Total pages in book: 64
Estimated words: 60377 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 302(@200wpm)___ 242(@250wpm)___ 201(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 60377 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 302(@200wpm)___ 242(@250wpm)___ 201(@300wpm)
Her face was soaked with tears. “Don’t go, please? I’m scared.”
My knees nearly buckled. Somehow, I made my way over to her. I sat on the bed and pulled her to me. “Yulia, you can speak,” was all that I could say.
“I could always speak,” she said.
I wiped the tears from her face. “What’s going on?”
“He killed my parents,” she said, barely able to catch her breath as the tears came pouring down her face.
“What do you mean?”
“Uncle killed them,” she cried.
I held my breath, almost too afraid to ask. “Which Uncle?”
“Uncle Yuri,” she replied.
I gasped as my heart fell into my stomach.
Chapter 44
April
Naturally, I didn’t leave the child in France.
I came back with her to London. I was in a state of devastated shock. I didn’t want to believe it. I couldn’t believe it. I had bared my heart to him. I trusted him. He told me about his mother. It couldn’t be.
A thousand thoughts and possibilities swirled through my head, but they all hinged on the only truth I would accept. That Yulia was mistaken. Yuri was dangerous, in more ways than I wanted to fathom, but there was no way I was going to accept that the man I had fallen for was heartless enough to murder his own brother and sister-in-law in cold blood.
Even so, I couldn’t deny that whatever Yulia knew, had been severe and devastating enough that she’d become speechless through sheer terror and will for almost half a year.
I asked her if she could be mistaken, but she told me she could prove it, if I just called her Grand uncle Ivan. For the sake of Yulia, we found his number and called him to come to the house. I sat on the floor in a corner of the room and watched as he came into the room.
Immediately, Yulia ran into his arms.
My eyes followed Ivan as he sat on the edge of the couch. “Is it true?” I asked him.
Gravely, he nodded in response and my head lowered to the floor. My brain refused to give my heart a pass.
“It happened in Yulia’s parents’ home in Surrey. Yulia’s father and Yuri got in an atrocious fight in his study. It was so severe that her mother came in with a gun, and forced Yuri out of the room. The surveillance video showed that Yuri came back and shot the both of them dead.”
My head was close to exploding but I forced myself to keep calm. “A video?”
“That was how Yulia found out. One of my men is in Yuri’s camp, so when he saw the video he recorded it with his phone, and sent it to me through the sleeve of one of Yulia’s stuffed animals. We couldn’t retrieve it in time before Yulia fiddled with the phone and saw it. When I came by to meet Yuri, I got her alone and found out what had happened.”
I looked at Yulia. “She’s just a child. How was she able to hold on this long without saying a word?”
“That’s what amazed me too. It must have scarred her so terribly. I’ve been working to gather enough evidence to take Yuri down, so she agreed to hold on. She stopped speaking because she didn’t want to accidentally let the cat out of the bag. I’m so surprised she spoke up now. It seems that she trusts you a whole lot.”
I felt so cold, that I wrapped my arms around myself. “Why do you need to gather more evidence? Isn’t the video already more than enough?”
“You do not know Yuri, do you?” he asked.
I looked up to meet the unbridled fear in his eyes.
“At the mere word of a video he will find a way to instantly get rid of it, and even if it somehow, makes its way to the authorities, his entire empire is in cohorts with the highest people in power. You should have realized by now that he is no ordinary man.”
I returned my eyes to the floor. “He is no ordinary man but neither is he this inhumanely cruel.”
“April, things happen that none of us ever intend, and moreover for the right price, anyone can turn inhumanely cruel.”
I thought back to what Yuri had said to me about his mother’s death. He hadn’t delved into detail but I knew that it was not a path that he would willing have gone down also.
“But he loves Yulia,” I defended. “So very much. Why would he do that if he knew—”
“Guilt,” Ivan interrupted. “He is brutal. You are right in that he is not heartless, but what was at stake is his brother’s empire which is almost as vast as his own. A little guilt doesn't seem much of a price to pay.”
He had all the answers, but none of it was what I wanted to hear so I sunk into my own thoughts, my body beginning to tremble.