Page 61 of Caught By the Bratva Beast

“Since when the hell do you get to tell me what to do?”

“Since I was the one who found you on the side of the road with Pearl desperately trying to keep you alive and rushed you to the hospital.”

Even though Yegor had been toeing the line in my patience before the accident, he was there when Pearl needed him. He made sure that she stayed alive. He kept her safe. He sat with her for over twenty-four hours.

For making my wife is priority, I've forgiven his past transgressions.

“How is the head anyway?” Yegor asks as he sits down. He stretches his legs out on the couch in the corner, glancing at the camera feeds I have up on the television. “You know, we're going to have to talk about it sooner or later.”

“Health is fine. It would be even better if you let me have the fucking scotch.” I kick my feet up on my desk, trying to get relaxed and find a comfortable position, though the bruises covering my body make that nearly impossible. “And I know we have to talk about it.”

“Any other activity on the cameras you've hidden around the house?” Yegor motions to the hidden one that shows a feed of my office. “That one proved useful when you wanted to know what she was snooping around for. “

“She hasn't gone digging around in my office since that day. I've been checking.”

“Figure out what her connection is to Antonio yet?”

“No, I keep watching it back and trying to figure out what she's doing on her phone beyond taking pictures. She has a burner though. It's not the one she normally has on her.”

“Have you tossed the house trying to find it?”

“Laura looks for that phone every day when she cleans up. She says she's gone through every inch of the house and moved every piece of furniture while we were at the hospital, and yet she still hasn't found anything.”

“Odd.” Yegor strokes the small beard coming in at the bottom of his chin. “There's no way she had the burner phone on her at the hospital. I checked her things when she went to the bathroom.”

“It's possible she's given up the phone after sending whatever she sent. A smart person would have. Even if they didn't know they were being watched, they would have thought that getting rid of a burner would have been a good idea.”

Yegor gets up and heads to the mini fridge, pulling out a bottle of beer and popping it open. He takes a long pull, smirking at me around the top. “Sure, would be nice if you could have a drink too. You're going to need it once we start digging into her.”

“She's the one who had to have told the Italians about Antonio. Nobody else knew about his existence or the fact that he was meeting with us. Tell me it's a coincidence that a few days after she's in here digging through the information I have on him, he goes missing.”

“I wish I could tell you that, but we both know what she was doing.”

At first, I didn't want to believe that Pearl was connected to this.

I watched the footage over and over again after Antonio disappeared.

Hell, I hadn't even thought that she had been in my study that day. But I started getting suspicious. She looked more like she was coming out of my office than going into it. And if she had truly been looking for me, wouldn't the office have been one of the first places she checked instead of hours later when I finally came home?

Yegor sets the beer on a slate coaster before sitting back down, grabbing the laptop, and pulling up another camera feed in the house.

Pearl is still standing on the balcony, looking out of the yard.

Yegor drums his fingers on the table in front of him before flipping to another camera showing her from an angle on the ground. She doesn't have a phone on her now either.

“She was talking to her friend when I left the bedroom. The call must've ended pretty quick.”

“Do you think the friend is connected to this in any way?”

“No, I've done some taking into the friend. She’s a NICU nurse, but she doesn't have any connections to the Italians. I've searched through every single file on her I can find. Every record check. Nothing.”

“I've been searching for anybody else she may have come in contact with since marrying you. But she's been pretty isolated staying here.”

“Which is odd enough in and of itself. She's twenty-two, you think she'd want to go out and spend time with people her age, but she's content to stay here. She spends her days reading or painting, maybe drawing. Sometimes she goes for walks. Every now and then she goes out shopping.”

“Do you think she's meeting with somebody?”

“I would be a fool to think she isn't and whoever that is, they were behind the attack on us. I'm sure it was the Italians. Pair that with the fact that she's Aaron's daughter. And now we've got a problem.”

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