“Something going on I should know about, Dad? And why would I call you if something would happen? What aren’t you telling me, dammit?”
“Nothing, Katie. Just concerned for you since you took that job. I know the quality of patients who come there are...” I closed my eyes and counted to ten at his words. He never failed to get his digs in because I didn’t go into private practice so I could attend to the wealthy instead of the poor and working class who came to General Hospital. I wondered frequently when he turned into such a snobbish person.
“Okay, Dad, gotta go. Patients to see. Tell Mom I said hi.”
“Just remember what I said, Kathryn. Bye.” Before I got a chance to return the bye, I had a dial tone beeping in my ear. I hung up the phone and headed to the exam room where my next patient sat waiting, the phone call with my dad easily forgotten.
I moved the curtain aside and walked in the cubical to find a large man sitting on the exam table wearing jeans, a black t-shirt, and boots. His dirty blond hair pulled back in a ponytail and his brown eyes looking me over. When his eyes raised to look me in the eyes, he wore a smirk on his face.
“Hello, Mr. Mizer. I’m Dr. Stevens. Your vitals are normal. Let’s see about getting that cut on your arm stitched. It says here you were working on your bike and sliced your forearm open.” His arm rested on the portable work table and I began removing the gauze the nurse had wrapped around the arm to stifle the bleeding after cleaning the wound. The man never flinched even when the gauze pulled in a few spots from being stuck in the drying blood.
“Nice, soft touch there, doc. You got great hands. How about when you get off, I pick you up and I can take you for a ride on my bike and you can run those great hands over other areas of my body.” Great, it’s not like I’ve never been hit on but usually they were a little less creepy when they made advances. Not this guy, he said it and the smirk never left his face.
“Mr. Mizer, sorry, but I don’t go out with patients, even when they ask me with such class.” That statement received a change in his demeanor. He stiffened on the table and when I looked up from his arm, the smirk was gone, replaced with his lips pressed together as if he was gritting his teeth.
The area had already been numbed by the nurse who did the initial clean. I rolled over the table with the supplies I would need to stitch the man up. Once I began the man sat quietly, he hadn’t even replied to my last comment. As I stitched the wound, I had my suspicions that it wasn’t from working on his bike, the pattern of the slice looked more like it was from a jagged edged knife.
“Mr. Mizer, are you sure someone didn’t cut you. The wound is more precise than if you just hooked the skin on something.”
“I told you how it was done. You calling me a lair, bitch.”
“Sir, there is no need for that kind of talk. I asked a question, it is my job when I am responsible for patching you up, no matter how you received the wound...” he got ready to speak and I held up my hand to stop him, “so you might want to cut the name calling considering the person who is patching you up can use a knife a helluva lot better than who did this to you,” I said just as I tied off the last stitch and set the tools down. My words had nothing to do with being scared but more that you couldn’t let them see the fear. It hadn’t taken me long after I started working in the ER to figure that out.
What had surprised me was the reaction from the man. He hadn’t gotten pissed off, he laughed and looked between me and the nurse who entered, then said, “Feisty, that is a good trait.”
I refused to go back and forth with the man, so I wrapped the forearm again with clean gauze, informed him on the ‘taking care’ portion of dealing with the wound and walked out after handing him a copy of the cleaning instructions and telling him to either come back into the ER or see his regular physician in fourteen days to have the stitches removed or before if he noticed any redness or swelling around the wound.
At the nurses’ station, I signed off on several charts and grabbed the next one of the patients in line to be seen. I turned the corner just as Mr. Mizer was heading out.
“Doc?” I stopped and turned when he spoke.
“Yes?”
“Tell your father, Mr. Kosnoff said hello.” He started to walk away.
“What are you talking about? How do you know my dad?”
The man laughed and as the doors to the outside opened and he walked through, he said, “Just give him the message, he’ll understand.” The doors closed behind him and I stood there and stared until Sandy said my name. I turned to her and she frowned.
“Is everything okay, Dr. Stevens?” she asked.
“Yeah, I just... I just thought I forgot something,” I said and looked down at the chart in my hand, then back to her. “I will be in exam room eight.” I left it at that and walked away. I wouldn’t be calling my dad like he asked before, no, as soon as my shift ended, it would be handled in person.
When my shift ended at seven the next morning, I headed straight to my parents’ house for the sole purpose of catching my dad before he headed into his office. By the time I drove across town and pulled into the driveway, it was ten minutes till eight.
Before I reached the front door, it was opened and my mother stood in the doorway. “Kathryn, what brings you by so early?”
“Did I miss Dad already?” I asked and watched my mother look over her shoulder before she answered.
“No, he hasn’t left yet, he is in his office down the hall,” she whispered.
“What is going on, Mom? Why are you whispering?” I frowned and waited for her to answer and once again watched her look over her shoulder before she spoke.
“I’m not sure. Your father won’t tell me but, Kathryn, he has been nervous and jumpy for a while now. He hasn’t been into the office for three days. He called them and told them he was under the weather but for each of those days he has been in his office going through papers.” Mary Stevens didn’t need any added stress with her condition but I knew she was feeling it because of the way she was wringing her hands as she talked.
We moved out of the doorway and I closed the door behind me. “I’ll go see him and see if I can get him to talk about what is going on. It’s not like him to take time off from the office or his precious clients.” I left my mother standing in the hall and walked toward my father’s office door. I knocked and received no answer but it could have been because he didn’t hear me for the sound of the shredder I heard being used on the other side of the door. I turned the handle, opened the door, and walked in to find my father standing by his industrial shredder with a stack of papers in one arm as he fed the machine.
“Dad!” I said loudly, startling him, and he whipped around to face me.
“What are you doing here?”
“Nice to see you too, Dad. I hear you are under the weather and haven’t been into work. Funny, you didn’t mention that when you called me. What is going on? And who the hell is Mr. Kosnoff?” I watched the change in his expression from surprise to what resembled fear.
“How do you know Mr. Kosnoff, Katie? Stay away from him. He is not someone you want to know.” He walked to his desk and laid the papers down, then looked at me. “Well?”
“A patient I took care of in the ER dropped the name. So here I am, like you wanted, notifying you.”
“I told you to call and let me know. Now you have. I will call Mr. Kosnoff and take care of everything. I just want you to be aware of what is going on around you, that’s all.” My dad never did anything that wasn’t calculated and planned ahead of time, reworked six more times to make sure it came out the same every time. His behavior was so weird and if I thought back, it had been a little off-kilter for some time. This just happened to be more extreme.
At one time my dad and I had the typical father/daughter relationship. If I had to pinpoint when that changed, I would say when I decided to go into medicine and not law like he had wanted. When he finally accepted that I wasn’t going to be a lawyer but a doctor in
stead, I was interning at General, which started his disapproval all over again. The last couple years had been nothing but him badgering me because I refused to give into his meddling. Unfortunately for him, I was over the age of where a daughter gave a shit about her father’s approval, especially when it was only given when I did exactly what he wanted.
“Yeah, that is what you said but how about you actually tell me the truth on what is going on? Why you are shredding papers? Why are you missing work? And again, who is Mr. Kosnoff?” I knew from the look on his face he wasn’t going to give in that easily, neither was I. “Before you give me some bullshit that you think I will buy, let’s skip that part. And if you don’t come clean, I will go by the offices and ask Mr. Harris.” I stood there and watched my father’s shoulders slump. He pulled the desk chair out and sat, letting out a breath. He motioned to the chair in front of the desk for me sit. Once I was seated, he began to talk.
“Please don’t interrupt until I am done, Katie. If you do, I may not be able to finish.” I nodded my head and he continued, “In the last ten years with the introduction of e-trading, my clientele dropped at the brokerage firm, causing my annual income to drop substantially because of it. With my knowledge in the market, I started dealing in high risk stock and selling off when the price increased to supplement the loss in my income. The problem was that I didn’t have the cash flow to do this so I used the monies from some of the clients I still had. Everything went well until one purchase of stock in a pharmaceutical company that had a test drug with great success getting ready to come on the market, only waiting FDA approval. I would have made millions and been able to put the initial monies back into my client’s fund account. Two days before the approval, it was announced the pharmaceutical company had lied about some of the side effects and the FDA postponed approval for further testing. The stock plummeted and the money I invested was lost.
“The money belonged to Alexi Viktor Kosnoff, owner and CEO of Kosnoff shipping, an international company with offices in Vladivostok, Russia, Vancouver, Canada, and Seattle, Washington. I cashed in everything I had, plus what I had in savings but it wasn’t enough. The jest is, Kosnoff found out and instead of turning me in, well, I cut a deal with the devil. It started as laundering money by setting up bogus trade accounts, and after a couple of years I had paid back the amount I had lost but by then Kosnoff owned me. He is into a lot of things, Katie, drugs, guns, human trafficking. I wanted out but he threatened your mom and you if I didn’t continue. He even has deals with a motorcycle club, using them to run the drugs and guns. Something happened there with one of the bikers, he fucked up and cost Kosnoff money. The club has caught the man who was essentially selling them out, Kosnoff still has a hand in the club but I don’t know who that is, but he gets information through them.” I didn’t know the man that sat in front of me and talked, he wasn’t the man I had grown up around.
“If you are still doing his bidding, why is he sending bikers to my work to give you messages?” I had a bad feeling as I waited for him to answer.
“I was in charge of the yearly audits at the firm so I always hired the company that came in. The one I used was bought and paid for by Kosnoff, covering up anything that might look suspicious and draw the attention of the SEC until this year. Louis hired a new company for the audit after he came into my office to get a file, I had stepped out for just a minute to check with one of the junior brokers about a new client he had brought on board. I left a file no one was supposed to see and Louis saw the motorcycle’s club name and flipped through the file. He told me later, after hiring the auditing company that if there was anything I needed to come clean about I had till the audit was done. After that, well, he hoped I didn’t end up in jail.
“I panicked and have been shredding anything tying me to Kosnoff. I don’t know why; it isn’t like it can’t be traced another way. Anyway, with this fuck up, Kosnoff wants me to get Louis to switch the auditing company back to the one he has on payroll. Katie, I can’t go to jail.”
“What in your mind told you this shit would be a good idea? I’m not talking your tie to Kosnoff, I’m talking using the man’s money to begin with. And jail, sorry for what you have done, but you should go.” I didn’t know the man in front of me.
“You don’t understand, Katie.”
“There is nothing to understand, you did illegal shit, and as far as I am concerned, what you get, you deserve.”
“That may be but Kosnoff won’t stop with just me. You and your mother are in danger too.”
“Because of you and your damn greed! What the fuck does a motorcycle club have to do with an international shipping company in the first place? Drugs, guns, what the fuck have you gotten involved in? And why would Louis know anything about a bike club either?”
“One member of the club was trying to take over, he cut some deal with Kosnoff. They had already been running drugs and guns for him. I told you that. I wasn’t involved in that part, just the money and bogus trade accounts. For Louis, well, Katie, Linc is part of the club.”
Linc. I would be lying if I said I didn’t think of him often but I did make an effort not to, it just never worked too well. I even avoided him when he came to town to visit his folks. I’d missed him when he left me behind, his excuse to me had been an easy way for him not to hurt my feelings. He was my first and not easily forgotten, but I didn’t need a neon sign to say he moved on without me.
“So, Linc took a turn in his life and that has what to do with me? Nothing, just like I meant nothing to him when he dumped me to move on.” My father’s head dropped and he broke eye contact. Well damn, that wasn’t a good sign.
Chapter Three
Moose
The buzzing of my cell had me cussing. I reached for it without even opening my eyes. “Yo!”
“Really, Linc, that is how you answer your phone?” I inwardly groaned and wished I had looked at the caller ID before answering.
“Hey, Dad. How are you and Mom doing?” The overconsumption of beer last night left me sleeping in one of the rooms upstairs at the clubhouse. Throw in the time I spent fucking one of the hang-arounds, and I might have had three hours of sleep, tops. I moved the chick’s arm that was slung over my chest, she moaned and rolled over on her back, her bare breasts revealed as the sheet slipped to her waist. As I sat up on the side of the bed, I ran my hand over the mounds and tweaked her nipples. Instant reaction to my touch had them hardening into peaks and eliciting another moan as she arched her back in sleep, seeking more, and my dick hardened wanting to give her what she was asking for. I would get to that after I got off the phone with my dad.
“We’re fine, son. But, Linc, there’s a problem at the firm. It involves Paul.” I listened to my dad and couldn’t believe all the shit I was hearing.
“You know that shit has been going on for over five fucking years. I can’t talk about club business, Dad, but we recently obtained something that we will be able to get answers out of. You know not all of us here at the club are involved, right?” My dad had always been understanding with every decision I had every made with my life, whether he agreed with it or not, I only got the support, never the negative.
“Linc, son, that never entered my mind, not once. You may not have wanted to follow in my footsteps but that has nothing to do with the man you have grown into. You reached out and grabbed what you wanted in life, not what others expected out of you. That, Linc, means more to your mother and I than the fact you wear leathers and ride a motorcycle or camouflage.”
“Glad to hear. Does Katie know about any of this?” I looked over my shoulder to make sure the woman was still asleep as I grabbed my boxers and headed into the bathroom and shut the door.
“I haven’t talked with her, son. I don’t know.” I faced the mirror and rubbed my hand over my face as my dad continued. “Son, I haven’t asked what happened between the two of you, I figured you would tell me when you were ready. But, Linc, I was sure after you found your place there and got
settled, that you would come back for her. When you didn’t, well, I didn’t want to pry.” His voiced lowered as he continued, “She’s never married. She isn’t even seeing anyone. Katie avoids asking about you, and that is when I see her at all, she avoids your mother and I too. I’ve been married to your mother for almost forty years so when a man looks at a woman the way you looked at her at her graduation, it isn’t because you are indifferent about how you feel. It is more like knowing that what you are looking at is yours. I knew something was wrong when you didn’t show up at Paul and Mary’s house for Katie’s party. But like I said, didn’t want to pry.”
“Thanks for not mentioning to them that you saw me there. Keep me posted and I will do some digging, see what else I can come up with. When I have anything, I will be in touch.” We said our goodbyes and I hung up, turned around, and started the shower. Once it was heated I stepped in and let the hot water pour over my head and down my back. As I leaned against the wall with my hands, I closed my eyes and brought Katie’s face up and pictured the last time I saw it.
She had her dark brown hair in a bun and from where I stood, I saw her brown eyes sparkle as she received her diploma. She’d been beautiful as a sixteen-year-old girl but as a young woman in her twenties, she was gorgeous and looked ready to take on the world. I’d come that day to claim her as mine, but instead, I walked away alone and tried not to look back.
Now after I listened to my dad, it brought everything with her front and center that I had long ago locked away. Her laugh, her smile, the first time I kissed her, the night I took her virginity, even her face with tears running down when I said goodbye to her to not only find a place for myself but to build something to share with her. She had her dreams too, and I wanted her to finish growing up and fill them. I wanted no regrets for her or me when I claimed her as mine.
Snatched: MC Romance (Haven MC Book 1) Page 3
