Chapter 22
“You ever clean your binos?” Tatiana asked, pulling the night vision binoculars away from her face. “There’re smudge marks on the lenses.”
She wasn’t wrong. Whoever had used them last, had put them away dirty.
We’d dropped off the team at the house we were spending the night in and headed to recon Nazari’s location.
I was happy to see Tatiana seemed to have snapped out of her funk.
Declan as usual hadn’t pulled punches while we were in the car and gave it to her straight.
On the best of days, he could come across as harsh if you didn’t know him.
He didn’t massage the truth to make it sound pretty.
He could and did bullshit with all of us, but when it was time to get serious, he cut right to it.
One of the many things I liked about him.
He also held his cards close to his vest and showed little emotion.
I could appreciate the need for the mask he wore – he may’ve been full of bravado while he was speaking to Tatiana, but I knew that shit that happened in Panama marked him deep.
He wasn’t over it, and the more he gave Tatiana advice the more it sounded like he was trying to give himself a mental pep talk.
“Any sign of Nazari?” I asked, ignoring her comment.
“No. Just his two sons are visible,” she said, lifting the NVGs back to her eyes. “Maybe he’s out somewhere with his daughter. We haven’t seen her yet, either. Or he could already be asleep.”
“Either is possible.” I checked my watch and it was nearing ten p.m. “How old is the daughter again?”
“Twenty-three.”
“And she’s not married?”
“Weird, right? Normally a woman her age would’ve been married off.”
It was unusual, especially coming from a respected family.
“I didn’t read anything about his wife, where is she?”
The more I thought about it, the more I realized I needed to comb over the files Garrett had sent over on Nazari and his family.
“Dead. Lots of rumors about cause of death but nothing has ever been confirmed. Someone’s pulling in the gate.”
I shifted my focus from the back area of the house to the front driveway.
A light-colored sedan rolled to a stop and Nazari stepped out of the driver’s side door, walked around the hood, and opened the passenger door.
A tall, slender woman stepped out of the car.
Even through the green tint of my NVGs I could see how dark her long hair was.
“That’s his daughter, Sefa.”
I watched as Nazari pulled her close and nuzzled Sefa’s neck. He took his time, and if I wasn’t mistaken, he’d kissed the skin below her ear.
“Ew. That’s gross.” I could picture Tatiana scrunching her cute nose as she spoke.
Nazari’s head lifted and the woman smiled brightly before she leaned forward and kissed him on the mouth.
“I think someone needs to double-check Sefa Nazari’s birth certificate. I’m not sure I’ve ever seen a daughter kiss her father that way. And if she is his kid, I never want to see that shit again,” I grouched.
Just when I thought the scene before us couldn’t get any worse, Nazari deepened the kiss and grabbed the woman’s ass.
I hoped to God, someone, somewhere got their wires crossed and their intel wrong because this shit was whacked.
He was full on making out with the woman.
There was so much wrong with what we were witnessing.
First, if he was her dad, he had serious fucking mental issues.
The age gap couldn’t be denied, he looked old enough to be her father.
He was fifty-nine and looked every bit his years and then some.
He was the same height as the woman but where she was thin, he was rounded.
“I can’t watch this shit,” Tatiana complained. “It’s disgusting.”
“There’s no way she’s his daughter. Are you sure that’s Sefa?”
“One-hundred percent. I’ve tailed her, sat a table over while she had lunch with her friends in Bahrain. I’ve also seen surveillance footage of her and Nazari together. Not like this. The images I saw, they looked very much like father and daughter.”
The couple broke apart and Nazari led her toward the house, still holding her hand.
They disappeared out of sight for a moment before we picked them back up through the large windows in the back of the house.
We had a clear view of the room the sons were sitting in.
When Nazari and Sefa entered the room hand in hand, both of the sons looked in their direction but otherwise didn’t move.
A few minutes later, Sefa’s hand grazed Nazari’s face before she kissed him again square on the mouth.
Neither son seemed to care that their sister was extra friendly with daddy.
“I feel like I’m watching a really bad porn movie,” she muttered.
“Yeah? You watch daddy kink porn often?”
“No!” she huffed.
“Right. So just regular porn then. Got it.”
“I don’t watch any porn.”
“So, how would you know this is bad porn?”
“I’m not even going to answer that. You know what I meant.”
Sefa exited the room, leaving the three men alone.
Nazari sat in a chair across from the couch his sons were lounging on and calmly engaged in conversation.
A minute later a light turned on upstairs, illuminating a bedroom.
From our vantage point we could clearly make out the door leading to the hall, a bed, and bureau.
I lost sight of Sefa when she walked to the far end of the room.
“No, I’m not sure what you meant. I think I need to hear more about what type of porn you enjoy.”
“We’re not having this discussion,” she told me.
Sefa come back into view. She’d changed into a long nightgown. If I had to guess I’d say it was satin. She stood next to the bed brushing her hair, smiling to herself. She looked happy. Not like I would expect a daughter to look if her father was forcing her into some kind of sick relationship.
“It looks like they’re going to sleep.” I glanced back into the living area where the men had been sitting. They were now up, turning off lights, and all three were heading toward the stairs. “I don’t think I want to see what happens next.”
Neither did I. If it turned out Nazari was indeed Sefa’s father, the kiss we’d witnessed was all I could take.
The older of the two sons stepped into the doorway and Sefa turned but stayed in place.
The man walked into the room, shut the door behind him, and did not waste any time moving to her side.
His mouth was on hers and he was pulling her nightgown up.
Not to be outdone, Sefa pawed at his shirt and got it over his head.
“I’ve seen enough.”
I had to agree. So had I. I moved my binoculars away from the window as the man was yanking the nightgown over Sefa’s head.
“This is some fucked-up shit.”
“Nazari is in his room,” she told me.
“Son number two is in his,” I returned.
“Great. Mission complete. Hurry up, I need a shower after seeing that. Maybe find some sort of voodoo pill to erase the last ten minutes of my life.”
I stood and held out my hand to Tatiana. I was fully prepared for her to bitch about me wanting to help her up. Imagine my surprise when she simply took it and allowed me to pull her to her feet.
“Thanks,” she murmured.
“Come on, I think I have just the thing that will help you forget what you just saw,” I told her, as we made our way down the small embankment leading to the side of Nazari’s house. I noted several points of entry. His security was weak. He didn’t even have a bodyguard with him.
“I don’t think that’s possible.”
“Doll, by the time I’m done with you, you won’t be thinking about anything other than how amazing you feel.”
“Cocky much?”
“Just laying it out for you.”
“Did you miss the part where I said I wanted a shower?”
“Yeah, I heard you. And as I remember, the shower was pretty fucking good. Though I prefer you in a bed where I can?—”
“You can stop now.”
We’d made it back to the car and I opened the passenger door for her but stopped her before she could get in.
“Just think about all the delicious things I’m gonna do to your body when we get home.”
Tatiana rocked back and her eyes came to mine. Even in the dark I could see desire swirling. Damn she was sexy.