Page 56 of The Russian's Forced Bride
His car then abruptly stopped the truck just before one of the alleys. The darkness and grimness seemed to be warning me to open the doors and run, but it was already too late. My body was paralyzed, my consciousness slipping in and out.
As my vision blurred, I could see Brandon lighting up a cigarette before finally looking my way. He had a malignant smile that sent a chill crawling up my spine, and just then, the door to the side of the truck I was seated in was jerked open.
I shook my head in panic as the men I had seen huddled in the alleys loomed over me, a knife glinting underneath the moon’s lighting.
I wanted to scream, but my voice remained stifled—stuck in my throat and unable to claw out in the dense atmosphere. The last thing I saw before I faded out completely was Brandon laughing.
The same hysterical laugh that had warned me at the coffee shop that I couldn’t completely trust him.
It was dark, sinister, and nothing like the one I had gotten used to over the past few months.
Chapter 19 – Rafael
“It’s been confirmed…Mateo Saavedra is alive.”
That was the first thing Maxim said as he stepped into my office, his hands tucked into the leather coat donned over his suit, and his hair, which was usually tied into a ponytail, falling loosely over his shoulders.
A shadow loomed over his expression as he approached my desk, which was lit up by a desk lamp. It was already past midnight, and I had no intention of drawing attention to this building by turning the lights on. I had tasked Cassandra and Maxim to find everything and every lead they could about Mateo Saavedra.
I had even pushed aside their investigation of Brandon Orozco, as it seemed less important. But with the scowl on Maxim’s face, I could already tell that I wouldn’t be pleased with any information he was about to share with me.
Once in front of me, Maxim slid some pictures onto my desk, but I didn’t pick them up yet as I leaned my elbows on the table, waiting for what else he had to say. I was afraid to pick up those pictures, fearing I would be hit in the gut by what they revealed, so I waited for Maxim to tell me before looking at them.
With a wave of my hand, I signaled for him to continue talking.
“Apparently, Joaquin had a sister, Rosa Saavedra, who committed suicide,” he began, hands planted on my desk. “The media aired the news of her death eight years ago, if you clearly remember, Boss.”
I nodded. Rosa Saavedra was a popular public figure, and when she died, it wasn’t a hidden secret. It wasn’t something Joaquin could easily brush under the rug.
Maxim then handed me the picture of a woman—pale and lifeless—a thick rope around her neck as she hung from a ceiling fan.
Her husband had been violent, the media claimed, and it led her to kill herself. But then….
“But then, the next thing we heard was that Joaquin’s nephew, Rosa’s son, died in an accident on his way to his uncle’s house, but that wasn’t the case.” Maxim blew out a sigh. “He’s alive, like we suspected, and Joaquin has been using his identity to launder money.”
It was all as we had suspected, but Maxim hadn’t dropped the big reveal yet. It seemed like he was debating whether to tell me or not, and my hands itched to turn the pictures in front of me over, but I waited.
After a deep breath, Maxim then pointed at the pictures as he said, “You might want to take a look at those.”
My brows furrowed questionably as I gazed into Maxim’s steel-gray eyes before I tentatively reached out to the pictures, turning each of them over one by one after taking a deep breath.
The pictures began with previously released images of Mateo Saavedra, seeming to show a progression of his appearance over the years.
With each photo, I could feel the blood draining from my face, right until I stopped at the most recent, which was taken some days ago, featuring the man who claimed to have been Arlette’s half-brother—with his hands wrapped around my wife’s shoulder while she threw her head back laughing.
My eyes remained glued to the picture as my mind still couldn’t come to terms with the fact that my suspicions about that boy were real. I had hoped I simply resented him for being so close to Arlette. But to think the bastard had actually been the one dishing out information to Joaquin this whole time….
The picture in my hands was threatening to tear apart as I clenched it tightly. The air around me had suddenly turned dense—too hard to breathe in—and my chest constricted hard as it ached.
How?
How wasn’t I able to put two and two together quickly? I had been too preoccupied to find everything I needed to know about Brandon.
“We checked all the data about Brandon Orozco, and there were no traces of his identity being forged,” I found myself saying to Maxim.
I still didn’t want to believe it. I wanted this to be a sick joke I could just laugh off.
But Maxim was dead serious.
