Chapter 37
Chapter Thirty-Seven
Kade
“Sosredotoch'tes' i skontsentriruytes'!” Thorne yells, telling me in Russian to focus and concentrate.
We’re in the training ring again. The sun has barely come up.
With time against me, I should be well versed in the elements of focus and concentration by now, but my mind is a bog of shit.
It’s been three days since I lost Isabelle, and my life has been hell.
I grip my staff, feeling the smooth wood cool against my palms.
Trying to focus, I lash out at Thorne, but he meets my blow with his staff. The room echoes with the rhythmic clack of wood striking wood, each impact sending vibrations through my arms.
We circle each other, every movement deliberate, testing, waiting. I lunge forward, the tip of my staff whistling through the air. I think I’m going to hit him, but Thorne deflects it with a swift upward block.
Without hesitation, I pivot, spinning the staff behind me and bringing it around in a wide arc aimed at his side. Once again, he counters, twisting around to parry my strike. Then he knocks me off my feet, and I fall flat on my fucking back.
Shit. Look at me. I may as well fucking stay here.
What is the point of getting up? With the system Alek has set up, Nikoli could come for me any day now.
By midnight tonight, he will have suddenly, unexplainably lost fifty million dollars. Then, in a few days, everything will be gone.
The war I started will begin, and look at me on the ground. If I can’t beat Thorne, how am I supposed to kill a warlord?
“Get the fuck up,” Thorne barks.
I flip myself up and get ready to fight again, but he drops the staff and throws a punch in my face.
“What the hell was that for?” I hold my jaw and wince, glaring at him. It grates on my fuckling nerves that I can’t take him down. He’d be on the floor already picking up his teeth.
“Really? You have to ask me that? It’s the middle of March. We’ve been training since January, and look at you. Don’t tell me I wasted my time.”
“You didn’t waste your time.”
“From where I’m standing, it looks like I have. I’m supposed to be preparing you for this secret thing, and you still can’t knock me down.”
“I’ll be better tomorrow. Can’t do any more today.” I hold up my hands in retreat.
“Whatever it is that’s going on between you and Isabelle, sort it out,” he snaps.
I straighten, but my chest caves. I’m not surprised he knew there was a me and Isabelle, so I won’t ask him how.
“I can’t.”
“You’re a Knight. There is no such word as can’t .”
“It’s not in my hands.”
“Then make it be in your hands. When trouble comes for you, you can’t be thinking about your relationship. Your enemies will use whatever they can against you. If that ever happens, you have to be able to think fast. And sometimes, you can’t use your fists.”
I appreciate his words. “Thank you.”
“I’ll see you tomorrow.” He gives me a curt nod and walks away.
I head to the changing room and take a long hot shower, allowing the water to soothe my bruises. I wish it could smooth away the ache in my heart, too.
People say if you play with fire, you will get burned. Now I know what they mean. I’ve lived it. Isabelle was the fire, and I was drawn to her like an idiot moth.
I knew the outcome and knew I was treading too closely to the edge of the cliff, but I did everything I said I wasn’t going to do and fell.
Why should I be surprised that I landed in hell?
I did the right thing by telling her. I just didn’t know I’d be in this much pain for missing her.
Regardless, I have to get my head together. Or I’ll lose more than just her.
I’m a dead man if I make the wrong move.
It’s late when I’m heading back to Erebus House. We have a big game next week, so the coach is working the team extra hard with long training hours that last into the night. Our wins during the football season gained us more publicity, and he wants to keep us winning.
I’m on autopilot when it comes to playing football.
And it’s times like these when I’m grateful for my skills. I could play the game with my eyes closed and don’t have to think to play football.
I walk across the parking lot, through the rows of cars, and when I reach the bike shed, I see Isabelle.
I stop midstride and watch her.
She’s walking across the grass in the distance.
Instinct makes me want to run to her and take her into my arms and love her, but I stop myself. I remind myself that I reverted to watching from the shadows again. And I’m still waiting for her.
She doesn’t see me. I’m too far away, and she’s on a slant. She also seems dead set focused on something ahead of her. I can’t see what that is yet.
She slows down and hangs back, then she hides behind a bush.
That’s odd. What is she doing?
She seems to be watching someone. And following them?
That moves me. I want to see who she could be following. And I want to make sure she’s safe.
She moves from the bushes, and I speed up, stealthily following her.
Knights are like ninjas. One of the first things we train to do is walk into a room without being seen or heard.
My steps are extra light because of football, so she would never hear or see me.
I slink up to a wall at the same time she slides behind another hedge. That’s when I see who she’s following.
Parker.
Parker and Lana DaCosta.
I grit my teeth when I see how close Parker is to Lana. I always knew he had a thing for younger women, but come on, Parker. This is a college, and Lana is barely nineteen.
They get into his car and drive away. I can’t imagine why Lana would need to go anywhere with her lord chancellor at this hour of the night.
They’re clearly fucking around.
Is that why Isabelle is watching them? But that’s not her style. She’d need a reason.
And she has one. She’s never liked Parker from day one.
With her shoulders slumped, she continues down the path. I watch her until I can’t see her anymore.
Why is she following Parker? Yes, the whole thing with him and Lana is suspicious, but what does Isabelle hope to gain?
I head back to Erebus and think about her again all night, wondering what this thing is between her and Parker.
She never did give me an answer for that. And I knew she never would.
I just hope she doesn’t do anything stupid. Parker won’t take being followed lightly.
I need to check in with him at some point this week and maybe give him the courtesy of telling him I saw him with Lana.
In no way do I condone what he’s doing if he’s doing anything with her, but he’s had my back more times than I can count.
I’m just returning the favor. Parker will be under a lot of scrutiny because Chancellor Potalov was so damn good at his job. There’s no point shooting himself in the foot before he’s truly begun.
I don’t suppose he’ll tell me anything about Lana, but I’m sure he’ll agree that if I saw him, then someone else who’s more influential can catch him, too.
Someone like Aleksander Ivanov.
Or Isabelle.
God, I miss her so fucking much. She’d be right next to me now if she were here.
It’s strange how you spend most of your life sleeping by yourself, then you meet the girl of your dreams and can’t imagine sleeping without her.
I fall asleep with Isabelle marching through my head. It seems like I just closed my eyes when I’m woken by the ringing of my phone.
I open my eyes to find that it’s morning. I retrieve the phone from the nightstand and answer it. It’s Alek.
It’s just past five. He’d only be calling me at this hour if he had something important to tell me.
“Hey, man,” I say, my voice groggy with sleep.
“Hey, sorry to call so early. I know you have training with Thorne, so I wanted to catch you before you head out if possible. It’s urgent.”
I sit up quickly, knocking the pillows to the floor. “What’s going on?”
“I can’t talk on the phone. It’s best I see you. I found some stuff that you wanted me to look at. And then some.”
Shit. That sounds serious. “I’m on my way.”
I sit on Alek’s sofa and he presents me with a Manilla envelope. He hasn’t said anything since I got down to his apartment, but the firm look on his face is enough to tell me that I’m about to launch myself into more shit.
It took me two minutes to get my ass down here. I didn’t allow suspense to drive me mad.
Alek sits next to me and pulls out some documents from the envelope. I don’t like that he’s not talking.
He hands me the document on the top and I take it. It’s an email print out from Tatiana Kolyav and Parker. It’s a business email from the New York Art gallery where Parker used to work. I see here that Tatiana worked there too.
The email is discussing paintings that were in transit but never got to where they were supposed to go.
“I assume you asked me to look into this because of Isabelle, not her mother per se,” Alek finally speaks.
I meet his heady gaze. “Yes, but at the time I didn’t know my godfather worked with her mother.” When I spoke to Parker about Isabelle he acted like she was just another student. Like he never had a connection to her or her family.
“There’s a lot about your godfather you don’t know.”
“Tell me. I don’t have time to read.” Or the fucking capacity.
“Isabelle’s mother worked with him for years. It seems that she suspected foul play when a some antiquities and Renaissance paintings went missing. From what I can see here in the records of text messages and emails. She seemed to think he had something to do with it.” He lifts some more documents. “He was the last person she spoke to before she died and he’s been heavily investigated by the Knights for her murder. All this is here is records of Isabelle stating that she thinks she heard him at the crime scene telling the shooter to kill her mother.”
I stand and glare at him in disbelief, my skin suddenly hot and my throat dry. “You’re fucking with me.”
“I wish I were. I found this information in the secret squad files so not even Parker knows about them.”
My nerves scatter that like mice under a bright light. The secret squad works for the Pakhan—Aleksander Ivanov—they’re only known by a number and they don’t even know the identity of each other. If Parker was being investigated by them it means it was a prime suspect.
“They stopped investigating him years ago. The evidence wasn’t strong enough to prove his guilt.”
This…
This is why Isabelle has been behaving the way she is. This is reason she doesn’t like him. The reason she was following him and acting strange.
Fuck I remember the day at the conference hall when she nearly fainted on me.
She thinks he’s the guy that wanted her mother dead. Parker was the man the hacker told her he could get info on.
I didn’t even know Parker was working with my father at the same gallery that Isabelle worked at.
“Fuck. Does Parker know anything about Isabelle?”
“I doubt it. The Knights, and her father, did everything to keep her name out of it. Parker didn’t even know he was being investigated.”
“The fact that he’s lord chancellor now and has held several notable positions in the Knights suggests they completely excused him from suspicion.”
“Yes, especially Aleksander. The Knights investigate for several years for crimes of this nature. Aleksander would have never made Parker lord chancellor of Raventhorn if he was still under suspicion. That said, I’m sure Parker suspects something about Isabelle because it was known that an anonymous witness identified the shooter in detail.”
I bite the inside of my lip and I wonder if he demanded all that craziness from Isabelle because he wanted to get rid of her. Maybe he suspected she was the anonymous witness and saw her as a threat.
But why wait until now?
No. It wasn’t that. Now could have been the perfect opportunity. Perhaps something drew his attention to her.
Like everything else, Isabelle never talked about that meeting with Parker. I mentioned it briefly after she came out of the hospital and she never went into it. She just said he had stuff he wanted her to do for her Cambridge application.
At the time I just wanted to be with her so I didn’t push, but now that I think about it, the night I found her in the art studio crying she must have been crying over that. It was the same night we got together.
I return my gaze back to Alek and clench my jaw. “How are you able to get this information?” The question isn’t relevant but maybe my brain needed a moment of reprieve.
“I told you I know how to do stuff. But that’s not important now. I think he’s guilty, Kade. I believe Isabelle. I believe Isabelle’s mother saw evidence of him stealing art and he had her killed.”
“What makes you believe that?”
“There’s more. I found more shit. A lot more.”
My chest grows smaller, tightening into a fist. “What else did you find?”
“This wasn’t on the Knights’ database. This what what I found when I dug around. But it’s the worst thing. For you .” He holds up more paperwork. “These popped on Nikoli’s accounts going back years. It looks like he’s been working with Parker to steal art and sell it on the black market.”
“What?”
“There’s a transaction listed for ten million on the day your parents died and this,” he holds up a paper that looks like another record of text messages. “This is him arranging to ambush your father in Greece and take his paintings.”