Page 51 of Claimed By the Bratva Brothers

Arriving at Annie Knowles’s address in Grand Rapids, I quickly realize that she was generously paid off on top of that tedious NDA. Her house is the biggest and grandest on the block, settled in the middle of a notoriously affluent neighborhood.

Cautiously, I get out of my car and walk up to the front gate.

The gardener spots me and comes over. “Can I help you?” he asks, his black brow furrowed slightly, beads of sweat trickling down his tanned temples.

“I’m here to see Mrs. Knowles. I’m her lawyer,” I reply, wondering if it’ll do the trick.

“Okay,” the guy replies and opens the gate for me.

A minute later, I knock on the front door. I can hear the sound of footsteps approaching from inside while a golden retriever rushes up to sniff me. I get a wag of the tail as a sign of approval, so I grab his tennis ball and toss it. Like lightning, he bolts away to catch it, just in time as Annie Knowles opens the door.

“Who are you?” she asks, suddenly alert, her gaze bouncing back and forth behind me. She sees the gardener working on her bushes and realizes what happened. “Did that idiot let you in?”

“Mrs. Knowles, be kind. The man is innocent. I may have deceived him,” I reply with a polite smile.

Now she looks worried. “What do you want?”

“I mean no harm, I just want to talk,” I say. “About a friend we have in common. A certain Matthew Phelps.”

Annie Knowles appears young for her mid-forties though I can tell that she has had some work done. I can see the faint lifting scars on her eyelids. The lip filler. Definitely some Botox involved. But if there’s one thing that she couldn’t cut away, it’s a deep frown line as she measures me from head to toe, understanding the position she has just found herself in.

“Who are you?” she asks again. “I’m calling the cops.”

“I’m a friend of Paul’s,” I say. “You might know him as Rooker’s boss.”

“Rooker?” Annie gasps, turning pale.

“As it turns out, I have something you need and you have something I need. How about you invite me in for a cup of coffee so we can discuss this in peace and out of sight. I doubt you want your nosy neighbors to learn about your son’s gambling proclivities.”

She thinks about it for a moment, briefly glaring at the gardener again. Something tells me the guy’s going to be out of a job after I leave, but I cannot afford to feel responsible about his fate. My own fate concerns me more.

It takes another five minutes before I’m with a cup of coffee in hand, sitting across the kitchen table from Annie Knowles. The house is ever more beautiful on the inside, but there are signs of wear and tear, layers of grime and dust everywhere. By the looks of it, she could only afford to keep the gardener to maintain the outside appearance. Indoors, the place appears to be too much work for a woman who clearly ran out of money.

“You know Rooker,” Annie mutters, watching me while I sip my coffee with slow and deliberate gestures.

“I don’t. I know Paul, his boss. And I’m offering to pay your son’s debt, interest included, in exchange for some information.”

She cocks her head to the side. “That’s a lot of money, mister…”

“Mr. Sokolov,” I politely supply.

“Mr. Sokolov.” My name sounds familiar to her, I can tell, but she doesn’t immediately register who I am. Good. I’ve got a few more words before the real dread sets in, when she becomes aware of who’s in her kitchen, casually drinking her coffee. “It is a lot of money. Seven-hundred thousand, if I’m not mistaken.”

“Plus interest, another two-fifty,” she sighs deeply.

“Your son went all out, didn’t he?”

Annie scoffs and shakes her head. “I did my best with Henry, I swear, I really did. I paid for everything, his school, his courses, I made sure he had everything he ever needed, and how did he repay me?”

“You gave him too much,” I reply with a wry smile. “Henry never learned the value of money, the effort one puts into hard work. Then again, all of this,” I add, motioning around us, “it didn’t come out of any hard work either, did it?”

“What do youmean?” she sounds offended.

“It’s hush money. How can Henry appreciate hard work when you never set a good example for him?”

Annie’s frown deepens. “Are you here to help me or are you here to insult me?”

“It’s the truth, isn’t it? You can’t even afford a housekeeper anymore,” I say. “And judging by the house—the expensive furniture, the high-end Italian light fixtures, the work you had done on yourself and what you just told me about your son’s every whim having been satisfied—there’s only one conclusion I can draw. You came into a shitload of money and you squandered it, one penny at a time, without any real consideration for the future. You never invested in anything, you simply let your son turn into a monetary black hole. And now, you’re at your wit’s end, desperate and broke, probably looking to sell some of the stuff in the house so you can put gas in that outrageously glossy Escalade parked in your driveway. How am I doing?”

---