Money Trail

Chapter 29: Punishment

Chapter 29: Punishment

“How sure are you about this?” Dallas asked as he and Ilia sped illegally down the mostly empty streets. It was too early in the morning for anyone to be up. The lights they met were all red and flashing, proving just how empty the roads were.

Ilia couldn't really answer. She loved Josh, she considered him like a brother. He was sweet, kind, the thought of him being involved in the horrors she still had nightmares over was painful to her heart in ways she had never experienced before. She denied it, she wanted to be wrong more than she wanted anything. Ilia was no stranger to denying reality just because it hurt. She had denied the truth about her own father for years now.

But with Dallas sitting beside her, just having forced her to see the truth about Apollo only a few hours before, Ilia knew she couldn't just deny the truth now. The truth was the truth, no matter how much you wished otherwise. Ignoring it, wanting to change it, wouldn't help anything and would just make things worse.

“I want to be wrong.” Ilia said. She just couldn't bring herself to say the words that would condemn Josh. Dallas wasn't like her, he took the truth exactly at face value and took care of business no matter how ugly. She knew if she told him Josh needed to be taken down, he wouldn't hesitate. He would regret having to take action, but not the action itself.

Dallas fell silent.

Alin, the dark man he had seen speaking to her. He had let an enemy get that close to her and had done nothing. He had failed in his duty.

And Dorina, wicked and beautiful, was involved. He was sure he had seen her and his sniper's eyes were rarely wrong. Yet he denied it, he tried to convince himself it wasn't true. Maybe if he had accepted what he had seen instead of trying to ignore it, he wouldn't be driving into potential danger with Ilia at his side.

Dallas took a peak at her out of the corner of his eye.

She herself requested never to be put in danger, yet here she was riding with him right into the thick of it. Not for him, he knew, but for Josh. The man she loved like family and only family could put that fierce, protective look on her face. Josh was in trouble, it didn't matter that she considered herself a coward, what mattered was that she couldn't leave him alone.

Not when she might be able to do something.

“Do you remember when you asked me about Dorina?” Dallas asked suddenly. He couldn't keep this from her, he decided. It wouldn't be right.

“Yeah...?” Ilia looked over at him, slightly confused about the sudden change in topic. Both of Dallas's hands were secured on the steering wheel, clasped so hard that his knuckles had turned white. His eyes were focused straight ahead on the roads lit up a pale yellow from the town's old streetlights.

“She's my ex.” he found, to his own surprise, that the words were easier to say than he thought they would be. Then again, he had already revealed more to Ilia than he had to any one before, except maybe Jack. “Six months ago, in Romania, I was investigating poaching and we met. We got really close. But...Dorina betrayed me. She shot me, tried to kill me and Jason both. She stole all the information we had gathered and left me and Jason both bleeding in our hideout which she tried to kill us in by setting it on fire. I think she might be here now.”

“Why?” Ilia asked accepting his conclusion without question. “What would she be doing here?

Dallas shook his head, he honestly didn't know.

Ilia fell silent for a moment, he could practically hear her thinking. “You said she stole your information. What information?”

“Just some information on mythic poaching.” Dallas shrugged. He hadn't considered it information worth killing over. But someone obviously had. “Some dragon like mythics called balaurs. Someone had been fishing for them in Romania.”