Dajana made no attempt to hide her anger. She kept her distance from all three men. She grabbed the kitchen step stool from beside the front door and dropped onto it. Her fingers drummed against her thigh. Her gaze moved back and forth in the moonlight between Bernard, curled up in the egg chair, and Noud, half lost in the shadows.
For a while, Timothy watched his guests with cool detachment, like a casual onlooker. Noud’s face was swallowed by the darkness, but the disappointment rolling off him was almost tangible. Bernard tipped his face toward the ceiling — he’d had enough. The first job he had ever failed… and who knew what consequences would follow.
“What the hell do you want from me?” Dajana hissed.
Timothy slipped straight back into his role — the host, the manipulator, the man with the winning solution.
“Come now, Dajana, that tone isn’t necessary,” he purred.
“Oh, we’re not going to negotiate and bargain,” Dajana said, spreading her arms.
She leaned forward in open challenge, as if she knew she was the one setting the pace.
“The situation is, Dajana, you’re not in any position to set terms,” Timothy said smoothly. “Either you end up in prison — and your family right behind you on the edge of ruin — or you do exactly what we say.”
“Why am I sitting here? Why not Viktoria? She was the one who held Ted captive and tortured him! Or are you trying to pin it on me?”
“Viktoria is just an unfortunate woman who wanted revenge for her family.”
“Yeah? Worked out great for her, I’d say. No money, nothing. Now she’s left trembling for Ted’s goodwill. She’s been trailing after him like a lapdog ever since,” Dajana muttered.
“You see, my dear — that’s exactly why you’re sitting there, and I’m standing here.”
Noud couldn’t believe his ears. On the one hand, the story still refused to come together; on the other, the usually soft, luxury-obsessed blowhard had struck a hard, uncompromising tone Noud had never heard from him before.
Dajana raked a hand through her hair.
“Pff…”
Timothy took a deliberate step forward and clasped his hands behind his back.
“Let’s get to the point.” He waited a few seconds. “You’ve been laundering Ted’s money for, what, ten years now. And since Adrian knows nothing about it, you two have been playing the struggling accountant-and-plumber duo very convincingly. That, of course”—Timothy cleared his throat—“has been perfectly clear to us for quite some time.”
Luckily for Noud, the dark corner of the room hid the way his head sagged forward. That damned missing link. It hadn’t been Adrian who was Ted’s partner — it was Dajana. No wonder she had never spoken at home about her connection to Ted. So that was what had kept the family’s ties to him hidden all this time.
Bernard pressed his head back against the chair. He wanted to scream. He had been so close to the solution. Which meant Viktoria’s sudden appearance hadn’t brought disaster down on them — it could have been the key to Dajana, if only he’d held his nerve. If Ted’s wink hadn’t thrown him off. At the New Year’s party, Dajana had practically been shaking with rage. She had watched Viktoria like a mother tiger. Not without reason. Her livelihood had been at stake.
The fact that Dajana knew nothing about Viktoria and Ted’s arrangement was obvious. But this was no longer their chess game. Now it was Timothy’s.