Ultimate Vengeance (Wanted Men Book 4) by Nancy Haviland Page A

Spinning his glass on it’s edge, he caught it before it rolled away. “Apparently, one of Lucian’s men had a sit-down with the clerk who has taken a couple of calls from our snitch. He gets an outline and then forwards the info onto our friend, Detective Smythe. Eight of the eleven calls they’ve received have come from a number that can’t be traced by the NYPD. Lucian gave it to his people and it led his boys to my warehouse in Brighton Beach.”
    Shock had Alek sitting back with a thump. “What the fuck? This son of a bitch is that close?”
    Vasily nodded. “The other three calls were made from an untraceable cell that came from an unknown location in Nassau County.”
    Alek’s stomach rolled in a sickening wave. They lived in Nassau County.
    “Now, I understand that’s a large area, but it’s our area. My main residence is there. So is yours. This bastard is close enough to have the ability to enter my office at the warehouse without causing suspicion. And he hasn’t only made his calls from our area, he’s been invited into my home. I trust him enough to have left him unsupervised for the length of time it took him to get into my private files and find the paper trail that led him to Eva’s mother.”
    Holy shit. “What paper trail?” Alek knew very little about Kathryn Jacobs. Basically, only that she existed. He’d heard Eva talk about her as a daughter would her mother, but never Vasily.
    “When I left them,” his uncle surprised him by saying, making it appear Alek’s ignorance on the subject was about to change. “I arranged for a solicitor to contact Kathryn with a story of an uncle of hers who died without a next-of-kin. His ‘estate’ went to her, and a deposit was made into her account every month.” He got to his feet and went over to stand before the window. “I left her completely alone with a three-month-old infant. She had no support. Her father had been a state trooper who’d been killed when she was fourteen. Her mother—who I never got a chance to meet but who sounded like a bitch—had moved back to France, her home country, the year before I met Kathryn.”
    Vasily turned back to the room, and Alek noted his stare was unfocused. His uncle was no longer here with him but in the past.
    “Eva’s mother was…brilliant. She was so small. Blonde. Sadly, our daughter doesn’t resemble her much until she smiles. Or cries. Though she does have the same astute mind. Kathryn would have swept through seven years of college in under four if I hadn’t come along. She’d have been a licenced pharmacist before the age of twenty. Isn’t that impressive? I was in awe of her.”
    He came back and stood next to the chair he’d vacated. “I met her on the Tacoma campus of the University of Washington. She thought I was a student.” He smiled as though remembering something. “You have no idea how pissed I was when she told me she was only seventeen. Not that I wasn’t willing to risk jail time to be with her…but luckily, her eighteenth birthday was less than a week away so I didn’t break any laws where she was concerned. Until later, of course.”
    He fell silent and Alek was overcome with sympathy. The loneliness filling the room wasn’t something he’d ever been allowed to witness. It struck him then that Vasily had been alone for nearly twenty-five years. Twenty-five fucking years.
    “This leads me to my reasons for keeping Maksim away from this. If he finds the person responsible for Kathryn’s death before I do, he will be tempted to kill him. That can’t happen.”
    Alek would understand why. “You’ve never spoken of her before now.” He didn’t mind admitting he was mildly disturbed to be hearing his uncle do so now.
    Vasily shrugged. “She’s been coming to me a lot lately. I’m hoping if I purge some of my memories I might find some peace.” As he came over, he offered a not-so-confident smile that didn’t reach his eyes. He didn’t believe that. “You