Page 96 of Sinner's Secret

Baz stabbed his cousin with a hard stare. “What the fuck?”

“The Ruiz family is making a play. Several of my people are not where they’re supposed to be, and a few are dead.”

The only person Baz cared about right now was Nika. “I’m going up. You clean your house.”

“Going up there alone is a stupid idea,” Yvgeny said on a drawl that almost sounded normal.

“They could be doing anything to her,” Baz rasped. “I can’t be too late again.”

“Getting torn apart isn’t going to help her.”

The elevator continued to descend. Ninth floor...eighth.

Baz managed a bleak smile. “Then you’d better hurry up and save my ass.”

Yvgeny shook his head, turned and ran toward an almost invisible door on the other side of the empty lobby. It closed behind Yvgeny just before the elevator dinged and its doors opened.

A bloody, limp body was shoved at him hard enough to knock him back a couple of steps. Panic grabbed at Baz’s gut with a cold hand, but the body was too big to be Nika’s.

The nervous manager’s pasty white face stared at him blankly.

Baz tossed the corpse to the side and smiled at the men coming out of the elevator to surround him. “Thanks,” he said looking at each man, but he’d never met any of them before. “But I already ate. Besides, I never liked anyone else’s sloppy seconds.”

“Mr. Ruiz wishes to speak to you,” one of the men said.

“What a coincidence, I’ve got a few things I’d like to say to him too.”

There was movement behind him, then something hit his back with the flash of a lightening bolt.

Chapter Seventeen

Nika woke with a kink in her neck. She lifted her head slowly. Why was her pillow so lumpy? She felt around and discovered her gun. That wasn’t there when she’d gone to sleep. Baz had tucked her in like she was five years old, and she’d passed out.

He’d promised she’d be safe here.

So why was her gun so handy, and who was screaming in the elevator?

She looked around.

Where was Baz?

The elevator doors dinged, and she heard them open. The screaming stopped and an unfamiliar male voice spoke in a rapid language that sounded Spanish-ish.

Definitely not Baz.

Great. Lovely. Fantastic. She was so tired of this shit.

She grabbed the cell phone Baz had given her, her gun, and slid out of bed while her uninvited visitor continued speaking. She walked quietly to the bathroom, locking the door as soon as she was inside.

She texted Baz, hoping he hadn’t gotten himself into too much trouble.

Right, who was she kidding. The man was a trouble magnet. He was probably in it up to his armpits.

Someone knocked on the bathroom door.

Oh, how polite.

“I don’t need room service,” she called out, setting her phone next to the sink. Her free time was up.

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