Total pages in book: 113
Estimated words: 106422 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 532(@200wpm)___ 426(@250wpm)___ 355(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 106422 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 532(@200wpm)___ 426(@250wpm)___ 355(@300wpm)
Her exhausted eyes met mine for a heartbeat, a painful understanding passing between us before I moved past.
Seeing a nurse with Diya when I reached her bed, I said, “Is everything okay?”
“Yes. I’m just checking her dressings.” After doing that, she pulled the curtains closed on either side of the bed but left the front open to the view of the nurses’ station. “Hazel’s on a break, but Maria’s monitoring Diya from the station.”
I was glad of the droplet of additional privacy. “Hi, baby.” I leaned over to lightly brush my lips over the side of Diya’s.
I hated the tube that came out of the other side of her mouth because it meant my beautiful wife couldn’t breathe on her own. The ventilator hissed, its mechanical breaths a constant pulse interspersed with beeps from other machines.
Her lips were soft, slicked over with something. The nurses, taking care of her. But it wasn’t what she would’ve used. Diya had a very specific five-step skin-care routine for the morning and an even longer one for nighttime. “I’ll get you that raspberry-flavored stuff you like. Korean beauty products, right? See? I do pay attention when you tell me these things.”
Her hand remained motionless, her hair tangled on the pillow. I tried to smooth it out as gently as I could. “Who’s Annie, baby?” I murmured, thinking of how desperately she’d tried to tell me something when I’d first found her.
Annie…they said…about Annie…not…
But she was silent, and when a doctor walked in, I took the opportunity to ask him about Diya’s injuries in detail. It had struck me that I’d been wrong to tell the surgeon to stick to generalities—the exact nature of Diya’s wounds might tell me something about who’d done this to her.
“No smoke inhalation that we can determine,” Dr. Chen said, his voice far deeper than I’d expected given his near-skeletal frame. “Your wife must’ve managed to get out before the fire really took hold. Eleven stab wounds. Six of them were superficial—but five went deep enough to do significant damage. One in particular only missed severing her abdominal aorta by a millimeter.”
He pointed to Diya’s stomach. “That one caused the worst bleeding, but the ones that hit her kidney and inferior vena cava as well as her liver, along with the one at her neck, are the most dangerous. A little longer before getting her to the ER and it might’ve been too late.” His manner was brusque and pragmatic, taking the emotion out of the situation.
It helped. “How long before you know if she’s out of the woods?”
“No way to tell at this stage,” the doctor said. “Right now, it’s watch and wait. Especially when it comes to her head injury.”
My phone buzzed. I’d have ignored it except that I’d just realized the time. “That might be Shumi’s family.” Taking it out, I glanced at the message. “They’re here, coming up to the ICU.”
Maybe they would know about Annie, this woman whose name Diya had never spoken until she lay bleeding and dying in my arms.
Chapter 16
Private notes: Detective Callum Baxter (LAPD)
Date: Dec 14
Time: 14:03
Finally got a copy of Virna’s will. No unexpected bequests in there—and no mention of Tavish Advani. Bulk of the estate will pass on to her son, Jason, but he’s insistent that Advani must’ve siphoned money from his mother in other ways.
I have to agree on one point: Advani is a financial genius. I did a bit of digging around and there’s a reason he held such a high position at his age. Man delivers when he isn’t getting into bed with his clients. If anyone knows how to play hide-and-seek with money, it’s Advani.
That uptight firm he worked for wouldn’t give me the names of his clients, but I managed to track one down after trawling through social media photos where Advani was tagged at various shindigs, and making some cold calls.
Vincent White was more than happy to talk about Advani—he’s pissed the man “jumped firms”—I guess that’s the cover story for Advani’s firing.
“I’m waiting to see where he pops up,” White said. “The rest of them are good, but Tavish? Pure genius. Got me returns like no one else—so good that I actually had a forensic accountant go over the books, figured maybe it was some pyramid deal.
“Nope, all straight. Tavish kept precise records of every transaction—which is why I learned he was doing deals for me at like four a.m. to take advantage of various time zones. Man is smart and focused and more than earns his paycheck. Whichever firm he joins, I’ll be shifting all my money over there.”
Have to say it wasn’t what I was expecting to hear, not with Jason’s accusations of financial malfeasance. But then, lots of folks are clean at work and messy in private, so maybe Tavish kept his financial messiness to his love life.