𝐅𝐫𝐚𝐜𝐭𝐮𝐫𝐞𝐝 𝐏𝐚𝐬𝐭

𝐧 𝐢 𝐧 𝐞

"Holy shit," Viktor said behind me.

This can't be true.

I looked at the pictures again.

This is true.

"That's the reason why I 'renovated' the hotels for ten months. To burn all the drugs and clear any records of them being there in the first place," Anton explained.

"What I had thought all along was wrong..." Viktor mumbled under his breath.

"I mean... I knew Roman did drugs once in a while, just to let some steam off and all. But I had no idea it had resulted in him building an underground base for drug trading and was possibly one of the most popular drug lords. I cross-referenced the list of people who stayed in the hotel with the transcripts of those who bought drugs in the hotels. More than half of the people who came to stay had bought drugs. That's why when I stopped the drug business, the hotels have not been doing very well."

Viktor took a step closer towards him.

"How could you keep this from me? You've been lying to me for the past seventeen years!" Viktor raised his voice.

"I'm sorry! I'm sorry that after seventeen years you still haven't found peace with your brother's death. But you know if you start digging into this, you are mixing with some very dangerous people that you certainly do not want to mess with," Anton stood his stand.

My hands started to tremble with the file still in my hands. Why did my parents have to be drug dealers? Why couldn't they be normal people? They wouldn't have been killed in the first place and I would have belonged somewhere.

Viktor sighed and looked at me with concern. "Alveanea? You okay?"

"Please do not dig into this. That is not what your parents would have wanted; to have yourself killed." Anton looked at me with pleading eyes.

"I just want to know if there is the slightest chance of them being alive. I mean there must be, right? Since I'm still alive." I felt something stick to my throat.

"They are not good people, Alveanea. You know that in their line of work, there is insane competition. You know that they have done unethical things to keep the business afloat."

I shoved the file to his chest, "You said that you were my father's best friend. How could you not know about this?"

"After both of us got married, we did drift apart a little. We were best friends and I mourned over his death. It was a few weeks after his death when his suppliers started asking me if I was going to continue running his business."

He paused for a few seconds, recollecting his thoughts.

"Of course I didn't know he had his other business back then and said yes. A week later when I received the shipment from him, you could imagine how I felt when I saw ten kilograms of drugs at the back of the truck."

"But how can you not have even the slightest clue that Roman was dealing drugs?" I asked. Something doesn't add up.

"Your mother, Minh. She got him caught into her family's business."

Viktor furrowed his eyebrows in confusion. "Are you implying that Minh's family had already established a drug business before she married Roman?"

"Yes, I've even hired a private investigator to find out more information about Minh's family background. From what he had gathered, her family runs the biggest drug trade in Asia. And Roman's family already owned three hotels over the world at that time. Together, you could imagine what they've done."