Page 37 of Final Installment
His candid reply surprised me.“I’m sorry.”
“I wouldn’t blame you if you weren’t,” he said with a harsh laugh.“Luka sent me here to save the family, but I can’t make it work.”
My feelings of shame and panic fled immediately.My only priority now was figuring out what sort of financial mess my sister was about to enter.“Do you want to talk about it?”
“I don’t think that’s a good idea.”
“In a few days, we’ll be family,” I reminded him.
Kristo hesitated and then glanced around the busy street.“Not here.”
“I have a suite at the Peninsula.We could talk there.”
Kristo shook his head.“I don’t think that would be appropriate.”
His reply amused and surprised me.“We could go to yours instead.”
“That would definitely not be appropriate.How about a drink?I know a place nearby.”
“Yeah, I could use a drink.”Anything to wash the taste of that bitter discussion with Drake from my mouth.The sound of thunder rippled through the night, and I glanced up toward the hazy sky.I was definitely not dressed for sloshing through the flooding streets of Shanghai in my Alexandre Birman ankle tie heels.“Do you mind if I grab us a ride?”
“That’s fine.”He seemed equally as unsure about the weather turning on us.
I used my phone to order a ride share through DiDi.“Where are we going?”
Kristo rattled off the name of a laundromat and assured me, “I promise it’s actually a bar.”
“Okay.”I sent a screenshot of the address to Cheyenne, just in case, with a quick note about where I was going and with whom.
“I’m not going to kidnap you.”Kristo had been reading over my shoulder, and he frowned down at me.
“Do you mind?”I bumped him with my shoulder, not aggressively but enough to make my point.“Not that it’s any of your business, but Cheyenne and I have a pact.We never go anywhere without sending a message to the other.”
“That’s paranoid.”
“Better to be paranoid than dead,” I reasoned.
“Maybe I wouldn’t have ended up in prison if I’d been paranoid like that.”
I clocked the bitterness in his voice.“You were in prison?”
He nodded stiffly.“Twenty-two months.Al Wathba.”
“Abu Dhabi?”I recognized the name from a travel advisory packet the company had given me a few years ago before a trip to the UAE.“For what?”
“Allegedly, I was driving a car while drunk and caused a fatal accident.”
“Allegedly?”
“I was a passenger.Someone else was driving.”
“Someone else?”
He glanced away as if trying to hide something.“A friend.”
I narrowed my eyes at the way he clearly didn’t want to name that friend.“So why didn’t you fight the charges?I’ve been to Abu Dhabi.There are cameras everywhere.You can’t walk five feet without having your face scanned.Their streets are just as heavily surveilled.”
“The cameras weren’t working,” he grumbled.“Malfunctioned right before we crashed.I woke up in a hospital surrounded by police.A week later, I was in jail.Within a month, I was convicted and thrown in prison.”
