got rid of their only threat in Yuri." He paused. "There's a chance my car might be on the security camera."
Savannah smiled. "That was already fixed with a little help from Brandon. He was able to hack into the cameras at the dealership and erase your car."
"Nice work." Brandon Tarek was one of their brilliant cyber techs.
"We've got your back. But there's still the possibility someone saw you, Jax, or that Yuri told Pullman or Bozic more about you than you know."
"Wouldn't matter. He met me under my cover name and background."
"Well, we should still keep an eye on your alias and see if anyone goes digging."
"Agreed."
"Listen, Jax—"
He saw the look in her eyes and knew what was coming. "I told you and everyone else I'm fine, Savannah."
"You're always fine. You're always smiling. You're always chill," she drawled. "But you can let down your guard with us. We're a team. We're family. Haven't the last five years shown you that?"
He nodded, seeing the serious note in Savannah's eyes. "Believe me, I trust the people here more than I trust anyone else in my life."
"Is there anyone else in your life?" she asked curiously.
"At the moment, the only person I'm thinking about is one dead Russian. I thought Yuri was a bit player, but he knew enough to get himself killed. And I have to find out what he was involved in before someone else dies."
"Just make sure that someone isn't you."
Chapter Two
"Your father will be angry that I asked you to do this, Maya," Phillip Ashton said, his old brown eyes filled with worry and fatigue.
"This isn't about him; it's about you." Maya Ashton leaned across the small table to put her hand over her grandfather's. He'd lost more weight since he'd moved into the assisted living facility, appearing more fragile than she'd ever seen him. Although, it wasn't really his physical appearance that bothered her, but his increasing mental deficiencies. Since his last stroke, he'd become much more easily confused and distracted. "I'm going to get the truth for you. The journals have helped me understand Natasha better, but I still have a lot of questions about my grandmother."
"Natasha was a complicated woman. I gave her the life I thought she wanted, but it wasn't enough. In the end, I had to let her go. I believed her freedom would make her happy, but only eight years later, she was dead, and everyone believed she killed herself with drugs. I could never come to terms with that. Over the years, I became convinced that something happened to her. I know that her second husband hired a private investigator, who came up with nothing, but I still have questions."
She nodded, having already contacted that private investigator. As her grandfather had said, the man had come up with no clues to indicate her grandmother's death had been anything but a suicide.
"When Natasha died, I should have conducted my own investigation, but I was married to Linda by then, and she would have been hurt by that action."
"That's understandable."
"Your father also did not want me to do anything. He just wanted to let it be. He was so angry after she died. They had a troubled mother-son relationship."
She nodded in agreement. Her father had refused to speak of his mother, saying she'd abandoned him, and he never wanted to hear her name again. But his refusal had only made her more curious about her grandmother, and when her grandfather had suddenly handed her Natasha's journals a few weeks earlier, she'd become as consumed as he was with finding another explanation for her alleged suicide, which didn't really make sense.
Natasha Petrova had been a glamorous Russian film star of the eighties. She'd overcome a childhood of loss and poverty to come to America, where she had truly achieved the American dream of superstardom. But along with her celebrity came scandal and ultimately a shocking death by suicide. It was a story that needed more details and a better ending. Once it had all that, it would make a fantastic movie, one she wanted to make. But first she had to get answers, and her grandmother had died thirty-six years ago. The trail was very old and very cold.
"I talked to a different private investigator," she told her grandfather. "He pulled the police reports for me and looked through the other investigator's report, but he decided not to take the case. He didn't think he could come up with any new evidence. He believes