Page 85 of Emerald

She throws up her hands. “I don’t know, okay. Never thought I would ever see Anna again after all this time. I don’t know if I’m supposed to report back that I’ve found her. I don’t know what to do,” she yells at me.

“You need a plan and that’s why I’m here,” I tell her, reaching out, grabbing her hand, and bringing it to my lips. The frown on her forehead straightens and she gives me a smile. I take that as a small victory.

32

ELENA

Ican’t believe I saw Anna today.

Four years of searching for her.

Four years of wondering.

Four years of her living her best life.You don’t know that. It could all be for show. To the outside world, you’ve looked like you’re living your best life, but you’re not.True.

Seeing her today has changed everything. What happens if she is happy? What happens if she’s disappeared because this is her life now? I shake my head, I don’t understand. I pick up my phone to call Max as he would be the only person in the world who would understand what to do, but I hesitate, he is still on his honeymoon, and I can’t ruin that. I can’t call Sergei, he will be down here on the next flight. Nash has had to go to the bar to sort something out and has left me alone with my thoughts, which is never any good. He’s right, I need to have a plan, but for the first time in my life I don’t know what to do. I call the one person who I know will listen.Mackenzie.

“Please tell me you are calling to tell me you and that grump are running away together?” Mackenzie teases.

“No,” I answer sternly.

“Oh.” I can hear the shock in her voice. “What happened?”

“Something’s happened and I need help,” I confess to her.

“Shit. That wasn’t at all what I thought you would say. Are you okay? Did Nash do something? I can be on the next flight to Mexico if you need me.”

“I saw Anna today.”

Silence falls between us.

“Anna? As in Sergei’s daughter Anna?”

“Yes.”

“And this is good, isn’t it?” she asks hesitantly.

“I thought it would be except she is married to the cartel leader who took Pearl.”

“She mustn’t know.”

“Not according to Nash. Apparently, she has a reputation in these parts. She’s killed people he’s known or so he says,” I explain to her.

Mackenzie gasps. “What do you mean?”

“He’s telling me she’s as bad as the cartel leader.”

“But isn’t she kind of like you?” Mackenzie questions. She knows some of what I am but not everything.

“She should be, but that’s the thing, the people I work for don’t know where she is either, she just vanished all those years ago without a trace.”

“Oh.”

“I can’t tell Sergei yet that I’ve found her. I can’t get his hopes up that she’s truly home. What happens if Nash is right, and she is this person now? What happens if she has killed off that side of herself?” I ask her.

“You think she can change that much?”

“Yes. They tried to get rid of everything that made us who we used to be.”

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