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In her emails, Emmy mentioned that she didn’t know who’d paid for her high school education and the strangeness of it ate at me. I found myself thinking about it continually for a week because, who the fuck pays for a fourteen-year-old girl to go to an elite high school? I didn’t like it.
When I found out who it was, I liked it even less. Thomas Armstrong.
Armstrong was a thug and a criminal with a white-collar exterior. Though he was the head of an international shipping conglomerate, he was also connected to every seedy, corrupt entity in the criminal world. Drugs, human trafficking, arms dealing, light espionage—he had connections to all of it and used this legitimate business as a front for his criminal enterprises. He’d paid for Emmy’s schooling, which was bad enough, but when I found out why, my heart nearly stopped.
Thomas Armstrong was Emmy’s father.
The minute I saw a photo of him and saw Emmy’s eyes staring back at me, I knew it was true. I was confident that Emmy’s mother never told either girl that Emmy had a different father. I couldn’t even begin to fathom how Jessica Prescott and Thomas Armstrong had crossed paths.
I sighed. “I know. I still remember when Yuri tried to get something going with him. Good fucking thing Mikhail put a stop to that shit.”
“I don’t blame him. I don’t trust him worth a fuck. I don’t know how he’s stayed alive with the shit he’s pulled,” Drago said.
“Money, fear, and connections,” I replied grimly. “What was he saying about her?”
“Just that he wanted an update on her, what was going on in her life. That kind of thing.”
“I don’t like it. He’s up to something.”
Drago blew out a breath. “Maybe. Probably. We’ll stay on him, but for now, we have to deal with Orlov. What’s going on with that? Who are you looking at?”
“I got something I’m worried about. At first it seemed like just a bunch of college douchebags,” I said thinking back to Emmy’s band buddy, Kevin and Delaney’s boyfriend. “Did you run a check on the roommate’s boyfriend and her band friend?”
“Anya checked them both, but they came up clean.”
I wasn’t surprised about Kevin. He didn’t look anything like Orlov. I was still conflicted about the roommate’s boyfriend. He had greater access to Emmy, which made me uneasy, but did I think he was Orlov or was I uneasy about another fucker in her space all the time? Fucking feelings.
“Okay, good. I’ll still keep my eye on them. I got a new name for you—Dan Belshaw. He’s Emmy’s music teacher.”
“You think Orlov can pass as a fucking music teacher?” Drago asked dubiously. It was highly unlikely, but the way he was so dialed into the Emmy bothered me. The rate I was going, we’d be doing background searches on every asshole Emmy had a class with.
“Probably not, but he’s a little too interested in her and he seems to roughly fit the age range.” he fits the age range.” I explained to him about Orlov’s behavior in the car with her, how he reacted when he realized that she knew and played classical music. “Her teacher just assigned the same song that was playing in the car.”
“Hm, that is fucking weird. We’re definitely going to look into the music teacher,” Drago said, then paused. “You ever going to tell Emmy about Armstrong?”
I took a deep swallow of my beer. “I don’t know. Probably. When this shit with Orlov is wrapped up.”
“You may have to move sooner than you think if he keeps talking about her,” Drago warned.
I blew out a breath and slammed my empty beer bottle on the table. “I know. I’ll handle it.”
“Okay, I’ll catch you later.”
“Later,” I murmured, my mind was already back on Emmy. Not that it ever left her for very long. I was constantly troubled at how much space she took up in my thoughts.
I looked down at my phone and pulled up my music app. I had one song downloaded—the song Emmy sang as she played her harp for me. Downloaded it that night.
Cosmic Love.
As much as the title made me cringe, I liked the song. Probably because when I heard it, images of Emmy singing it rolled through my mind—her eyes burning with shocking intensity, her breasts swaying as she plucked the strings, the sound of her soft, delicate voice—all of it wrapped around my dick like a hand.
I found myself listening to it before I went to sleep, trying to fathom what the fuck Emmy saw in a miserable, anti-social asshole like me. It didn’t matter.
I got up and headed to my bedroom, hitting the play button on the only song I’d ever downloaded.
Chapter 13
Emmy