Page 38 of Secrets

Ivan stared in disbelief and anger at his wife.

“Very well. The divorce papers will be ready for you to sign on Friday. I’ll have them delivered to your apartments.”

She couldn’t believe he was serious. They’d been planning this for years, and finally, it was within their reach. She would have the millions of dollars hidden in the accounts.

“You’ll regret this, Ivan. You need me,” she said in a haughty tone.

“My dear, I survived forty years without a wife. I will survive the rest of my days without you. You were nothing but an accessory.” Ivan turned and left her standing there, alone and stunned.

“Looks like you’re on your own with this, Beatrix. I’m not going to be a part of this,” said Fowler.

“I’ll tell them about you!”

“They already know about me. I’ll be waiting for the bullet or knife that I won’t see. I’m going to get my affairs in order, write my final letter to the bureau, and apologize to mywife and children. You might want to think about doing the same.”

Fowler left her alone, her bodyguards standing back from her. They were paid by her, not Ivan, so she felt certain they would stay with her in spite of what her husband said.

“Let’s go,” she said to the first man.

“Ma’am, no one wants to go up against these men,” said the bodyguard. “You can be angry all you want, but we’re not stupid. You have no idea who these people are, and it would take me decades to explain it to you. This time, you kicked over the wrong rock.”

Shock enveloped her body as the bodyguards walked away, and Beatrix was left alone. She turned, hoping to see someone, anyone who might have changed their mind and returned for her. There was no one.

She was alone. Utterly and definitively alone.

CHAPTER TWENTY-FOUR

“Jay, how many men at the bureau are involved in this?” asked Gaspar.

“I’m not sure. The only person I ever had contact with was Fowler. I think he’s the only one, but it always felt like there had to be more.”

“That seems strange. If he were able to close all these cases, eliminate all these men, he would have been promoted.”

“No. He didn’t want that. For that very reason, he didn’t want to be promoted. Everyone would have looked at him and wondered how there were so many closed cases, criminals gone. The eyes would have been on him. He turned down promotions. Plus, he wanted to stay in the Midwest so that he could be near my mother and the Dyatlovs.”

“How involved are the Dyatlovs?” asked Nine.

“They’re involved in the sense that they would send the contracts to my mother. When she married Ivan and left us, I didn’t know how much they were involved after that. They pretty much operated without my knowledge, sending the hits to my father and then to me.”

“So, your father told you who to kill?” asked Ghost.

“Yes,” he said, nodding. “I hate who I am. Who I’ve become. I should have been stronger and left sooner. I should have gotten Millicent out sooner.”

“Sounds like you did all you could, Jay. Don’t beat yourself up over it. She’s safe now,” said Ian.

“She looks good. She looks happy, and her husband, Trevon,” he chuckled, shaking his head, “I don’t expect that anyone will bother my sister.”

“He damn sure hovers over her,” said Ghost.

There was a silence in the room as the men waited for Jay to say something.

“What will happen to me?” he said quietly. “I mean, I know I’ll go back to prison, but if they see me as an escapee, I’ll be placed in solitary, or worse.”

“We’ll be able to explain it all, more or less,” said Nine. “But you do have to go back, Jay. I can’t overlook the fact that you did kill, even if it was under duress.”

“Not all of them were under duress. There was this family of brothers in Mississippi, six of them. They had their own little sick gang. Mostly bothering local businesses, that sort of thing. Then they started kidnapping kids,” he said, staring down at the table.

The men in the room just waited, patiently holding their breaths.

---