Page 100 of Glass Omega

It had been a week and a half since the charity gala and things had been quiet up until this morning and now I knew why.

Apparently, whoever had been fucking with me for the past few months had now moved on to trying to framemefor shit that neither I, nor my men had done.

“What else am I supposed to think, Keane?” Jifein Cheng’s voice was tight as she spoke on the other end of the line. “Those explosives paired with the bodies of one of your men are all telling me that you are full of shit. I just can’t quite figure out what your fucking plan was when half of the shit that was exploded was your own product.”

My teeth gritted together at that. Not only had we lost a shipment by land a few months ago in that first ambush, but now we’d lost yet another one that had come in by water.

I hadn’t wanted to loop anyone other than Shuuhei Saito in on my suspicions that someone in the five families was trying to sow discord and start a war—the only conclusion I could come to as to why anyone would play a fucking game like this—but now I was pretty sure I was going to have to at least fill the Chinese in or else risk retribution.

I still didn’t even know who the fuck was doing it.

I had four suspects in mind—three now that the Chinese were being targeted as well.

My first suspect was the Russians. Vladimir Volkov wasn’t usually one to engage much with the five families, but I always had a hard time reading the man. The Russians had yet to be involved in any of this and that was suspicious in and of itself.

I wasn’t sure what sort of motive he had yet, but I had Collum on it whenever he wasn’t escorting Perrie to school.

Next was the Italians. I’d heard through the grapevine that Amante was still seething over my nuptials with Perrie, so it wouldn’t be that surprising if the famously impulsive man was trying to fuck with my business to get back at me.

Lastly, and unfortunately most likely, I suspected that Liam and the rest of the branch heads of Keane family members were behind this. It made sense that they would try it.

After all, they’d been trying to undermine my leadership for two years.

But they couldn’t be doing it alone. The first thing I’d done upon taking over was snip the reins of their power within the family.

Which meant that one of my first two suspects had to be helping them.

“I’m going to send you some files. When I tell you that these are for your eyes only, I fucking mean it, Cheng. If I find that you have anything to do with any of this, I will make sure to wipe you and your people from the face of this city for the foreseeable future.”

There was a heavy pause on the other end of the line and I could almost hear gears grinding in the woman’s head as she tried to decide whether to trust me or not.

“Fine. But these better be good.”

“I guarantee they are probably the most interesting thing you’ll see all year.”

There was a snort on the other end of the line. “I don’t know, Keane, this season of theBachelorhas had me on the edge of my seat.”

There was another long silence before the woman sighed. “You really have no sense of humor, do you? I feel bad for your wife.”

“Just read the damn files once you get them and call me back. They’ll self delete and fry whatever you read it on, so I suggest maybe finding an old laptop to view them.”

“Fine.”

We hung up and my next call was to my IT guy who spent most of his time in his little basement office. He was on the younger side, but I’d never met anyone as good with computers as he was.

“Finneas. I need you to send what we’ve gathered about the incidents over to Jifein Cheng.”

“You want me to sendthatstuff over to the Chinese, boss?” came the younger man’s usual nervous cadence whenever he spoke to me on the phone.

The sounds of fake gunshots and explosions filled the speaker of the phone and I held it away from my ear with a frown. “Are you playing video games during your work hours?”

The sound cut off abruptly. “N-no absolutely not, sir. I would never. I was just… uh…”

He apparently couldn’t think of a good enough excuse because he changed the subject. “Are you sure you want me to send that over, sir? You told me it was of the utmost importance that we keep it all safe.”

His words echoed my own worries about looping the Chinese in, but if I didn’t send it I knew that I would have Jifein’s men at my doorstep within twenty-four hours and the war that I was desperately trying to avoid would be here.

“Yes. Send it with one of those bomb things you keep telling me about.” I couldn’t pretend to even understand how it worked, but he’d shown it to me about six months ago and it had fried my laptop in less than sixty seconds.

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