Total pages in book: 158
Estimated words: 145803 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 729(@200wpm)___ 583(@250wpm)___ 486(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 145803 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 729(@200wpm)___ 583(@250wpm)___ 486(@300wpm)
“Liam Gram had one son, Elliot. Elliot never lived with Liam, and few people knew of him. He didn’t have Liam’s last name because Liam and his mother, Astrid Blom, had never married. The bet between Daniel Wallin and Liam Gram was for half of Wallin’s stock in the Northern Lights Hotel and Casino. That would give Liam thirty-seven-and-a-half percent, or equal the shares as Daniel. Daniel wouldn’t like that, nor would his grandfather. The entire point of allowing Daniel the seventy-five percent was to have a legal business the Bottaro family could still control. Angelo was a very shrewd man. No doubt he saw the handwriting on the wall and knew the Feds were going to be cracking down in Las Vegas. Daniel was making a fortune for them. The last thing they would want was for him to lose his shares to an outsider.”
“Wow, Daniel must have been very sure of himself to make a bet like that,” Harlow said.
“He was,” Vienna said. “Just the way he was with me. He relied on his psychic gift to always win the big hands. My guess is his voice didn’t work on Liam any more than it did on me.”
Raine looked at Zale and Rainier again. She waited a few moments while the clock ticked, filling the silence with the rhythmic sound. Vienna glanced up at her and then followed her gaze to Zale and Rainier. They appeared to be wearing expressionless masks. The tension in the room wound tighter. Both stared at Raine as if they might really pull out their guns and shoot her at any moment. Vienna felt that the danger to her friend was so real she shifted position to put her body between Raine and Rainier, believing, at first, that he might be the bigger threat.
“Liam apparently went directly from the casino to a young lawyer who was a junior partner in a rising firm in Vegas,” Raine continued. “He had his will drawn up, leaving his shares in the casino to his son and any heirs his son might have. He instructed the lawyer to file the will and also his share in the casino immediately. Liam then disappeared, which scared the junior lawyer. He did, in fact, file the document proclaiming Liam was a shareholder, but it wasn’t the original. He had that as well as Liam’s will locked away in a safe in the law offices.”
Vienna’s heart began to pound. Zale’s eyes had gone very dark. His gaze narrowed until his eyes were twin laser beams, deadly and lethal. There was no doubt that he was warning Raine to stop the flow of information. Vienna had shifted her body to block the wrong man from her friend.
“Wallin owned someone who intercepted Liam’s claim and he destroyed it. He was certain that was done. There were no more filings and as far as Wallin knew, when Liam turned up dead, that was the end of it. The junior lawyer was terrified after Liam’s body was found. He didn’t want to end up the same way, and he knew that the Bottaro family had to be involved, so he simply wrote a letter to be opened in case of his death and put it with the original document containing the shares and Liam’s will. That lawyer died recently and his firm opened the letter.”
“Raine, enough,” Zale said quietly. The purr of menace was in his voice.
“You had every chance to come clean,” Raine said. “Both of you.”
There was no fear in her voice, but Vienna knew there should have been. The tension in the room was coiled so tight she expected the room itself to shatter at any moment. Her chest hurt. The pressure felt enormous. She lifted a hand to her heart and pressed hard. Tiny beads of sweat trickled between her breasts and her palms felt clammy.
“I’m telling you to stop,” Zale commanded. “You’re walking the edge of classified information.”
“None of this is classified. Do you think I don’t know the difference? This is information certain parties don’t want known and you didn’t disclose but know you should have.”
For the first time, Vienna could see that Raine was angry. She rarely lost her temper but when she did, the explosion was like a bomb going off. She was extremely angry at Zale and Rainier—and that didn’t bode well for Vienna. Whatever Raine had discovered neither man wanted disclosed, but more than that, Raine knew it was going to really hurt her friend. Raine only got angry when someone harmed her friends.
“Liam’s son, Elliot Blom, was raised by his mother, unaware that he owned shares in a very lucrative casino. His mother passed away right before he turned eighteen and he joined the service and made that his career. He was extremely intelligent and while in the military pursued college. Eventually, he became an officer, got his degree—several degrees in fact—and joined special ops, where he had an exemplary career.”