Page 145 of Mile High Ex's Dad
He wouldn’t doubt Anna. Not the way I do.
Or maybe doubt isn’t even the right word. It’s not that I think she did it. It’s that she was hiding something from the moment I saw her again. On the plane she warned me away from Viktor. Then yesterday she pretended not to know me at all until I forced the issue.
That wasn’t nothing.
And Viktor didn’t seem to know she’d been on the same flight with us.
I think back to his face in the hallway when he found us together. The surprise when he realized I knew his sister. The way he asked when she had arrived, like he was only just learning she was here. If he had known she’d seen me on that plane, known she’d spoken to me after I came out of his cabin, he would have said something. Maybe not everything, not all at once, but something.
He didn’t. Which means Anna kept that to herself.
Why? I don’t know.
That’s the part that gets under my skin.
I reach the end of the corridor and stop for a moment, looking out through the open service doors toward the lawn. From here I can see chairs, flowers, guests beginning to drift into place. And at the edges of all of it, Viktor’s men, trying not to look like they’re watching.
But why would she want to hurt her own brother?
As if thinking of Anna is enough to bring her into view, I spot her a few seconds later. She’s at the far end of the side corridor, moving quickly toward the rear exit with one hand to her ear. On the phone.
I slow at once and step closer to the wall without really thinking about it. She doesn’t see me. Or if she does, she gives no sign. Her voice is too low for me to catch the words, but her pace tells me enough. She’s not wandering. She’s going somewhere.
I should let it go.
I don’t.
I follow, keeping enough distance not to be obvious, my clipboard still tucked against my side like that somehow makes this less ridiculous. Anna slips through the back door and out toward the side garden, still speaking into the phone. I stop just inside the doorway and watch through the gap.
She ends the call. Then she looks up, and a second later someone steps out from behind the hedges.
A man.
I can’t make out his face properly from here. He’s too far away and the angle is wrong, one shoulder turned toward me, the morning light catching only part of him. Tall. Dark suit. Broad through the shoulders. Familiar in the way all these men around Viktor seem familiar now, built from the same world of quiet menace and expensive clothes.
Anna goes straight to him. And he hugs her.
Not formally. Not like two people greeting each other at a wedding. Closer than that.
What the hell?
Anna steps back first and says something I can’t hear. The man answers. His head turns slightly, and for one second I think Imight finally catch his face, but then he shifts and the angle is gone again.
I stay where I am, barely breathing, staring through the doorway like if I look hard enough everything will finally make sense to me.
It doesn’t.
All I know is this:
Anna is hiding something.
She just slipped away from the house.
And now she’s with a man she clearly did not want anyone to see her meeting.
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VIKTOR
