18. Ilya
Ilya
"How long till Cillian arrives?” I ask Sergei, who glances down at his phone.
"A half hour," Sergei replies.
"Make sure she’s ready for him," I order him. "And make it clear to him just how important this is. I want him on his A-game, you hear?"
"Got it," Sergei replies as he rises from the seat opposite me. "Anything else you need me to take care of?"
I shake my head. "Just make sure that the baby is well," I reply. "And that nobody gets a chance to slip any other notes under her pillow."
He nods again and heads to the door. I watch him as he leaves, leaning back into my seat, and as soon as he is gone, I find the room cast into silence again. Nothing for company but my own thoughts.
And they have kept me up long enough as it is.
Shit, I know I should be keeping my head in the game, but I spent most of last night tossing and turning, trying to figure out if Kieran really was the one at fault for what happened with that note.
He’s the only person we didn’t have eyes on that night; the CCTV for that part of the house covers the kitchen and the garden, not the door itself.
There’s nothing to back up his story that he’s innocent, but still something nags at the back of my mind, telling me that there’s something I’m missing here.
I don’t know what Sergei did with Kieran, exactly.
Just that he’s gone, and it’s going to stay that way.
I can’t let him set foot in this place again, not without drawing the attention and ire of everyone who was there to watch him get beaten to a pulp.
As far as they are concerned, I made a choice and followed it through.
I don’t back down when I make a call like that, and I’m not going to change my mind now.
Not without looking weak and unsure of myself.
Fuck it—I open my laptop, tapping through to the CCTV footage from the night before the note was discovered.
That’s when it must have been abandoned there, right?
If Petar is really the one who left it, he must show up on at least one camera throughout the house.
In the form of a car pulling up, just something to confirm that he was snuck in right under my nose.
I play the footage as quickly as I can, until I come to the evening when it must have happened.
Drumming my fingers against the desk, I slow the video so I can watch from the hour or so after sundown.
That’s when he must have been brought in, when the house was quiet and still and nobody was watching too closely.
I narrow my eyes as I watch, taking in all the screens, gaze darting between each camera feed to see if anything looks out of place.
And much to my surprise, it turns up nothing.
Nothing I can see that looks like it doesn’t belong, nobody there I don’t recognize.
I run the footage forward a little, focusing on the kitchen area where Kieran would have been standing guard, but there’s nothing.
Not a flicker, not a hint of someone stepping out who doesn’t belong.
I suck on my teeth, pushing the camera feeds forward and running through as much of the footage as I can.
There has to be something to confirm Sergei’s accusation of Kieran.
Sergei knows this place better than I do, running the security here like the tightest of ships.
And yet, I can’t see anything. Can’t make out a single detail that looks like it doesn’t belong.
Which means...
Which means Sergei could have been wrong. And that the beating Kieran took to pay for his crimes might have been aimed at the wrong person.
I scroll through the rest of the night, eyes fixed on the gardens, where Petar must have come through if Kieran let him in through the kitchen. But Petar is nowhere to be seen. In fact, the footage is downright idyllic, still and unmoving.
But that note… that note was real. There’s no way in hell Rose would have faked something like that, I am sure of it.
She knows that she will pay if she lies to me, and, as defiant as she’s been since she arrived here, she doesn’t take risks like that.
Besides, what good would it do her to throw something like that into the mix?
She must have known that I would tighten security on her, take things to the next level, and she seems intent on clinging to as much of her freedom as she can.
No, something just doesn’t sit right. There’s a piece missing. I might have acted too hastily in casting Kieran out, or in blaming Petar for the note in the first place...
I rub a hand over my face. Fuck it. Having Rose so close to me has my mind spinning. I have a child in the mix now, who I have to protect on top of everything else. A child who was threatened in that note in a way I can’t ignore.
All of these pieces are piling up on each other faster than I can make sense of them. But if I don’t get a handle on them soon, things will only spin further out of my control.
And I don’t know who will pay the price if that happens.