Saved by the Outlaw(196)

Until now.

“Daddy, I’m sorry, but I really just need to lay down,” I mumble aloud, as though he can answer me and give me permission. But there’s no reply. And I just crumple onto the bed, peeling back the slightly-musty quilts and snuggling down into the pillows with my cell phone on the bed beside me. I reach under the sheets to pull the crumpled letter out of my pocket and look over it again, now that I’m in a safer place. It’s quiet enough here that maybe I can gain a little perspective and figure out my next move.

It reads:

‘Dear Katherine Foss,

I have information pertinent to your business. It has come to my attention that you are fraternizing with a very dangerous man. You know this. You may have even accepted the nature of his profession. You have learned to care for him, maybe even love him. But you have been deceived. You don’t know what he has done. And if you have any respect for the man you once called father, then you will cease all contact with him immediately. Ivan Dragomirov is the man who killed him. He was not ordered to do so. It was not a sanctioned hit from the Bratva. Dragomirov killed your father for personal pleasure. If you want justice for your father’s death, then you will turn his killer over to the NYPD. Consider this a warning from a friend. Act quickly, before he suspects something and kills you, too.’

I feel tears stinging in my eyes and I hastily wipe them away, once again crumpling up the letter and dropping it over the side of the bed. The letter isn’t signed, so I have no idea who sent it to me. I assume it must be someone else from the mafia, since the writer seems to know a lot about the inner workings of it. Someone who knows Ivan and probably knew my father, too. Anyone who speaks of justice for my father must be an ally, I think.

Then again, Ivan himself swore to me to find my father’s killer.

I sit up angrily in bed and cradle my face in my hands. To think that I allowed myself to believe him! To trust him! I let him lure me into a false sense of security, let him woo me!

And he really did woo me, I realize now. Despite everything I knew about his line of work, I truly cared for him. And where has it gotten me? All this time I have been sleeping with the killer of my father! I feel so dirty and disgusting. I have betrayed my own father for the sake of money and lust. How could I have been so foolish? All along I knew it had to be too good to be true, but I ignored my instincts. Well, now I am in a far worse position than I was before.

For who knows how long, I lay in the bed, my knees curled to my chest, alternating between bitter tears of heartbreak and anger so intense it makes me feel physically hot. I lay paralyzed with indecision, with fear, as it dawns on me that the warning in the anonymous letter might be true. If Ivan goes to my apartment to help with the movers and finds me missing, he’ll immediately look for me elsewhere. He’ll go to the Amber Room, I’m sure. He’ll call Natalie, Ashton, Charles — anyone who might know my whereabouts.

With a cold, shaking hand I reach for my phone. He’s going to call me soon, I’m sure.

And what will I do?

Before I can overthink it, I go ahead and shut off my phone. That way, he’ll just get my voicemail over and over again, and there’s no way he can track my phone while it’s off. Of course, I have no way of knowing for certain that he would even attempt that, anyway. But at this point, I have to rethink everything I thought I knew about him. It shouldn’t surprise me at all if he has been tracking my location using my cell phone signal. After all, he has always been able to find me easily, seeming to show up unannounced wherever I was. And I never really questioned it, as his presence was always welcome.

But I have to remember that now he is a hostile presence. And he has all the resources of the mafia to keep tabs on me and follow my every move. I take the battery out of my phone and throw it across the room. Now I’m starting to get a little paranoid.

What if he finds me here?

I mean, as far as I know he has no clue that this cottage even exists, much less where it’s located and that it belongs to me. I have tried to keep it a secret from everyone — even Natalie. So even if he interrogates her… she won’t be able to tell him where I am. Oh God. I hope he doesn’t interrogate my friends.

The writer of the letter is right. Once I disappear from Ivan’s sight he will start to suspect me. He will become angry. I’ve caught glimpses of that anger, and I absolutely do not want to be on the receiving end. I never thought I would be. He always reserved some modicum of generosity and tenderness for me. But only when I followed orders like a good girl.

And this… this was not something a good girl would do.