Total pages in book: 94
Estimated words: 92549 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 463(@200wpm)___ 370(@250wpm)___ 308(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 92549 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 463(@200wpm)___ 370(@250wpm)___ 308(@300wpm)
If Marina were here, I would know.
I wasn’t sure how, but I would know.
I would be able to feel her if she was still in the building.
“It’s been handled,” Gregor said as he came into the room, slamming his phone down on the table. “Now tell me what the fuck happened.”
I had already been through everything three fucking times and I did not have the patience or the will to go through it again.
“You know what happened. More importantly I want to know what’s being done to track down Marina.”
“Do not forget who you are speaking to,” Gregor said, slamming both his hands on the table and staring me down. Pinning me in place with a glare that promised intense violence.
The men who spoke of the Ivanov blood going thin after Gregor’s marriage had clearly not faced the man in person.
I bit my tongue, holding back the rage that begged to be unleashed on him and anyone else that stood in my way. It would not do a single fucking thing to help me. I needed Gregor’s help, so pissing him off even further was the last thing I wanted to do.
“Go through it again,” Gregor demanded, and I gritted my teeth. Then sucked in a deep breath through my nose and let it out through my mouth.
I didn’t have time for this, but I also had no idea what the next move would be.
Solovyov had Marina.
There was no telling where the fuck he took her.
If she was still alive, I had absolutely nothing other than the events that had already happened to help me find her. So we went through it again.
“I was going through the bag trying to find what was so important about that money—”
“Was there anything else in the bag?” Mikhail asked.
“No, it was just the stacks of rubles.”
“But it wasn’t enough money to warrant this kind of reaction?” Gregor asked again, clarifying.
“Correct. It wasn’t even enough money for a halfway decent bribe, or even to pay for a hit. I had thought that there may have been something hiding within the stacks, a microchip or maybe a prototype for printing the rubles?”
“Anything like that at all?” Mikhail asked.
“No,” I answered automatically, and then I remembered what I had found seconds before I caught a bullet.
In all of the chaos, I had forgotten.
“One bill had a series of numbers printed on it. I didn’t have time to figure out what they were, but that had to be what he was looking for.”
“Numbers? Like a bank account?” Gregor asked.
“It was sixteen digits, so too long to be a phone number, but maybe coordinates?” I said, sitting back as Mikhail finished the last stitch and tied off the thread with a sharp tug that stung.
He gathered the towels he had used to soak up my blood, piling them at one end of the table. It looked like he had treated a small army instead of only a single man.
“You should rest,” Mikhail said.
“I will rest when Marina is safe, not before.”
Mikhail nodded as if he understood.
He didn’t understand. How could he? No one could understand what it was like to fail their woman so completely. I needed to make this right.
“Drink this,” Mikhail said, handing me a large bottle of water. I ignored it.
“I have the hotel manager scouring the security feeds to figure out where she went,” Damien said, coming into the room and sitting down at the conference table, leaning back in his chair and propping his feet up on the table. “Security is already clearing the floors, and they’re positive she’s no longer here, but not sure how she left yet.”
“Find her,” I demanded, getting to my feet.
Mikhail grabbed my good shoulder and pulled me back down in the chair, pressing the bottle of water into my hand.
“Drink, or I will drown you with it.”
Asshole, I thought as I opened the bottle and drank the cold water down in a single pull.
“The numbers,” Gregor said, pulling my attention back to him. “You said eight digits? You think they are coordinates? For what?”
“A hit maybe?” I said, shrugging and ignoring the pain and limited movement in my right shoulder. ”There wasn’t enough money to pay a pro, but maybe if it was a deposit and the rest of the payment was to be delivered upon completion?”
“Do you remember the numbers?”
I rattled off the digits and Mikhail grabbed his phone and started typing while I reached into the first aid kit and finished wrapping my shoulder. If I was going to get her back, it would be easier if I could keep the rest of my blood inside my body.
“Was there anything else in the bag that may have explained the digits?” Gregor took a seat at the head of the table.
“Nothing that I saw,” I said. “But I had just found the numbers when those dead men walking broke into my room.”