Chapter 20
James
James attempted to get in touch with Yara for the hundredth time, but it wouldn’t go through.
Her phone was still off. He still hadn’t met with Steve.
The man had kept pushing him off, giving him busy work.
He had already had meetings with more clients than he had any wish to.
Faceless business men with varying interest in stakes in their company.
And now he had been in this town for several days.
The company.
It was his only tie to Steve and one that he was deciding quickly he no longer wanted any part of. He needed to be there for Yara. For his unborn child. To find his daughter.
Finding his daughter.
That had always been the plan, but then Steve came along and pushed him further into his career, fully distracting him.
Shame and guilt layered inside his gut uncomfortably.
He had driven all around this town attempting to find some hint of her, anything to confirm she was in fact here and alive, but there had been nothing. And now he was more than halfway lost, parked outside of a school, unsure of what to do next.
His phone rang in his lap. A number he didn’t recognize. “Hello?”
“This is Kazi. I need you to answer a single question for me.” The man’s voice was sharp as it cut through.
“Is Yara okay? I need to speak to her.”
“I couldn’t find a picture of your boss anywhere. Not online, not on any of the background checks we attempted. Do you have one?”
James did. From the very first meeting, he had secretly taken it just in case the deal the man was offering was too good to be true. “Yes.” He wanted to reach through the phone and shake Kazi, demand answers.
Instead, he found the picture and texted it to him.
A moment later, Kazi swore loudly. “This is important James. Do you know where he is? Where he’s staying?”
“No,” James admitted, a sheen of cold sweat forming on his brow. “Kazi, please man, I know you don’t owe me anything. But please, what is going on?”
Kazi breathed raggedly in and out a few times before replying, “There are few things you need to know. The first is you cannot meet up with this man. He is a very bad man who owns part of this town.”
James waited for him to continue, but after several beats of silence, his impatience won out. “What else is there?”
“This man is your daughter’s stepfather, and we haven’t figured out why, but he also had a vested interest in—"
“Steve is my daughter’s stepfather?” The information was a piano from the thirtieth floor crushing and pulverizing James, and in its wake, he couldn’t hear anything but a piercing white noise shooting directly through his head. His heart shot up his throat, and he struggled to swallow it down.
Steve.
The man who had approached him, who had been so empathetic to his cause, who had offered him money to build up his company, who had always asked too many personal questions. Who never answered any of his own.
“Yes,” Kazi replied. “And you must not go anywhere near him. Listen to me. There’s more to it than—”
James disconnected the phone, he had heard enough.