Chapter Eighteen #2
“The house came to me. The house and the contents.
The money in our personal accounts. The company, but it doesn't seem to have been much more than some paperwork.
No employees. No equipment. No office. I didn't realize.
It never occurred to me things weren't aboveboard until after he died and the attorney laid it all out.
The house, the cars, all that money in the bank, and the business that wasn't a business.”
“No one came looking for him? Asking about the trucks he used or unfinished jobs?”
“No. No one. It's like when he died the business evaporated. I decided not to worry about it until I went looking for Adam's birth certificate.”
I believed her. Maybe that made me a fool, but I believed her.
Time to come clean, all the way. I mentally braced before I said, “Lily, I have cameras in your house.”
At this revelation, she leaned forward. I was ready for her to throw a punch, slap me. Anything. Her eyes went wide, then narrowed, and I knew exactly what she was thinking.
“I didn't see anything I shouldn't. I swear. I did it partly to keep you safe and partly because I have to find out what Trey knew.”
“And you thought I would know. You thought I was working with them.”
“I thought it was a possibility.”
She let out a huff of air and flopped back into her chair. “I should be pissed at you. I really should. I hired you to protect us, and you were spying on me instead. I had a feeling you weren't just there for me.”
“I was protecting you, too.” I wanted to drop my hand from the back of her chair to her shoulder. To touch her, even if it was only with a fingertip.
I kept my hands to myself. She hadn't jumped up and kicked me in the balls. That was a good sign. I tried again.
“Lily, this is about more than you and Adam. Tsepov threatened my mother.”
“I should be furious right now,” she said quietly, mostly to herself.
“I'm fine if you are,” I said. “It was a shitty thing to do. I know that. Sometimes, in my line of work you have to make hard choices.”
Lily sighed. “I guess you do. If you've been watching me, you know I'm not involved. And you searched the house? Trey's computer?”
“Not as thoroughly as I need to. But I'm not the only one who searched the house. Deputy Dave went through Trey's office twice during dinner the other night. He didn't find anything, but he's looking for something. Any idea what?”
“What? Why? If Trey owed him money or something, he could have told me.” Lily tipped her head back, resting her soft curls against my arm. She stared up into the cloudless blue sky. “He was working with Trey, wasn't he?”
“I don't know for sure, but I'm starting to think he was.”
Her eyes still on the sky, she said, “Who is Andrei Tsepov, and what does he have to do with anything? Why did his men break into the house and say they were taking me to him?”
“Fuck,” I said, “that's a long story.”
Lily tipped her head down and speared me with a no-nonsense look, the same one I'd seen her give Adam when he refused to eat his vegetables. “I'm not going anywhere. Talk.”
“Okay. Andrei Tsepov is the nephew of Sergey Tsepov, who was shot and killed a few years ago by my sister-in-law.
Sergey Tsepov was a bad guy. He was very good at being a bad guy.
It looks like he was in business with my father, who we didn't know was such a bad guy until recently. And from what we can figure, tracking the money moving from Tsepov, to my father, to Trey, Trey has been wrapped up with them for a while.”
“Wrapped up with them in what, exactly?”
“I don't want to tell you what they're into. I don't want you to know.”
It was clear there'd been problems between Lily and her husband. Maybe it was wishful thinking, but it sounded like they'd fallen out of love years ago. Not being in love with her husband and knowing he was a criminal who'd put both her and his son at risk were two very different things.
I thought about some of the shit my father, Tsepov, and Trey had been into. I didn't want to bring that kind of darkness into Lily's life.
“Tell me, Knox. I'm not a child. I need to know.”
“You really don't.” She didn't, but that wasn't my call. Lily was right, she wasn't a child. I gave in.
“Fine. I don't know that we have the whole picture.
We may never have the whole picture until we find my father, and knowing him, probably not even then.
From what we've been able to find, there's been some arms dealing, a lot of transport.
Tsepov moving things and using my father and Trey to do it.
Drugs, though that wasn't a major part of their business. Trafficking, mostly women. And an adoption ring, highly paid surrogates, mostly.”
“Trafficking?” Lily asked in a weak voice. “Arms and drugs?”
“From what we can tell, the Tsepov syndicate originated the business except for the adoptions.
My father and Trey worked together on logistics.
Moving product, whatever that product was, from one place to another.
The only way we've been able to figure it out is that my father, when he was shorthanded, used the company as protection for some of the transport. Not often, or my brothers and I would have caught on. Often enough that we could see the pattern once we looked for it.”
“But the adoptions aren't Tsepov? The adoptions were your father and Trey?”
“From what we can tell, yeah. Not all of them, maybe none of them, are illegal. Highly questionable, but not necessarily illegal.”
“How is Andrei Tsepov tied up in this?” Lily asked.
“Andrei inherited the family business, and he is not following in his uncle's footsteps. He's sloppy and a little stupid. Normally that would be a good thing. For us, it's not. He's an amateur and a dumbass.”
“Why would he want me? Why send those men?”
“He called us the same night you did. Said my father took something from him and he wants it back. If we don't turn it over, he'll kill our mother.”
“What did your father take?”