45. Dimitri
45
DIMITRI
T he home theater doors are thrown open. The sudden noise makes me pull my gun out of my holster.
It’s Pavel.
“Does nobody sleep in this house?” I mutter, putting my gun away.
“I was looking for you,” he says, increasing the brightness in the room. “You didn’t answer your phone.”
“I was preoccupied,” I say.
I look back at the screen, double-checking that I didn’t imagine seeing it. But it’s still there, so obvious now that I’ve already seen it.
“What are we looking at?” he asks, coming to a stop beside me.
“Behind the pillar,” I say. “Do you see it?”
“What?” he says, glancing back at me.
I zoom in even further until a shape forms in the darkness. There’s an eye peeking out of the pillar’s shadow. And it’s connected to a girl with dark brown hair.
“The girl,” I say. “Do you see her?”
Pavel peers closer. I watch him. I see the exact moment the girl shows herself to him. His eyes widen by a fraction.
Her entire body is hidden behind the pillar, but it’s undeniable that she’s watching the family that’s being photographed. Most of her face is hidden, but there’s an intensity in her eye that I can see even in this grainy photograph.
It’s eerie.
“When we met the detective in Paris, he said that he found something in the background of this very photograph,” I say. “And I have a feeling he was looking at the same thing we are right now.”
I don’t know who this girl is, but it feels like we finally have something.
Pavel remains quiet. He pulls out his iPad and swipes through some pages. There’s a furrow between his eyebrows. He’s deep in thought.
“This just reminded me of something,” he says.
“What is it?”
“It’s probably nothing, but…”
“Speak,” I order.
“The twins,” he says, shaking his head. “We know that Malorie Thorne has a twin even though there’s no record of her ever having one. But there is a record of one of the maids who worked at the mansion having twin girls.”
He pulls up Oleg’s report on the Thorne family and hands it to me. I scroll through the information.
“Whyam I just hearing about this?” I ask.
“It was in Oleg’s full report, but none of us thought it was that important. It was just a rumor…”
“What was the rumor?” I ask.
“There was a rumor among the house staff that the twin girls were fathered by Richard Thorne.”
I blink.
Richard Thorne was Malorie's father. If he had a clandestine affair with one of the maids who then had twin girls, it means that Malorie has half sisters.
“And these twin girls grew up on the estate?” I ask.
“That’s just the thing,” Pavel says. “The maid was let go before the pregnancy even started to show. And it was only a rumor that she was later spotted with twin girls in another town. I just thought of them now because the girls were said to have dark hair.”
My gaze flicks to the screen again. The eye is still watching me, waiting to see what I’ll do next.
I point toward the screen. “Do you think that girl was one of the twins?”
“I don’t know,” Pavel says. “For some reason, seeing her reminded me of the rumored affair.”
“Do we know the names of the twin girls?” I ask.
“There’s no record of it,” he says, shaking his head.
I glance back at the girl on the screen.
There’s fury in that single eye.
I lived and breathed vengeance all my life. I know what pure rage looks like better than anyone.
If what Pavel is saying is true, then this girl was denied a life that should have been hers. She had every reason to hate the Thorne family.
My mind is whirling with thoughts, but I don’t want to get ahead of myself. I need to stick to the facts, not just rumors from the past.
I take a deep breath and turn to Pavel.
“Did we hear back from the team who went with Chloe?” I ask him.
He nods. “Yeah, they’re on their way back now. Chloe was picked up by Max Montgomery.”
“Was there any trouble?” I ask him.
He shakes his head. “No, but we have another problem that I wanted to tell you in person. It’s about the other sister.”
“Grace?” I ask.
Grace is Briar’s youngest sister. When we raided the estate a few months ago, she ran away. She was never seen or heard from again.
He nods. “She was captured by her mother.”
“Fuck.”
“That’s not the worst of it,” he says. “We received an invitation to one of her private auctions in Monaco. And Grace Thorne is included in the auction as one of the girls.”
I suck in a breath. “What kind of mother does this to her own daughter?”
“She’s sick in the head,” Pavel says. “It shouldn’t surprise us.”
“It’s a trap,” I say.
“What?” he asks.
“She set up this auction because she knows that Briar and Chloe will show up,” I say. “They’ll do anything for their little sister. And that includes walking right into her trap.”
Everything is so messed up right now, butI know one thing for certain.
Briar can never find out about the auction.