Page 5 of Gabriel: Duke of Bencalor

“I think you meant that just as much as you be­lieve Ko­dra is one of the kid­nap­pers,” Gabriel said, his lips twitch­ing up­ward at the cor­ners. “Fam­ily is com­pli­cated at the best of times.”

“You have no idea,” she mut­tered. “Mikel has al­ready sent a sur­veil­lance team to Italy. He doesn’t want Ko­dra to dis­ap­pear again.”

“Mikel is al­ways five steps ahead.”

Quinn beamed with pride. “He’s awe­some, isn’t he?”

In truth, Gabriel found Mikel a lit­tle ter­ri­fy­ing. The man knew ev­ery­one on both sides of the law, re­mem­bered ev­ery­thing, and feared noth­ing. Gabriel sus­pected that Mikel could kill with his bare hands. The man’s only vul­ner­a­bil­ity was his daugh­ter. Yet Quinn viewed her boss with ad­mi­ra­tion rather than fear.

This woman was be­gin­ning to in­trigue him.

“How long does Mikel plan to ob­serve Ko­dra?”

“I guess it de­pends on whether it looks like he’ll lead us to some­one use­ful.” She shrugged. “If he’s just liv­ing a nor­mal life with nor­mal as­so­ciates, Mikel will have him brought back here.” Then her eyes widened as though she’d re­mem­bered some­thing. “Of course, the de­ci­sion about that is yours, Don Gabriel.”

“If you call me ‘don’ one more time, I’ll have you thrown in the dun­geon.” He smiled.

She choked on a laugh. “But I didn’t curtsy, so I have to make up for that.”

“Amer­i­cans make a mess of curt­sy­ing. I was re­lieved that you didn’t make both of us un­com­fort­able.”

“I took bal­let when I was a kid, so I am per­fectly com­pe­tent at curt­sy­ing.” Her brown eyes sparked with chal­lenge.

“Well, save it for el rey.” He raised his eye­brows. “I would rec­om­mend that you curtsy to him.”

“Yeah, I want to keep my job…and my head.”

“No one has ever been be­headed in Cal­eva. That is con­sid­ered bar­baric. Those who dis­re­spected the king in the past were tossed off Acan­ti­lado Alto, the high cliff.”

“Much more civ­i­lized to have your bones bro­ken when you hit the rocks a hun­dred feet be­low and then drown in the crash­ing surf.”

“Two peo­ple sur­vived.”

“Se­ri­ously?” She leaned for­ward. “What hap­pened to them af­ter­ward?”

“They were cap­tured and tossed off the cliff again. The sec­ond time nei­ther lived.”

She frowned. “Shouldn’t they have been par­doned be­cause God had shown them mercy or some­thing? Or maybe con­scripted as sol­diers since they were so tough?”

“You are more mer­ci­ful than our early kings. And more prac­ti­cal.” He liked her skewed per­spec­tive.

“Do you want to see the rest of the in­for­ma­tion about Ko­dra?” she asked in a sud­den re­turn to busi­ness.

Pain stabbed at his fore­head. “Can you email it to me?”

“I don’t know how se­cure that would be.” She shifted in the leather chair that dwarfed her small-boned body. “I could put it on an en­crypted flash drive.”

“Per­fecto,” he said.

“I’ll be right back.” She shot up and bolted out of the room.

He slouched back in his chair and mas­saged his tem­ples. He hated not be­ing able to con­trol the fear even a year later.

The door swung open, and Quinn trot­ted back into the room. Slid­ing into her chair, she plugged a small sil­ver thumb drive into her lap­top and tapped a few keys be­fore she looked up. “I’m copy­ing the files for you now.”

“Thank you.” He pulled his lips into a smile that he hoped looked like grat­i­tude and not a gri­mace.

“Would you like some more wa­ter?” she asked, ges­tur­ing to his empty glass.

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