Roman chuckled under his breath. He reached into his pocket, pulled out a cigarette, and lit it. He took his time with the first drag.
“I was wondering why Iker invited me to this event,” he said, exhaling smoke into the air. “Now I know why.”
“Roman.” My voice carried a warning this time, and he turned to me. He watched me for a while before stepping closer, lowering his voice as if we were discussing something intimate rather than dangerous.
“I’ve done a nasty business with Iker. It was a clean deal, and now you are here making a mess of it,” he said.
For a few seconds, I just stared at him, letting the words settle. My mind worked through it, trying to understand where the pieces connected.
He sighed. “Fine, I needed this famous Mexican poison, and in exchange, he didn’t want money. He wanted me to find who killed his daughter.” His eyes held mine, like he was waiting for me to connect how that had to do with him knowing Inna.
Silence settled, and I just glared at him. He knew when I didn’t need to talk. Sometimes words didn’t matter. One look did.
“Come on.” He set the cigarette between his fingers and smoked it. “Don’t pretend you don’t know I killed our father,” he went on, almost bored. “I needed something that would kill that man slowly. I’m sure you have heard of the Mexican poison that can’t be detected. It mimics natural conditions, causing symptoms similar to common diseases. And the man behind that poison is Iker.”
The problem was that I didn’t care about that. He still hadn’t answered any damn shit here.
I cut through it. “How do you know Inna?”
“Inna?” He looked at me, then laughed under his breath. “You mean Grace? What exactly do you want from Iker?” he asked.
“That’s my business.”
“A business that ends with you marrying his granddaughter?” Irritation slipped through his voice. “Give me a break.”
I stilled, his words catching me off guard. I watched him take another drag, my brows pulling together as the words settled wrong in me. Did he just say…
“Iker’s granddaughter?” I repeated. “What does that mean?”
Roman studied my reaction, and whatever he saw answered him. “You didn’t know.” That wasn’t a question. “You didn’t know Iker is Grace’s grandfather?”
Inna and Iker?
The connections snapped into place. She had missing pieces in her records. The silence around her family has always been suspicious. So this was the answer? She was from Iker’s family.
There was no damn way!
Roman scoffed, shaking his head. “Of course you didn’t.” He flicked ash over the edge of the rooftop. “Grace’s mother is Iker’s daughter. She faked her death to disappear from the crime world and marry a contractor. Iker spent years believing she was murdered.”
Each word rearranged everything I thought I understood.
“So to find who killed his daughter, he made a deal with me. He gave me the poison, and in return, I would solve the murder mystery.” His lips curled slightly. “Turns out his daughter wasn’t dead, just hiding.”
I didn’t respond. Not because I didn’t have words, but because every instinct in me shifted direction. Everything I assumed about Inna tilted in entirely different directions.
Inna wasn’t just a desperate girl. She carried dangerous blood. I pulled her into my world without knowing whose name she carried.
My thoughts moved faster now, locking into place one by one. Iker has been after his granddaughter, and I married her and made it clear that she was mine by killing his men. This was a war. He gathered us here because he had something planned.
I looked over the parking lot below, scheming quickly because this party could get dirty any second. Roman didn’t know what he had just revealed.
And the funniest and most stupid part was that I had no intention of letting anyone take Inna. I didn’t care if they were family or not.
“Where is her mother?” I asked.
The ground just shifted beneath me, and I was standing in themiddle of it, recalculating every move I was about to make.
“Mexico. She is the one running the family business. Iker gave her a choice. She returns, or he kills her family.”