Page 69 of Final Installment
“Should I?”
“No,” he said quietly.“I’ve done nothing to earn your forgiveness.”
Memories of my torrid fantasies flashed before my eyes.Instead of telling him all the sordid ways he could that forgiveness, I said, “Well, keep me alive and you might.”
We settled into silence as he drove.I couldn’t get my bearings.It had been so long since I’d lived here, and I hadn’t even so much as looked at a map of my homeland since taking world geography in high school.I thought we might be going east, but I wasn’t sure.“Are we headed to the coast?”
“There are a lot of cheap hotels there.Places to hide.”
“Until?”
“Until it’s safe.”
Safe for you or safe for me?
Chapter Sixteen
“Didyougetallthe cash from the traps in the car?”Zec asked, his voice tired on the other end of the line.Always paranoid and planning for the absolute worst, Zec ensured every vehicle in their fleet had hidden compartments of cash that could be used in emergencies.
“Yes.”Luka paced the small balcony of the cheap hotel room they’d rented.For thirty euros a night, he couldn’t complain.It was clean, secure and only a few blocks from the beach.
“You may need to stay hidden for a while so be careful and ration it out.”
“I will.”He leaned against the balcony railing but instantly straightened when he felt the metal rock unsteadily.He eyed the rickety old bolts tying the railing to the balcony.This thing was a deathtrap.
“Did you dump the car?”
“Yes.”He backed away from the deadly ailing.“Right after we stopped for shoes and other supplies.”
“Shoes?”
“Elona left hers in the grass.”He’d been replaying the night over and over in his head.Dafina’s revelation.The argument with Besian.Chasing Elona through the palace and out into the grass.The bomb.Fleeing the scene.He wiped a hand down his face.Fucking nightmare.
“You should have dumped her with the car,” Zec said rudely.
“Hey!”
“Luka, she had information on our warehouses and operations in her carry-on.She also had twenty thousand dollars in cash in her luggage plus a few thousand leks and five thousand euros!She didn’t come here to be a wedding guest.For all we know, she’s the one who placed the bomb.She was on her phone right before it went off.”
“She was receiving photos of me and the two dancers back in Houston,” Luka corrected and shifted uncomfortably.
Zec was silent a moment.“I have what’s left of her phone.I’ll know if she’s telling the truth.”
“She is.”Luka couldn’t explain it, but he knew she wasn’t lying.“Maybe you can find out who sent them to her.Someone was following me in Houston.Someone wanted to make trouble here.”
“Someone like your bride-to-be and her family?”Zec simply refused to let his theory go.
“Except that Artan is dead,” Luka pointed out.“It doesn’t do them much good to kill off the family patriarch.”
“Unless they have another waiting for his chance.”
Luka reflected on that.“You think that this was a play by Aleksander?”
“I think we kept that kid locked up like a prisoner for too long.I think we left him in the care of a family that might not want us to stay in power.”Zec repeated things Luka had heard dozens of times.It had been no secret that Zec felt strongly about keeping the Dushku scion a hostage all these years.He’d been even more irritated about the fees paid out to the Raffaelli family for acting as Aleksander’s jailers.
“The Raffaellis aren’t stupid.They know that Skender could never hold power over—.”He stopped talking as he realized how stupidhesounded.Of course.“The Raffaellis want us fighting each other so they can swoop in and take us all out.They want to keep the trade corridor for themselves and the money.”
“Now you’re talking like a boss,” Zec remarked in that sarcastic asshole way of his.
