She shrugs. “He told me to simply go there if anything happened to me, and give that name. Richard Coleman.”
“He has to be working with him, even if Richard does live in New York and not Los Angeles,” I say, exhaling a cynical laugh.
“He can’t be. My father isn’t a criminal. Why would he give me the name of one to protect me?”
“Exactly,” I accuse.
“Because your biological father is the protective type? The type to take in a damsel in distress and make sure she’s safe?”
That softens my resolve. Richard Coleman is a lot of things. White knight in shining armor is not one of those things.
“So what is it then?” I ask, mostly to myself as a way to work it out.
“Maybe my father has dirt on Richard. You know, information that he’s blackmailing him with?”
“But why hold onto it? If it’s that bad, why not just air it and put my father away?” I ask.
“To protect me,” Leira mutters. I turn to find her mouth hitched in a soft, crooked smile.
I’m still not entirely convinced, mostly because, if that’s the case, how the hell did he come across this information in the first place? The only answer I can think of simply brings us right back around to her father being a criminal.
A sudden thought occurs to me and I stand up again, working out the kinetic energy that it brings about in me.
“What is it?” Leira asks.
“The list, the one with the names and amounts of the people Richard works with. It must have been sent to me by your father.”
Her eyes go wide and she looks away in thought. “That does make sense. Maybe it’s the same information he’s hiding at this location he gave me.”
“In which case, why give it to me in the first place? The whole point of blackmail is that no one else knows about it.”
She just gives a half-hearted shrug.
“We have to find out what’s in that building.”
“We could call my father again?” she suggests.
“No,” I say quickly. “Not until we figure out who this person is that wants to meet with me next Friday and how they found out about me.”
She exhales with relief. “He probably wouldn’t tell us anyway.”
My head is still spinning with everything I’ve learned tonight, but the weariness is setting in.
“Let’s get something to eat, and we can figure all of this out. You must be as hungry as I am.”
“Right. I’m actually starving.”
“I know a place that will give us some privacy so we can talk. Let’s go.”
Leira nods and rises from the bed.
As I follow her to the door, I can’t help but look at her in a new light. All of this is far too coincidental. The one question that is front and center in my mind is, is she the daughter of a man who is my ally or my enemy?
Chapter Thirty-Six Leira
The place Enrique takes me to is another tapas bar, which I have absolutely no problem with. I’d live on this stuff if I could.
We are tucked away in a corner of the dimly lit restaurant, which is surprisingly full for how late at night it is. Still, he was right, we do have privacy.
Our glasses are filled from the bottle of red wine—yet another thing I’m getting used to—and we have our first servings of thinly sliced ham on pieces of bread and more of those potatoes I love.
“Okay, so let’s start from square one,” I say after swallowing a sip of wine.
As much of a mind fuck as all of this is, I’m actually enjoying the conspiratorial feel of it all. I’ve always been good at solving puzzles. The past forty-eight hours have been the most excitement I’ve had in a long time.
But I still want to figure all of this out.
Most importantly, which side of it my father falls on.
“You were five when you saw your father kill a man?”
Enrique nods, and sips his wine. “The man worked at one of the Luxembourg banks that my father was helping people launder money through.”
“And he discovered what your father was doing, right?”
Enrique gives me a bland smile and lifts his glass up in confirmation.
“So you told your mother, and she thought she could blackmail your father with it?”
“I suppose,” he says, his expression going dark. “I wasn’t there for that part. But when she turned up dead, what else could I assume?”
I nod as though that all fits into place. “So then you were adopted out and…fast forward how many years? When did you first get the list of names?”
“The summer after I graduated university. It was an attachment in an email message.”
“What did the message say?”
A sardonic smirk touches his lips and I straighten up in anticipation.
“That he—or she, I suppose; I don’t really know—knew that I didn’t really want to work for my parents now that I had graduated. It suggested an alternative.”
“Why would they think that you had the ability to do anything with it? Why didn’t he just suggest you take it to the police?”
A smile curls his lips. “What I do these days is a result of years of practice.”
“So, you’ve always been a thief?”
“Not necessarily. My parents were well off enough that I never needed the money. But I was always good at…exploring, let’s say. Mostly via computer.”
“A hacker,” I confirm, sitting back in my seat with my glass in my hands.
He shrugs. “The result of a mostly hands-off upbringing. My parents were socially and professionally active people. I practically raised myself. Which left so much mischief to get into.”
I laugh and sip my wine. “So, he apparently knew a lot about you.”
“In all fairness, it wasn’t much of a secret. Everyone I went to school with knew I could be counted on to help change grades or find exam answers.”
“And you call me Diabla,” I scold.
Enrique smirks. “Here we are, two troublemakers.”
I laugh
