Total pages in book: 58
Estimated words: 52338 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 262(@200wpm)___ 209(@250wpm)___ 174(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 52338 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 262(@200wpm)___ 209(@250wpm)___ 174(@300wpm)
"Ah, the man of the hour," he says as he leans forward and puts the cigar out in an ashtray on his desk. "You've been causing a lot of trouble tonight, haven't you?"
“I shot you earlier,” I say, trying to rationalize what I was seeing in front of me. I think back to the chaos of the auction, remembering distinctly going up to him and shooting him in the chest multiple times. But then I realize the man before me doesn’t have the disfigured face and he isn’t tall and lanky as the man I’d seen earlier.
He continued grinning. “Did you now?” He looks down at himself and pats different parts of his body before he shrugs. “Seem perfectly to me.”
I clench my jaw as I stare at him. How in the world did we get the information wrong? He looks exactly like the man I shot, minus the burn on his face and having a bit more muscle. As if sensing my confusion and irritation, he laughs.
“I’m assuming you met my dearly departed brother Cristiano.” He puts his cigar out in the ashtray on the desk with a light sigh. “It’s a shame what happened to him, but thanks for taking care of my dirty work. He was running the organization into the ground anyway, so now that’s one less thing on my agenda.”
"Where's the girl?" I ask, cutting through the small talk. The longer it takes them to tell me if Morgan is okay or not, the more anxious I become.
"You know, you and your organization should've just carried out the hit," he says instead, ignoring the question. "When you go poking your nose in business that isn't yours...well, that's when problems arise."
"Your problems started when you were stupid enough to try to frame the Russians by having an innocent girl killed. If you’re going to be dumb enough to set up your enemy, you could’ve picked a more suitable victim for your bombing terrorist scheme instead of a girl who looks more like a pop princess than a mass murderer,” I state, satisfaction rolling through me when his smile falters. "What, did you think we wouldn't see through your sloppy scheme?”
He scoffs. "I don't have to frame anyone. Do you know how powerful my organization is in this region?" He waves his arms around the room. “Why would I need to frame them? They have nothing I want."
"That's what I’ve been trying to figure out." I take a step forward, his henchman raising their rifles and pointing them at me. "On the surface, it seems plausible for the Russians to want to eliminate the person helping you advertise your illegal dealings. But after a while, that didn't make sense when you look at the bigger picture. Because the same way you hired Morgan to advertise for you is the same way they could've hired an influencer to do the same thing."
"What's your point, pig?" he snaps, impatience flaring in his eyes.
I grin. "I went digging a little further. Went to see how you found Morgan to begin with. Looks like you tried to do a different kind of business with her father a year ago, trying to turn one of his hotels into a whore house to wash your dirty cash in, but he wouldn't sell. In fact, he blocked you from being able to purchase any property in that section of town by buying all of the available properties and donating them to charity organizations to be repurposed. And you couldn't have that, could you?"
His jaw flexes as he stares at me, and I know I've struck a nerve. Once Natalie and I dug a little deeper into the Rosario family and their connection to Morgan, it was revealed that her family had been on Christian’s radar for a while now.
His original plan was to try to rope Morgan's father into some sick partnership that allowed the Rosario family to use a few of his hotels to wash money through, as well as creating an underground brothel beneath it in order to have local trafficking income. After her father refused and prevented him from getting any other property in the prime real estate area downtown, he set forth to take the property by force. But first, he was determined to make her father suffer a little.
He'd targeted Morgan and made it appear as if it was simply a competitor trying to take out another competitor. Had the hit been successful, Christian would've eliminated the only heiress of the Thomson estate and then would’ve killed her father before finding a way to try to seize the companies once the estate fell into the hands of the state.
Christian slowly claps his hands as a smirk tilts his mouth up. "Bravo, Sherlock," he says sarcastically. "You've solved the case. But the problem is that you weren't hired to solve a case. You were hired to carry out a hit, and you failed." He shrugs. "And now you and your entire organization will pay for this fuckup, starting with you."