Total pages in book: 158
Estimated words: 145729 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 729(@200wpm)___ 583(@250wpm)___ 486(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 145729 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 729(@200wpm)___ 583(@250wpm)___ 486(@300wpm)
Sitting in front of his computer, he opened the file on the Bogomolov family. They were known for being ruthless. They killed entire families in retaliation for the slightest misdeed. Now that he knew what he was looking for, he went back, trying to find a reference to Sonia’s father. It took him a while to find it.
They’d had the information on Sonia all along. It was in the enormous file the investigators had collected on the family. If he’d thought to do a name search for Sonia Lopez in that file, he would have found it. It had been impossible to read the entire thing before his meeting, so he and Drake had chosen to concentrate on Nikita Bogomolov as head of the family and the crimes they’d committed in Miami.
Roberto Lopez, originally from Cuba, had been a low-level runner for the Bogomolov family. His wife, Valeria, had had one child, Sonia. Roberto had been found dead when Sonia was twelve, obviously tortured and partially burned. He’d died hard and he’d been put on display for all to see, a common practice to show others what happened if they were disloyal or stole from the Bogomolov family. Strangely, his wife and child had been spared.
Valeria had worked in the Bogomolov home as a housekeeper. She’d worked for them for five years before being diagnosed with cancer. She’d lived in the guesthouse on the Bogomolov property with her daughter, and once she was ill, it had been the Russian family who took care of all her bills and brought in nurses to attend her around the clock until she died.
Little was known about the daughter, Sonia. His Sonia. There were pictures of her at her mother’s funeral, with Sasha Bogomolov, his arm around her. He studied every picture carefully. The man’s body language screamed protective. Two photographs caught him looking down at her. Both showed what appeared to be genuine emotion. If Joshua had seen them together, he would have sworn he was looking at a man in love.
Still, there was no marriage certificate to be found. He sent out a quick message to the investigative team to search every public record for that certificate. There was little on Sonia after that. Sasha Bogomolov had been seen at nightclubs, but without Sonia. Sonia had been home, thinking she was married to the man while he was out wining and dining with his friends and business acquaintances.
Joshua sank back in his chair and stared at the evidence. Sonia had never gone out with him because she hadn’t known about going out. She didn’t dress up and go to dinner. She didn’t go dancing out in public. She danced on her verandah. She’d been in the Bogomolov home from the time she was twelve. She’d grown up there. She’d trusted them. They’d been family to her. She’d eaten at their table, swam in their pool, laughed and cried with them – but she hadn’t gone out in public with them. Why?
She’d been barely eighteen when her mother died. Sasha had been thirty-three. He’d supposedly married her. She’d lived with him in the home after that. She’d been a prisoner in a gilded cage, she just hadn’t realized it. He couldn’t imagine the betrayal, overhearing the man she believed in telling his father she wasn’t married to him, it had all been a sham. The man who was supposed to love her agreeing to murder her. The pain of that. How had she survived?
She had to have figured out from the conversation that Nikita had ordered her father’s murder. He’d slept with her mother and then dismissed both women as trash one got rid of. Sasha had agreed. Joshua groaned, thinking how that had to have made Sonia feel. She’d been so young and had already suffered too many losses.
Joshua went back to studying the photographs of Sonia’s supposed husband. What if he had loved her? What if he’d tried to keep her safe, even from his father? There was a reason Valeria and Sonia hadn’t been killed when Roberto had died. There was a reason Sonia had been kept out of the public eye. Even the lack of a marriage certificate might have been a protection. Had Sasha known his father wanted to kill the women and he’d found a way to save them?
Joshua rubbed his eyes. He sometimes got headaches. Migraines. He detested them and tried never to give in to them. He believed a man should be able to overcome all physical ailments and get the job done no matter what. He hated that sometimes it was impossible. He could take a bullet – and he’d taken more than one – but a headache? No, that got to him.
He had blocked out most of the early years of his life deliberately. He hadn’t wanted to remember his grandfather, but he could hear his voice calling his father a sniveling baby for lying in bed in the dark because of a headache. Real men didn’t acknowledge headaches.