Page 92 of Gabriel: Duke of Bencalor

Ricci threw him­self down on the sofa, drop­ping his head into his hands. “I had no choice.”

“Ex­plain,” Mikel com­manded.

Ricci raised his head. “I was black­mailed.” He looked around at the floor-to-ceil­ing glass win­dows. “For all I know, they’re watch­ing me now. They prob­a­bly know you’re here.” His toned was de­feated. “I didn’t know what they wanted me to do un­til I got to the…site.”

“They?” Mikel prompted.

“The black­mailer. The kid­nap­pers. Who­ever it was.”

“You don’t know?”

Ricci shook his head. “They wore masks when they picked me up at the train sta­tion in Brus­sels and kept me in the back of a win­dow­less van. When we got to the site, I was blind­folded. All I saw was the op­er­at­ing room and the pa­tient.”

“What about the anes­thetist and the nurse?” Quinn asked.

“I have no idea who they were. They knew their jobs, though. Not that it was a de­mand­ing pro­ce­dure.” Ricci’s tone was dis­mis­sive.

His lack of re­morse for what he’d done to Gabriel sent a nearly suf­fo­cat­ing rage through Quinn.

“How long were you in the van?” Mikel asked.

“They took my watch…and never re­turned it,” Ricci said. “But it was more than three hours, I would guess.”

Dupont’s crew were pros. She had to give that to them.

“Any guess as to where they took you? Any dis­tinc­tive sounds or smells as you got in and out of the van?” Mikel probed.

“I didn’t want to know where I was. I didn’t want to know any­thing. I just wanted to be done with them.” Ricci’s voice vi­brated with real fear.

“All right. Let’s go back to the be­gin­ning,” Mikel said. “When and how did the black­mailer first con­tact you?”

“About two months be­fore the surgery, a manila en­ve­lope showed up mixed in with my of­fice mail, ex­cept it hadn’t gone through the post.”

“Do you still have it?” Mikel asked.

Ricci made a push­ing-away mo­tion with his hands. “No, no, I de­stroyed ev­ery­thing in it.”

“What was in the en­ve­lope?”

Ricci’s gaze flit­ted around the room again. Then he met Mikel’s gaze al­most de­fi­antly. “Pho­tos. Of me with some­one not my wife.”

“We know about the apart­ment in Paris,” Quinn said. “Were they taken there?”

“Yes.” Ricci seemed to de­flate. “And one other place.”

“Where was the other place?” Mikel pounced.

“A…a bar re­stroom.” Ricci stared be­tween his knees. “A gay bar. My wife might for­give me if I had a fe­male lover, but a man? She would di­vorce me.”

“And take all your money?” Quinn asked, a note of scorn in her voice.

Ricci gave a hu­mor­less laugh. “She would take all her money.” He swept a hand around. “This? This is our small­est prop­erty. We have six homes scat­tered over the world, each with a full staff at all times. We have a pri­vate jet to travel among them when­ever we want to. Sylvie likes the ca­chet of my pro­fes­sion, so I con­tinue to work, but my pay is a bagatelle com­pared to her fam­ily’s money.”

Quinn wanted to smash his per­fect nose with her fist. He’d nearly crushed an­other man’s fu­ture for a bunch of houses he hadn’t even earned him­self.

This time, Ricci saw the look in her eyes and cow­ered back against the cush­ions.

“What came with the pho­tos?” Mikel prod­ded.

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