Page 65 of Sapphire Tears

She sighs. “This takes sibling rivalry to a whole new level.”

She folds her sunglasses and tucks them carefully in the crook of her white silk blouse. She looks troubled. Uncertain. It’s not an expression I’m accustomed to seeing on her face.

I stop my pacing right in front of her. “What else are you not telling me?”

Her reaction, by her standards, is way over the top. To anyone else, it would like the subtlest pulse in the vein above her temple. But I see it for what it is: something akin to panic.

“I-it might be nothing…”

“That’s not your call to make,” I growl. “Whatever you find, you’re meant to report back to me. Immediately. So go on then—report.”

She scowls at me, her eyes narrowing into thin little slits. She’s never liked it when I speak to her the way I speak to all my other men.

“Milana.”

She snaps out of her reverie and takes a deep breath. “I’ve been working my whole network looking for angles in. I still have a few contacts. Girls I knew who’ve been shuffled from place to place. Not all of them managed to get out like I did.” Sighing, she toys with the ends of her hair. Another worrying sign. “I went into one of the clubs last night to try and see if I could dig up some information myself. One of my contacts took me to this room in the back. There was a girl there. Early twenties, dark hair, blue eyes, very striking. Answers to the name Star. She told me she knew Adrian.”

I frown. I have no idea where this story is going, but I have a sickening feeling about it. “Who was she to him?”

“No one. But she’s smart, and she kept her eyes open, so she saw him coming and going in and out of the club. Said he gave her a spooky feeling, so she paid attention to him in particular.”

“What was he doing? Scouting?”

She shakes her head. “As far as she could tell, no. He came to see someone in particular. An older woman. Someone close to aging out.”

“Get to the point, Milana. Who was he visiting?”

She examines her nails, her bracelets, anything to avoid meeting my eyes. “She goes by Sapphire, apparently. And from what Star gathered, Adrian wasn’t visiting to get his rocks off.”

I scowl in disappointment. “So a prostitute claims she saw my brother visiting a brothel to what—play cribbage and drink tea with some older woman? That’s not a lead, Milana. That’s a fucking dead end.”

“I wouldn’t be so sure,” she says carefully.

“Fine. Fuck it. Bring them both to me. I’ll get the answers myself.”

Milana shakes her head regretfully. “It took a lot of sweet talking and a lot of money to arrange that meeting with Star. We won’t get a second chance at a conversation. And I don’t think anyone there will talk to you. Funny enough, these women have a hard time trusting men. I can’t imagine why.”

“Sarcasm doesn’t suit you,” I growl at her. I turn and resume my pacing. “Fucking Adrian. The thought of him bringing that shit back to life, the ring we destroyed… It makes me sick to my stomach, Milana.”

“Some monsters are created from the very things they hate,” she replies softly. “Adrian always had this aggression inside him. I felt that early on, even before I saw it.”

“Why didn’t I see it?”

She gives me a gentle smile. “Because you loved him, Kolya.”

I think about what June just said, about love being blind. It has the sting of truth to it. The kind of truth you don’t want to hear.

“You okay?” Milana asks pointedly.

“Fine.”

She snorts. “I’ll take that as a no.”

“Give Sara a call and get her to come down here. June needs another examination and I’m not inclined to leave the hotel so soon.”

Milana nods. “Consider it done. How’s the gazebo coming?”

“It’s coming.”

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