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Virginia
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Virginia had trouble falling asleep. The words she’d heard earlier played on a loop in her head. It wasn’t so much Gregory’s thinly-veiled threat that bothered her; she didn’t worry too much about him. No, it was what he and Sander had said in the gardens that had her mind whirring.
Someone new was entering the picture. But who?
Whoever it was, Gregory and Sander weren’t happy about it. That, in itself, didn’t mean much. In her experience, those two were only happy when they were the ones in charge, wielding control. As the estate manager, Gregory was at the top of the staff food chain, with Sander a close second.
For the most part, Chris left them to it, only intervening when he felt it necessary to do so. Making her a permanent part of his staff and household had been one of those instances. A decade later, they still resented her for it.
Now it seemed something else had their boxers in a twist, and that suggested someone who had the ability to threaten the comfy nests they’d made for themselves had entered the picture. There was only one person Virginia could think of that wielded enough power to do that: Darius Kristikos. Was Darius sending more of his people, displeased with how they were handling Chris’s disappearance?
Virginia didn’t think so. If Darius was sending someone on his own payroll, Gregory and Sander were smart enough to know it would be in their best interests to cooperate fully, especially without Chris around to have their backs. They’d be falling all over themselves trying to kiss Darius’s rich, wrinkled behind.
Which meant they’d garnered the unwanted attention of someone else, someone whose involvement would not be welcomed. She thought of the dark suits that had been coming and going. More Feds, perhaps, hoping to avoid an international incident? The US had specialists who handled that kind of thing. FBI. CIA. NSA. Alphabet agencies, as she called them, who worked quietly in the background for the safety and welfare of US interests.
That would certainly explain the displeasure she’d heard in Gregory’s tone. He made no secret of the fact he didn’t think very highly of the US, neither its government nor its people, her included. It didn’t matter that he’d been living and working in the States for more than a decade. In fact, Gregory seemed even more critical of her homeland and its people than he had when she’d first met him. He certainly wouldn’t appreciate them questioning him or the way he ran things.
Virginia wasn’t particularly keen on having Federal agents sniffing around, either, but . . . if their questions helped shed light on what happened, it was worth a little inconvenience, wasn’t it? She, for one, would do whatever she could to find Chris and bring him home. And, she thought as she finally felt the gentle tug of slumber, if she could do that and watch Gregory squirm in the process, all the better.
Either way, she supposed she’d find out soon enough.