She beamed a beatific smile at me, and fuck if that didn’t make me lean back so my dick wasn’t trapped.
Christ.
"Okay, so the Albanians hated Milano as much as your father did. Did you know that?"
"I think everyone hated that SOB. Even his fucking mother. He was the type of bastard who’d turn his grandma in to the cops if he thought he could make a profit on her arrest."
She dipped her chin. "Right? That fits with everything I’ve found. He was cruel and abusive to his family, and to his men, he handed out severe punishments for light insubordination. Anyone who questioned him was whipped, for God’s sake."
"He created an army of yes-men," I agreed. "Da used to bitch about them all the time. ‘Like a bunch of robots,’ he said."
"That’s right. But even robots have a breaking point. When your father came calling for Jurkavic, no one even stopped their compound from being overturned."
I blinked. "I mean, I wasn’t there so I don’t know for sure, but that doesn’t sound right."
She shrugged then showed me some pictures.
As I stared down at them, I frowned. "What am I looking at?"
"That’s the gate to their compound. If you can see, the way it’s been forced open… only one of the locks was engaged. Not all six."
Scowling at the image, I held it up to the light and squinted at the two sides of the damaged gate that, if memory served, Da had rammed with his customized Range Rover. The bull bars on there would take down a fucking Mack truck, never mind a gate.
I hummed though, when I saw the way the two sides of the gating had been ripped apart. "There would have been a lot more damage if more locks had been engaged."
"Correct. So, when I looked at that, I started to wonder what else was off about the narrative we’ve been fed."
"I can understand why you’d look deeper."
"Don’t ask me how…" She peeped up at me. "...I managed to get access to some of Jurkavic’s bank accounts—"
I arched a brow. "As easy as that, huh?"
Her smile nearly blew me off the sofa. "Not everyone sees through the airhead act."
Grunting, I muttered, "Men are fools."
"They are for a pair of tits and a short skirt," she agreed, which made my blood pressure surge some more. "Anyway, this was his personal account. Look at where I’ve marked."
She shoved some documents at me, and reaching out with my left hand, I drew them closer and found large red rings circling some dates.
"Are you a southpaw?"
The question jarred me from what I was looking at. "Yeah, I’m left-handed."
As she hummed, I read the documents, forcing myself to focus on the dates, times, numbers, and names, which were, to be frank, a nightmare.
Slowly, I stated, "These are flight receipts."
"They are," she said brightly. "He was in Italy when Paddy…died."
The repercussions of that rammed themselves home. As hard as if my dad’s old Range Rover, a beast that was long since a burnt out shell in a scrapyard somewhere, had done the deed for me.
"No one ever said he was in Europe. I’d have heard."
"I know."
The Albanians didn’t go for a crap without Jurkavic’s approval, and if he was out of the country, that meant… Shit. That meant quite a few things weren’t as cut and dry as we’d come to believe.
"That doesn’t mean he wasn’t behind Paddy’s murder," I muttered.
She scoffed. "Your father didn’t target another Albanian. Not saying others didn’t die in his attempt to reach Jurkavic, but once he took him out, that was it."
"They instigated those little spats afterward," I mused, thinking back to the past. "Not him. But he went in hard and stomped them out." Reaching up to rub my forehead, I frowned. "His men didn’t give him an alibi."
"And with a sword sticking through his belly, I don’t think Jurkavic had much of an opportunity to explain what happened to him, do you?"
No.
He hadn’t.
Da had told me the story.
Jaw working, I rasped, "Da said the compound was minimally guarded. They took out security, then infiltrated the house. He said it was easy, but he’s a cocky piece of shit. He’d think it was easy because we were so well-trained, not because the Albanians were trying to get rid of their leader."
"Jurkavic was asleep, wasn’t he?"
I nodded. "How did you know that?"
She shoved another piece of paper at me. I squinted at it, then heaved a sigh as I forced myself to focus once more. My brain, apparently picking up on the fact that she was going to keep doing this, shoving evidence at me for me to scan, decided not to obey.
If I ever told anyone that the letters danced and weaved around the page as if they were on mushrooms, I knew I’d never hear the end of it.
Forcing myself to focus helped sometimes, but I’d pay for it at the end of the day with a killer migraine. Thanking God for text-to-voice tools that let me keep up the charade of reading with ease, I stared down at what I came to realize was Jurkavic’s autopsy report.
"You already knew about the sword," I accused, once I’d figured out what I was reading.
She smirked at me. "I just wanted to see if you’d be honest with me."
"Did I pass the test?"
"You didn’t fail."
"Damn me with faint praise, why don’t you?" I mocked, but I steadfastly ignored the way her cheeks blushed as she laughed. God, she was pretty. When I reached the Toxicology section, I frowned. "They doped him up with Rohypnol?"
"Fitting, don’t you think? Considering, at that time, they were the biggest peddlers of date-rape drugs in the Tri-State area."
"Definitely fitting. So, Da skewered a drugged-up nemesis." My lips curved. "If only I could tell him that. He’s rather proud of his abilities with a sword." Her cheeks blanched, and as I picked up on that, I decided to state the obvious. "You’re scared of him? Probably a very smart thing to be. A lot smarter than trying to get into contact with him to write his biography," I pointed out.
She flushed. "It seemed like a smart idea at the time."
"If you don’t mind bringing predators to your door, then sure it is."
I stared at her, long enough for her gaze to dart from mine and down to her notepad. It was a dickish move, but staring contests were a surprisingly painless way of establishing dominance.
We weren’t dogs, but we still found ways to submit to those who were bigger, meaner, and nastier than us. For all that Savannah undoubtedly thought she was the top dog in her world, in mine? She was a gnat.
Pursing my lips, I murmured, "So, the Albanians sacrificed their leader the second they could?"
She nodded. "Pretty much."
"Interesting."
"That’s not all."
Of course it wasn’t.
I tipped my head to the side and made a motioning gesture with my hand for her to continue.
"Would you say your uncle was a fit man? Physically and mentally?"
Scowling in contemplation, I replied, "Well, yeah. He was younger than I am now, and he was always healthy. The O’Donnellys have strong genes." Go figure. And they said that only the good died young...