Page 76 of You Don’t Kiss Your Brother's Best Friends

“I mean whoareyou?” he coughed. “Because you sure as hell aren’t a chef.”

He had me there. I shrugged.

“No. No, I’m not.”

Raif coughed again, until fresh blood formed on his lips. I cut the ties on his hands and handed him a towel. He looked up at me gratefully, as he wiped it away.

“I’m here for Blight,” I said truthfully. “We go back a long way. The chef thing is a cover, because they’re not big fans of mine.”

The man in the chair coughed again, this time so hard that he winced. “I figured as much.”

“You want to tell me why they did this to you?” I ventured. “They don’t seem to be your biggest fans, either.”

“They wanted information,” Raif choked, “and I wouldn’t give it to them.”

“Wouldn’t or couldn’t?”

The man in the chair swallowed, painfully. “The second one.”

“That sucks.”

“I mean, I knew it had something to do with one of you,” Raif clarified. “But I didn’t know what, or why. Turns out they found something.”

He pointed weakly to the far side of the room. I didn’t even have to look, though.

“Shit.”

I turned my head anyway, and there they were: the detonators Bishop had planted.

“You already know though, I’m assuming,” said Raif.

It hadn’t even occurred to me that Victor Knox’s crew might find the detonators before Roman did. As far as we were concerned, the mercenary captain finding them first was the best-case scenario. It would sow the most chaos, do the most damage. But now…

Now Victor’s men had reason to be suspicious; before Roman even knew what had happened. They hadn’t wasted any time, either. They’d closed up ranks, and went straight after the one person who always had answers:

Poor, unfortunate, Raif.

He nodded toward a mostly full bottle of water on the table beside me. I grabbed it and tossed it to him.

“Thanks.”

“What else did they want from you?”

Raif drank deeply, until the bottle was empty. After discarding it, he rubbed at his wrists.

“Foley’s missing,” he wheezed. “Did you know that?”

“Heard something about it, yeah.”

“Well, everyone on Victor’s crew is looking for him,” said Raif. He nodded at the detonators again. “Personally, I think he planted those things. Or he was in the process of setting up something very bad, and never finished.”

“And you think he bugged out?”

“Wouldn’t you?” Raif shrugged. “Especially if he was made.” He spat on the floor and shook his head. “This whole thing was a clusterfuck from the beginning. You can’t put this many assholes in one place. It turns into the biggest dick-measuring contest in the eastern hemisphere.”

He was so right, I actually chuckled. “Might even be the world championship.”

“Yeah, well unless you got the biggest dick, you’re fucked.”

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