Page 84 of Gabriel: Duke of Bencalor

She shoved that prob­lem aside to stare at her phone.

Would send­ing that one text to her fa­ther give him per­mis­sion to reen­ter her life? She had fought so hard to dis­tance her­self from him. She didn’t want to undo all the work of build­ing those bar­ri­ers.

The Irish coin glinted in the glow of her com­puter screen.

She hit Send and shoved her phone back in her pocket. Five min­utes later, it vi­brated, and she pulled it out again.

An in­com­ing phone call from her fa­ther. So he was still alive.

She braced her shoul­ders and an­swered. “Dad?”

There was a mo­ment of si­lence be­fore her fa­ther’s voice with its hint of Irish came through the phone. “Quin­nie, my dar­lin’, it’s so good to hear your voice. I…” He cleared his throat. “I’m fine. Your un­cle Pete is fine as well. He’s just out of touch at the mo­ment.”

“Does that mean he’s in jail?” She’d learned to be­ware of her fa­ther’s eu­phemisms.

“No, not at all. He’s with a friend in a re­mote lo­ca­tion.”

Quinn shook her head. “I’m go­ing to take a wild guess that the friend is fe­male.”

“You’d be guess­ing cor­rectly.” There was that hes­i­ta­tion again. “I’m be­yond de­lighted that you reached out, but why were you con­cerned about Pete’s and my well-be­ing?”

“I have your lucky coin.”

“Well, that’s good news. I’ve been miss­ing it.”

Quinn sighed. “A very un­pleas­ant man gave it to me. Jean-Pierre Dupont.”

Her fa­ther mut­tered a string of curses that de­scribed Dupont’s an­ces­try in an un­flat­ter­ing way. “How did you come to meet with the likes of Dupont?”

“I work for a se­cu­rity con­sul­tant.” She’d kept the full scope of Mikel’s job from her fa­ther. “Which means that we oc­ca­sion­ally have to deal with crim­i­nals. How did Dupont get your lucky piece?”

“One of his cronies won it from me in a poker game. A rigged poker game.” Her fa­ther’s dis­gust came through the phone.

“Wait! You fell for a rigged game?!”

“Ach, he struck at my pride, and I was blinded by anger. You and I both are aware that anger is—”

“A bad ad­viser,” Quinn fin­ished the proverb with him. “How do you know Dupont?”

“We’ve had deal­ings here and there in the past. Why would he give you some­thing he knows is valu­able?”

“I be­lieve he has a mis­taken idea about the close­ness of our re­la­tion­ship. His name has come up in an in­ves­ti­ga­tion I’m work­ing on, and he would like me to back off.”

“Quin­nie, he’s not a man you want to cross.” Worry rasped in his voice.

“My boss is not a man you want to cross ei­ther, so I’m not con­cerned.”

“Your boss has to fol­low rules. Dupont does not. You should leave him alone.”

“My in­ves­ti­ga­tion leads where it leads.”

“Princess, Dupont is a—”

His use of her child­hood nick­name set a match to her re­sent­ment so it flared into fury. “Now you de­cide to be pro­tec­tive? It’s a lit­tle late.”

“Quin­nie, I made sure you’d be safe when you went away.”

“I didn’t go away. I. Went. To. Jail. Say it, Bren­dan.” She re­fused to call him Dad again.

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