Page 109 of I Stop Somewhere Waiting For You

“She’s not up for discussion.” His voice takes a hard edge. “You hear me?”

“Pretty sure with the shit you pulled, I’m allowed free range of topics, so fuck off.”

He leans back in the chair, waving me off as he swivels back and forth. “So?” he prompts me after a moment. “My sister?”

We stare at one another briefly in silence before I take pity on him. “She’s good. She’s happy. Well, aside from this bullshit with you.”

“I never doubted she’d be happy with you, Mav. I still don’t think you deserve her, but she loves you so much there’s no chance she was ever going to be anything other than happy with you. And I know how gone you are for her.” His gaze flickers back to me as he eyes me up and down. “I suppose it could be worse. If she had to end up with an asshole, it may as well be one who would burn the fucking world down for her.”

“Nah, I’m tired of being destructive, Nick. I’ve burned enough shit down. Imma do your sister one better. I’m gonna build a fucking life with her. At least, as long as you and I can pull this shit off without getting our asses killed.”

“Speaking of building a life…” Nicky leans forward, his arms coming to rest on his knees, “…you got something you wanna ask me?”

My brow involuntarily arches in response. “What am I supposed to be asking you?”

“Motherfucker, I know you are not going to put a ring on my baby sister’s finger without asking permission first.”

I bark out a laugh much to his chagrin. “I’ll tell you what, Nick. You do something worthy of climbing back up on that high-ass pedestal your sister used to have you on? And I’ll consider asking your permission before I pop the question. Until then, shut the fuck up and let’s get to work. What do you got for me?”

His eyes shoot daggers at me, conveying how much he hates everything about having zero control in this situation. However, he also knows he doesn’t have a leg to stand on. Eventually, he relents, sinking back into the chair once more. “The address Val gave you is some vacant property out in Middleburgh. Standard residential home. Nothing seemingly out of the ordinary. Only when I had Rico pull who owned it, a red flag popped up.”

“What kind of flag?”

“The house is owned by a guy named Roy Truvepi. If you start to dig deeper than a basic background search, it’s evident he doesn’t exist. Once I confirmed that, the rest was easy to catch. Fucker thinks he’s so clever when he is and always will be a basic ass bitch,” Nicky spits the last word in disgust.

“Nick, what are you talking about?” I toss my arms up in frustration. “A little context would be fucking awesome right about now.”

“It’s an anagram,” he explains. “The name. If you rearrange the letters, you get Yuri Petrov.”

My body shoots forward, with Nicky now commanding my full attention. “What the fuck is Amber doing mixed up with Yuri?”

“Oh, just wait,” he scoffs. “I haven’t even scratched the surface yet. There’s no cameras at the house, so there’s no feed for me to pull from the property. However, there’s neighbors and one of them has a video doorbell that faces the house. Rico hacked the cloud storage, looking to see if it recorded anything on the date Val gave us.”

My eyes slightly widen, waiting for him to continue.

“We got a hit. You see Amber’s car pull into the driveway around one in the morning. From the distance the video’s taken at, Val just looks super drunk as Amber helps her inside.”

“So, we’ve still got nothing then?” I bite out, my voice laced with anger.

“Fucker, do you think I’d waste such a climactic build up just to end with and that’s all folks?” He holds his hand up. “Fucking patience. A car pulls in about ten minutes after that recording. It’s a car service. They drop a guy off and leave. I couldn’t get a good look at him on the feed, but I ran the plate of the company and hacked their payment records on the chance that he paid with a credit card.”

“No one’s that stupid.” I shake my head.

“Oh, this douche is.” Nicky snorts. “This motherfucker is as dumb as they fucking come. Apparently, in more ways than I originally thought.”

“You know him?!” I snap back in disbelief.

“Yeah, you do too.” He turns, reaching back to grab something off the seat of the chair behind him. Swiveling toward me once more, he tosses an oversized envelope onto my lap.

I rush to pull it open, eager to see who’s gonna be catching a bullet from me. My fingers reach inside to withdraw the stack of papers, freezing halfway out when a familiar name is dragged into view. I glance up at Nicky, who cocks his brow at me before gesturing with a nod of his chin to keep going. Returning my gaze to the image, I slide the papers the rest of the way out, discarding the envelope on the table beside me.

“The deep dive Rico did on this? Let me tell you, that boy earned his keep this week. Shit, even Bent would have been impressed.”

I continue scanning through the report, fully engrossed in what I’m reading. The first page is a screenshot image of an online bank statement belonging to none other than Lucian Devoreaux. Circled in red is the charge from the car service company on the date in question.

“What is going on?” I whisper as I thumb through the pages in my lap, desperate to have it make sense.

“I guess the easiest way to explain it is to start at the beginning.” Nicky scoots closer to me, taking the papers from my lap and depositing them on the table beside us where he begins sifting through them. Finding what he’s looking for, he slides it over to me. It’s an arrest report with Lucian’s mug shot on it. Judging by the date, it happened a few years ago while in college. “Luc raped a girl one night at a party.”

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