get the guys ready to go to his meet. Two cars. Follow the usual routine. He’s unbalanced, so make sure you’re all wearing your bulletproof vests and keep your tempers. The last thing we want to do is start a war. There will be no winners.”

“Will he kill her?”

“No, the greater problem is, he scares her enough that she starts to sing.”

Four hours later, I was on the phone with Maxim as we slowly pulled up to the deserted base of the bridge. I spotted his black van. It was surrounded by his thugs, all dressed in his trademark black formal attire as if they were bouncers in a nightclub.

“I just arrived,” I said to Maxim. “He has an army of his men around.”

“Be careful,” he warned. I could hear the worry in his voice. He’d wanted to fly down immediately, but I told him I wanted to handle it myself. This was my problem.

“Yeah. Call you after I’m done with him,” I said.

Just as I was about to end the call, he suddenly asked, “Push comes to shove, are you willing to give up the girl?”

“No,” I snapped abruptly and ended the call.

The fact that he actually thought the question was warranted had set off a ball of suffocating fury into the pit of my stomach. The choice was coming down to either her or our entire conglomerate of operations in the country, and I already knew my choice.

And it seemed Bogdan had also made his choice. He must really want Bianca … even at the price of his life.

I slipped my dark glasses on.

Sergei pulled the car door open for me and I stepped out as I straightened my cuffs.

Bogdan stepped out from his blacked-out SUV, his laughter boisterous and grating. He’d always been a burly man, a ferocious boxer in his younger days. Well, that was the past. Now, he was potbellied while decked out in thick extravagant gold chains and rings compliments of the empire he had built from people and Fentanyl trafficking.

He looked like such a parody of a low-class pimp from the eighties that I could hardly believe he had found the guts to do what he had.

“Our prince,” he greeted sarcastically, his hands rising up in the air as he bowed mockingly as low as his thick stomach would let him.

Still, I noticed he had stopped a safe distance away from me. It told me he was nervous.

He knew he was playing with the big boys. He had grasped the tiger’s tail and now, his hand was stuck on it and he had no choice but to face his fate. “Gracing us with your magnificent presence is a true privilege,” he said.

I didn’t react to his ridiculous drama. “You took Sarah Dale. You do know what that means don’t you?” I asked calmly. “You just declared war on us … and the US government.”