Chapter 25

Paris, France

“The woman is already here,” Ivan informed him after returning from the cockpit. This was Viktor’s second undocumented trip to this particular private airstrip outside Paris in a matter of days.

“Good.” He was impatient for the information she’d been contracted to acquire. Taxiing to the secure hangar gave him plenty of time to think about his princess and what he wanted from her, especially after all she’d given him the night before.

The morning light slipped away as the plane moved into the relative dark of the mostly vacant building. When the massive doors shut him in with the lone black Ducati and its rider, the pilot came out to lower the steps.

Within moments, the infamous Gabriella Cruz sauntered in. Her leather pants and black T-shirt clung to a body made for sin. Never had the woman’s appearance appealed to him less. Their business relationship wasn’t built on trust, so he’d never had her in his bed and never planned to.

Cruz moved with confidence, unzipping a pocket on her leather jacket. So far, the woman hadn’t crossed him, but her skills made using her a risk he only took when he absolutely felt it necessary. She was the best. No one knew her by the name he used. None of her clients had ever even come face-to-face with the thief. Her skills were specialized and cost a fortune.

He’d known her for years, having some secrets of hers on hand should she ever attempt to cross him. So far, that hadn’t happened.

He tapped the arm of his chair. “What do you have for me?”

She cocked a dark brow, her eyes glittering with amusement. “No chitchat, then. Works for me.” She handed over a drive. “This was everything in the box.”

Ivan had a laptop set up on the table in front of him and quickly transferred the information from the high-powered hard drive she’d handed over.

His gaze hardened to a warning. “Tell me about the contents.”

She tilted her head and tsked. “Still don’t trust me, Viktor? I don’t look. I don’t make copies. I only see what I have to take images of. There is a picture of the box exactly as I found it. There were dozens of hard drives, several hard copy files, and a black ledger beneath it all. I had to snap pictures of the documents and book, but you know well enough that I don’t care about what’s not mine.”

“You’ll forget all of it.” He had no problem letting her see the ruthless side of him. He wasn’t sure what he’d find in the files. He didn’t like Jean Luc’s interest in his princess, not with how obsessive the man was.

“Already forgotten.” She smiled, seeming unfazed, but there was a flash of something in her gaze, gone in a split second. Whatever had been in those files, she hadn’t liked seeing it. That single tell sent a sliver of unease through him.

“One other thing. You have competition for this information.”

His fingers tensed on the arm of his seat. “Who?”

“Don’t know. They did make my job easier, though. I was able to piggyback on their hack into the security feeds to the vault.”

He considered that information and didn’t get a good feeling. “Did you try to find out who it was?”

She gave him a look. The woman was thorough. “I got nowhere.”

“Can you track them? Have they been inside the box?”

Cruz was watching him closely. “The hack was clean. Routed and rerouted so many times that there was no locating the origin. And if they got in the box, they didn’t leave any hints of it. I won’t say it didn’t happen, but I doubt it.”

He still didn’t like it. “I want you to stay close.”

She tilted her head. “The usual standby fees apply. You have two days before I have someplace else to be.”

He nodded. “Wait for my call.”

Viktor looked at Ivan, who’d been clicking away at the computer, assessing the files to ensure they were what Viktor had asked for. His man gave him a tight nod that only added to the tension in the plush confines of the plane.

Viktor turned his attention back to the woman. “The contract’s complete.” Over half a million dollars wired to her account was well worth his sanity. He didn’t care that the woman had added a fee for expedited services.

Her bowed lips curved. “Always a pleasure. I’ll see myself out.”

He barely heard the steps lifting smoothly back into the plane when Ivan spoke. “This is a problem.”

“What did you find?” Viktor waved his pilot back to the cockpit and took the laptop from Ivan.

His eyes scanned the thumbnails as fury built. He barely noticed the first file containing the initial contents of the box—a file Cruz had tagged as “La Couronne,” the Swiss boarding school Feliks and Sophia had both attended. Then there was something that said “Ledger,” and another tagged as stills of the hard-copy files she’d found. He could care less about the files on prominent political figures, including the apparent dirt he seemed to have on the French president.

Something about the file labeled “Toys” bothered him, and when he clicked the folder, he felt bile rise in his throat. His fingers curled. “Where is he?”

Ivan had stilled at his side, and a tense silence followed as he contacted the men he’d had following Jean Luc ever since the bastard had met with Sophia’s brother in London. “Here in Paris. At his office. Sasha saw him go into a meeting five minutes ago,” Ivan growled.

“He does not leave the city. They will pick him up tonight. Quietly.” He wanted nothing more than to drag the twisted piece of shit from his office at that very moment, but some part of his mind still worked. How hadn’t anyone known this about the sick fuck?

The fact that the man was close should have settled his thudding heart rate, but it didn’t. Even knowing Sophia was safely in London did nothing to ease his fury and fear.

His shoulders only tensed further when he found a large folder titled “Sophia Loredan.” When he clicked it open, at least a hundred fucking files popped up. His vision bled red as he noted the tag “bedroom” on dozens of the clips.

The bastard had been stalking Viktor’s woman for months, as far as he could tell from the date stamps. Seething, he continued to assess the information in front of him. There were even videos of the outside of Viktor’s London home.

Fury beat at him as he clicked on file after file. The detailed notes at the bottom of the files made blood pulse in Viktor’s ears. They were very detailed notes. More like a log of her actions every day.

Ivan’s words to his men faded in the background of the blood roaring in Viktor’s veins.

A beat passed as Ivan ended the call. “He is scheduled to fly to Porenza this weekend.”

Viktor’s jaw clamped down tight. Sophia was scheduled to return to Porenza that weekend. It was no coincidence the bastard had made arrangements to be there as well. After all Viktor had seen, the man would no longer be making any trips. “Get Cruz on the line.”

He clicked on a video of his princess tossing and turning in a gold and white carved bed. It was dated two months prior, with “Palace” included in the file name. Most were. Someone had put a camera in her bedroom, facing her bed. A muscle in his jaw ticked.

Ivan handed him the phone. “Cruz?”

“That was fast,” she murmured, sounding darkly knowing, her South American accent a little thicker.

“Get me everything in that box tonight.”

Cruz could choose to make it clean if she wished. He couldn’t care less if the bank learned of the breach as long as he had what he wanted.

He was still clicking on thumbnails as he released the call. She would do as he asked, and he would pay. He didn’t care how much.

He skimmed everything, intending to go back and watch it all in detail. For now, he was getting a picture he didn’t like. The old file from the boarding school records drew his attention. He pulled up the video and went very still. His princess was a teenager with two other girls. Her beautiful face was etched with anger… or maybe pain. Her long dark hair was held back in a high ponytail. He hated the look on her young face. If the other girls’ names hadn’t been in the file name, he might not have recognized them. One was Titian’s Irina, a blonde with long legs that looked almost coltish in her youth. Riot Cross was the other girl. Her darker skin was clear of makeup, and she looked little like the woman she would become, definitely not the high-fashion party girl with a famous rock star father.

He barely took in the others because his focus was on his princess. She angrily swiped at tears that started streaming down her face. That sight gutted him. He adjusted the volume to hear what had upset all of them as the other girls followed his princess’s suit. Trees surrounded them, and the gloom of the day seemed to fit their upset. But their words made no sense to him.

“What are they talking about?” Ivan asked as they both frowned. “A dead boy?”

Jesus! They’d found a boy’s body. Feliks had been at the school at that time. There had been no mention to Viktor about a dead child. Fury rocked him.

Sophia mentioned the name of the killer, but it was only a first name. Fahd. The comments the bastard seemed to enjoy detailing would likely give him the details he wanted, but he refused to scan those until he’d seen everything.

“Search for information,” he commanded Ivan. His friend and guard had already swung another laptop in front of him and started keying in words Viktor picked up.

Ivan’s phone buzzed. After snapped orders were issued to the men on the other line, Ivan turned to Viktor. “Where do you want the Frenchman when they get him?”

“Is there a clean house close?” He hadn’t needed a soundproofed building with metal-covered windows in a very long time.

Ivan barked more orders. “They will find one.” It was midmorning. He knew his men and trusted they would have a location and his prey by nightfall. That meant he had a lot of files to pore through before that time.

He clicked out of the first video and clicked on one dated a week later, needing to see more.

The girls were in the same spot, situated in front of a large oak with glimpses of a deep-blue lake. There were thankfully no tears in this one. At first, he thought that was good.

“What did she just say?” Ivan asked as he narrowed his eyes at the screen in front of Viktor.

He didn’t want to say out loud that the three young girls were discussing murder. He could see the pain and helplessness on their young faces. He had to get to the bottom of why this had been recorded. He saw other files, not of Sophia, but of other students. Decades’ worth of files. He only clicked each for a moment at a time, too anxious to learn the purpose of the recordings. The other videos were also of students who were talking about private things. Someone had been stockpiling the information for either blackmail or insurance. He couldn’t decide which yet.

“Prince Fahd of Saudi Arabia went to that school. He died in a car crash after being exiled,” Ivan said as he read from a news article.

“Date?”

Ivan gave him one that would have been roughly a year after the girls talked about killing the prince. Viktor ran a hand over his face. There were a large number of files, and he didn’t trust anyone to sift through them but himself.

He clicked on video after video, planning to comb through every one after he had Jean Luc in his hands. When he finally clicked the notes, a bigger picture came to light. His logical mind dissected the comments. There was real proof linking his woman to killing a Saudi Prince. The theories written in the comments said that was exactly what Jean Luc had been assuming.

The more he dug, the more furious he became.

Another file called to him. It was in the weeks after the girls apparently witnessed a murder. He fisted his hands as he thought of their trauma and of their plans to avenge the boy who’d died. A part of him filled with pleasure at his princess’s daring heart, but a much larger part of him wanted someone’s blood for allowing any of this to happen.

This video seemed different. Viktor fast-forwarded until he saw Sophia speaking. Her beautiful eyes were hard… ashamed, and even though he might not like what he found, he couldn’t turn away.

Ivan was back on the phone, pacing in the back of the plane, so he was alone with whatever Sophia planned to share with her friends.

It was a confession, but not hers. She was sharing her family secrets, her family shame, showing him exactly why this had been recorded and kept.

Fuck.