Chapter 8 - THE CALL MY MOTHER NEVER TOLD ME ABOUT
My mother had known Viktor Kovacs.
Not socially.
Not accidentally.
She had called him for help.
We returned to a private apartment Viktor kept in Manhattan while his security team investigated Tomas.
I refused food.
I refused coffee.
I refused everything except answers.
Viktor finally sat across from me.
“Your mother contacted my office fourteen months ago.”
“That was when she got sick.”
“Yes.”
“What did she want?”
“She had found papers among Ilona's belongings.”
“The notebook?”
“No.”
He placed a folder on the table.
Inside were copies of medical invoices.
My mother's invoices.
Then I saw something that made my chest hurt.
Several bills had been paid anonymously.
Large ones.
Twenty thousand dollars.
Thirty-two thousand.
Fourteen thousand.
“Was that you?”
Viktor nodded.
I stood so fast my chair scraped the floor.
“You paid my mother's hospital bills?”
“She asked me not to tell you.”
“Why?”
“Because she knew you would ask where the money came from.”
“I spent fourteen months thinking she left me with everything unpaid.”
“She did leave debt.”
His expression tightened.
“I couldn't pay all of it without drawing attention to her connection with my family.”
I wanted to hate him for saying that.
Instead, I understood exactly what he meant.
Someone had photographed my apartment merely because I could speak Hungarian.
“What did Mom find?”
Viktor hesitated.
“A second agreement.”
Of course there was another agreement.
In my life, apparently, one secret legal document was no longer enough.
My mother believed Ilona had hidden evidence showing how Tomas's father gained control of several companies after Viktor's grandfather died.
She feared those assets had been stolen.
“Where is the agreement?”
“She wouldn't tell me.”
“Then why call you?”
“She wanted to know whether you would be safe if the truth came out.”
My throat tightened.
“What did you tell her?”
“That I would protect you.”
I stared at him.
“You didn't even know me.”
“No.”
Something in his voice changed.
“But I promised her.”
His phone buzzed.
His security chief sent a photograph from Tomas Varga's townhouse.
An entire wall was covered with surveillance images.
Viktor.
Council members.
Pierce.
And me.
Some photographs of me were recent.
Others weren't.
May you like
One showed me leaving my mother's hospital eleven months earlier.
Tomas had been watching me before my mother died.
