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Chapter 4

“You haven’t? Okay, thanks.”

Michal kept his phone in his breast pocket and walked out of the shopping mall. It was the tenth one he had walked into in the past three hours and his patience was running thin. What he would not give to have her tied up or locked up someplace in the house. Would teach her a thing or two.

He opened the car door and sat in, ready to drive off and call it a day- she wasn’t a minor after all, when a call came in. Taking his phone out of the pocket, he checked the caller ID and sighed. The governess was calling again for the umpteenth time. Michal had repeated the same information for the first twenty calls and promised that he would call her immediately he found a lead but she was a persistent woman. She also sounded very frightened on the phone.

Which left him with a lot of questions. Why the nineteen year old wasn’t allowed to go out of the house by herself and why it was important that he find her- instead of her finding her way back home. At the same time, it wasn’t his business.

He answered the call.

“I haven’t found her yet,” he said briskly.

“Have you checked all shopping malls close by? She should be in one of them, I’m sure of it.”

Well, short of trying to bribe their security personnel to see camera footage of everyone that came in over the past few hours and getting told that if he viewed a minor on the tapes it would be an offense, he showed her picture to everybody who was in and walked into the premises.

”Yes, I did. She is not in any of them and nobody seems to have seen her come in or go out,” he replied.

“There are so many people going in and out. Even if they did, it wouldn’t register in their mind. I think I need to come out there. Maybe I can help.”

“No, you just stay there. I’ll find her, don’t worry,” Michal assured her. Even though he did not know how, he was going to find Katya.

He ended the call and started the car, intending to drive until he found the next shopping mall or clothing store which at this point, had to be three hours away from the house. How far did she really go? If he was going to find her then he had to make use of his sources- whether he liked it or not. Ignoring the sign that indicated another mall, he did a U-turn and drove back.

He slowed down when he got to a high rise building. He drove past the cars that were parked in the general parking lot, handed the security guard a card and was shown a secluded place to park his car.

He took the elevator until he got to the penthouse. Before he knocked on the door, it was opened by a man wearing whom he assumed was a personal bouncer. Without saying anything, the man closed the door and turned, leaving Michal to follow behind him.

”I have been expecting you,” Michal heard a man say as he followed the bouncer into an office.

“And here I am,” Michal replied, careful to keep every trace of emotion out of his voice. He had to appear as if he was in control of the situation.

The chair swiveled and the man on the chair smiled at him- a wide grin. The smile, however did not seem to touch his eyes or change his features.

“Michal.”

“Sergei.”

“How are you? How is the family? Last I heard, your father-

“Let’s cut the pleasantries and small talk, Sergei. You know exactly what I came here for,” Michal interrupted him. If Sergei wanted to know about his father, he could ask him himself. After all, he was the closest person to his father. And Michal had no love for him.

Sergei chuckled- a dry sound. “I see that you have grown. I should tell your father that his little boy is zhestche. Or as they say here, you have grown quite the balls. Reminds me of the last time you stood shaking. We had to get your sister to do it.

But okay, I will indulge you this time. You want to know where the girl is?”

Michal nodded, not trusting the next words that would come out of his mouth.

“I can help you. But you have to do something for me first,” Sergei told him.

“Never,” Michal told him adamantly. He would rather search for days than owe the bastard a favor. He hated him and Sergei knew that. He also knew that Sergei would do whatever it took to make him grovel at his feet. Too many times bitten. Never again.

He turned to go.

“Tougher, but not smarter.” Sergei’s words stopped him in his tracks. “You are tougher but it seems to me that you have forgotten the kind of man your father is. Don’t you want to make him happy? I can call him right now if you wish.”

The bastard!

Michal nodded to the valet and drove away from the premises at high speed. A bar, a freaking sleazy bar. What was she doing there? Why the hell would someone who had enough money to go a classy place be looking for in a neighborhood like that?

It was the last place he would ever look to find her.

Then it hit him. The smart minx. It was the last place they would ever look to find her. She deftly evaded them by going to the worst of locations. Michal did not know whether to praise her for her cunningness or berate her for her stupidity. Where she was could be referred to as a typical Hell’s Kitchen or Gotham.

Thanks to the debt he had just gotten himself into, he might be able to find her before she did something stupid or got into the kind of trouble that would leave her scarred.

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