Page 14 of Prodigal

André studied him, and Gideon swore he saw the other man’s brain working to figure out what was really going on.

“The cops aren’t looking for me?”

“Why would they? The robbers are dead and Tony and his wife are fine. There was nobody else involved in the robbery.”

André blinked when it clicked and he spluttered. “They don’t know Jules and I were there?”

“Did you want them to know?” Gideon lifted an eyebrow. “So your sister can be traumatized all over again when she’s made to recall the events?”

André rubbed a hand over his mouth, meeting Gideon’s gaze with wide eyes. “Why did you do this?Whatdid you do exactly?”

“Money can make any unpleasantness go away, André.” Gideon knew before he said it that those were the wrong words. As he watched, André stiffened, his expression turning agonized before he smoothed it out.

“Right. And what do you want in exchange for your help? Because men like you aren’t the altruistic type.”

Gideon couldn’t help the smile that appeared at those words. “Do you know many men like me then?”

“I know enough.” André rolled his eyes. “What do you want?”

“Like I started to say earlier, when we rescued you, Jules told us where you lived. I had one of my men go there, with the help of the key Jules gave us?—”

“Why the hell would she do that?” André blurted out. “You’re strangers.”

“I don’t know why she did it, why she trusted us, but you should be grateful she did.” Gideon made his way back to his desk and picked up his iPad. He turned it on, tapped the Photos icon, then held out the device to André. “This is what your house looks like.”

André’s eyes bulged as he studied the images. “What the fuck? Who did this?” His home had been destroyed, torn apart. Furniture overturned, drawers emptied onto the floor, cupboards ripped off. It was as if whoever did it had been searching for something. “Who did this?”

Instead of answering him, Gideon picked up the cracked phone that had been sitting on his desk and offered it to André, who took it hesitantly. “This belonged to one of the dead men from the pizza place. Look at the most recent text messages.”

He watched André’s eyes go back and forth as he read, his skin turning paler and paler until he was damn near ashen. “It’s photos of me and Jules,” he whispered.

“Yes.” Gideon nodded. “So, I’m gonna ask again, who wants you dead?”

André stood there holding Gideon’s iPad and a dead man’s phone, and Gideon had never seen anybody look so lost, so confused. This wasn’t André’s world. He must feel it in the pit of his stomach, the sense of impending doom. Gideon could’ve told him, as André took a step backward, that he was already in too deep.

In over his head and he didn’t even know it.

“I don’t—I don’t know who would want to hurt us.” André’s voice rattled as Gideon cocked his head.

“No?” He sat on the edge of his desk. “Tell me about Ennis Canto.”

André blanched.

“Heisyour father, isn’t he?”

André gaped at him “How do you?—”

“Could he be trying to get rid of you permanently?”

6

Gideon’s wordscame at him so fast, André couldn’t keep up. One after the other, his secrets kept falling from Gideon’s lips, and it took a minute for him to truly hear the question Gideon was awaiting an answer to.

“Could he be trying to get rid of you permanently?”

He, the man who’d fathered and abandoned André.

Someone had tried to kill him and Jules? Their home had clearly been ransacked, as if the perpetrators had been searching for something. What the fuck was his life right now? And now Gideon thought the culprit was Ennis Canto. The same man who wanted nothing to do with André? Couldn’t be.

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