Page 91 of Gabriel: Duke of Bencalor

She fol­lowed Mikel across the thresh­old and into a two-story, sun-filled foyer.

Ricci closed the door with a no­tice­able slam. “Through here,” he said, walk­ing into a glass-walled room with a view of the lake. A white sec­tional sofa curved around a huge cof­fee ta­ble sliced out of a for­est gi­ant’s trunk. Ricci turned and crossed his arms over his chest.

He wore a blue V-necked sweater over a peach-col­ored polo shirt. His trousers were navy, and he was in­deed shod in el­e­gant co­gnac loafers. “I’d like to see ID other than the badge,” he said.

“Of course.” Mikel slid a black leather case out of his breast pocket and flipped it open, of­fer­ing it to Ricci. The sur­geon stepped for­ward to scowl at what­ever iden­ti­fi­ca­tion card was dis­played in the plas­tic win­dow. He said noth­ing but stepped back again.

“This is my as­so­ciate, Quinn Pier­son,” Mikel said. “May we sit down?”

Ricci’s gaze skimmed over Quinn with­out much in­ter­est. She de­lib­er­ately shifted so that her jacket flapped open on the hol­ster side. The sur­geon’s jaw tight­ened.

“Will this take long?” Ricci asked.

“Long enough that I’d pre­fer to be seated,” Mikel said.

The doc­tor strode to the couch and dropped onto the cush­ion grace­lessly. “Fine.” Some­thing lit in his eyes. “Do you have a search war­rant?”

“I can get one, but I wasn’t plan­ning to ran­sack your home.” Mikel smiled in the way a shark might as he sat op­po­site Ricci. “Would I find any­thing of in­ter­est if I did?”

“No, of course not.” Ricci waved away the sug­ges­tion. “Ask your ques­tions, what­ever they might be. I have an ap­point­ment in half an hour.”

An ap­point­ment with a golf cart, Quinn guessed, as she chose a seat a few feet to Mikel’s right.

“Then I will get to the point,” Mikel said. “You have been iden­ti­fied as the sur­geon who sliced off the Duke of Bencalor’s ear when he was kid­napped a year ago.”

Ricci ad­justed the col­lar of his polo shirt. “That’s not even worth re­spond­ing to.”

“It wasn’t a ques­tion,” Mikel pointed out.

“Then what the fuck are you here for?” Ricci burst out.

“To of­fer you a deal. We want the per­son who hired you. You lead us to them, and we’ll re­duce your sen­tence.”

“My sen­tence?” Ricci scoffed, but Quinn caught him smooth­ing one palm down over his thigh as though rub­bing off sweat. “I haven’t been con­victed of any­thing.”

“It’s only a mat­ter of time,” Mikel said, a note of men­ace un­der­ly­ing his rea­son­able tone. “The duke has iden­ti­fied you be­yond a shadow of doubt.”

Ricci stood and paced to the win­dow be­fore he spun around. “That’s not pos­si­ble.”

“What part of the body is most im­por­tant to a sur­geon?” Mikel asked.

“The hands,” Ricci an­swered al­most au­to­mat­i­cally, lift­ing his to waist height be­fore he glanced down at them.

“Yours are very dis­tinc­tive. As you might imag­ine, a royal duke’s word car­ries a great deal of weight in Cal­eva, and we have an ex­tra­di­tion treaty with Switzer­land.”

The sur­geon dropped his hands and looked around the room as though search­ing for a way to es­cape.

Mikel waited.

“I had no idea who I was op­er­at­ing on…un­til I saw the news af­ter­ward.” Ricci’s tone was plead­ing. “I was ter­ri­fied. I didn’t want to know.”

Mikel sat, stone-faced.

Ricci gave up on gain­ing their sym­pa­thy. “The duke was lucky that I did the surgery. You ask the doc­tor who did the re­con­struc­tion. I left him a sur­gi­cal site that made it a cake­walk to re­build the ear. If I hadn’t done the pro­ce­dure, they would have got­ten some butcher with­out the level of ex­per­tise I brought to the surgery. You should thank me.”

Even as her blood boiled at his ar­ro­gance, Quinn had to ad­mit the truth of what he’d said. The med­i­cal re­ports con­firmed Ricci’s state­ments. The irony was that the high level of skill ex­hib­ited had made it much eas­ier to nar­row down the field of po­ten­tial sur­geons.

“You sliced off the ear of a help­less pris­oner,” Quinn grit­ted out. “What hap­pened to the oath you swore to do no harm to your pa­tients? Doesn’t cut­ting off a healthy ear to aid and abet kid­nap­pers break that prom­ise in a big way?”

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