Total pages in book: 133
Estimated words: 128290 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 641(@200wpm)___ 513(@250wpm)___ 428(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 128290 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 641(@200wpm)___ 513(@250wpm)___ 428(@300wpm)
“How is that possible?”
“If you’d have asked me then, I would have said it wasn’t, even if ten years ago the security systems weren’t a fraction of what they are now. Now I know better after seeing what a good tech guy can do with a few clicks. Someone managed to take out the entire city’s surveillance that night, giving them just enough time to get the woman off the grounds, out of town, and the people who helped her escape back to where they came from.”
“And you know who that person was?”
“I suspect.” He frowns, opening his mouth and accepting the blueberry I drop onto his tongue. “That’s for another time, though. So, this woman that no one could find, I found. I tracked her down to Costa Rica in half the time I was contracted for. I let the man who hired me know I had found her, and the next thing I knew, I was ambushed.”
“By the woman?”
“By the man who paid me to find her.”
My brows pull in confusion, and I tip my head. “I don’t understand.”
“The man who hired me did so because he heard my team was like no other that came before us. We had a one hundred percent success rate, in both businesses, and if no one could penetrate our security measures, that in turn meant we knew exactly what to look for and how to identify other people’s, so he knew we were as good as we claimed to be.”
I run his words through my mind, slower and reading between the lines, factoring in the ambush that was already waiting and the timing in which they attacked. “Oh my god.” It hits me. “He didn’t hire you hoping you would find her, he hired you to make sure she couldn’t be found…because he was the one who was hiding her all along.”
“Exactly.” Enzo dips his chin. “Too bad for his men, I had twice as many at every position and they never made it within five feet of me. The moment the final body hit the dirt, the woman stepped out of the house with a gun to her head and pulled the trigger before we could say a word.”
“What? Why?” I fold my legs under me, the water sloshing around us. “Why didn’t she want to be found?”
Enzo pointedly looks to the bowl of fruit, and I flick my eyes to the ceiling, tossing two berries into my mouth, rolling my wrist to keep him going.
His lips twitch briefly and he continues. “Because she was the mistress of the man who hid her…and when he sent her away, he sent her with his legitimate child, born of him and his wife.”
“Katana.”
“Yes. His one and only heir.”
“That doesn’t make sense, why would he hide his daughter away from her mother, and with his mistress, no less?”
“Because her mother never would have allowed him to sell her off as the ultimate power play.”
A sharp pain settles against my chest and I drop my eyes to the water. That one falls a little too close to home, as my mother made my father promise never to do such a thing to my sister or me.
“By the time we made it inside the building, it was empty, and that was how we figured it all out. The young girl’s clothing and the bars and drapery on the windows. There were messages on an old computer they didn’t have time to take, and a few had written letters we had to decipher. We took everything and within two days we knew we were played. The man panicked and sent an email out, and since we had one of the computers, it came right to us. He put his sixteen-year-old daughter up for auction.”
“And you outbid everyone else.”
“I did.”
“And he just let you have her even though you knew the truth?”
“Not exactly, but in the end, the ceremony was complete, and she was—” He cuts himself off.
My gaze softens, and I offer a small smile. “Your wife.”
“Not because I wanted her to be.”
“Still counts,” I whisper.
“Legally, yes, but not where it matters most.” His eyes hold mine, the passion within them, the meaning behind the words too much. He means what he’s saying, it’s all right there, written in the lines of his expression.
I break eye contact, focusing instead on the half-empty bowl in front of me instead of on the man I didn’t know how bad I wanted to fall for, let alone when it started to happen. “And then?”
“And then I killed him and every single man he brought with him.”
My head snaps his way, eyes widening, and Enzo chuckles.
“He intended to kill me the moment he hired me if I found what he was hiding. He would have tried again and again until he succeeded had I not, but even if he didn’t, I would have killed him anyway.”