Page 27 of Power

“There’s not much on him, either. Just old information and photos like with Tarun. Their IT team did one hell of a job concealing them. He died not too long ago, and obviously, nothing new has surfaced on him since then.” He had taken out his phone and searched through it as he spoke. “Here.”

I took it from him. It was a photo of a brown-skinned man, bruised and bloodied. He looked to be about Jai’s age, late twenties. His face was round, like in the old photo of Tarun that I had seen, but it wasn’t as full. He was missing the birthmark that Tarun had on his neck. The eyes were also close-set like Tarun’s, but they were closed. He was dead.

“Scroll to the next one.”

I swiped my finger and another photo appeared. It was another Indian man but with lighter skin, and even heavier set than the last one. This man was alive and not beaten. He had light-brown eyes and looked different from the previous man that I had seen. The only thing that was the same were his narrowly set eyes.

“What am I looking at now?” I asked, confused.

“That’s also Tarun’s brother.”

I stared at the picture in disbelief.Prosthetics.He must have been wearing heavy prosthetics in the second photo to change his appearance.

“The same one?! That’s insane. He looks so different.”

“He had been working in our network in New York in disguise. We stripped his prosthetics after he died to see what he really looked like. Then we took the first photo you saw. The second photo is one we captured when he was alive and in disguise. I was hoping we could get a hit using either of these photos, but we had no luck with older versions of facial-recognition software.” He took the phone back from me when I offered it to him. “They are already uploaded to our shared cloud for your use. Since your software has higher accuracy for people of color and accounts for cloaking, I know we’ll have a higher chance of finding Tarun using it.”

It all made sense. We just needed someone to take a current photo of Tarun and compare it to photos of his brother with and without prosthetics for hits. The photo captured would carry the coordinates of where the photo was taken too, so we would be able to track him down. It sounded simple, but Tarun was an expert at hiding.

“How did his brother die?” I asked Jai to piece together more information about our enemy.

Silence. He just stared at me, but his eyes conveyed everything I needed to know.

“Never mind,” I said, dropping my gaze and shaking my head. I didn’t need to hear the words to know that Shyam and Jai had killed him.

He lowered his voice to a more serious tone. “You know what we do. We’re not spoiled corporate chumps who spend our time on the golf course or sailing yachts. We’re dangerous men who work hard for our money. You need to come to terms with that if you’re going to be Shyam’s girlfriend.”

This was the first time he had addressed my relationship with his brother. I didn’t know how much he knew about our intimate relationship, but I assumed brothers talked.

“I’m not sure we’re together in that way, so to speak.” I didn’t feel comfortable sharing much, so I didn’t elaborate any further.

“Really? Because he kept you his little secret when you started here. He’s never been shy about his other women, but he’s been surprisingly tight-lipped about you.”

“His other women?” I repeated quietly. For all I knew, he could be seeing other women in addition to me. We had never discussed being exclusive, so it would be fair if he slept with other women, but the idea made my stomach drop.

“Well, the otherpastwomen. I haven’t seen him with anyone else since you came around. Except last Friday, with that stripper.”

Last Friday?That was the night he had told me about his parents and then taken me completely.Was he with another woman when I called him from the bar?He’d fucked me without protection after her. I felt sick to my stomach. I tasted bile in my mouth.

Jai’s phone buzzed with a text. He focused on his screen, seemingly oblivious to the tears of anger that threatened to fall from my eyes.

“Oh shit. Gotta go, love. Drug-dealer emergency.” He rushed out of my office to sort out whatever needed his attention, leaving me alone to stew in my dread.

Chapter XVIII

Shyam

Ten fucking crates of product—all intercepted. My men prepared the shipment and loaded it onto the cargo ship for delivery. When the cargo arrived at the port in Barcelona, our crates had been emptied, leaving only the computer hardware we used to hide our product. We were able to hack into the video security system used at both ports, but nothing suspicious was discovered from the footage.

Our client was livid. They assumed that we were responsible for the loss and were taking advantage of them, but I had had my most trustworthy men work this job, so I knew they weren’t responsible for what had happened. Someone had sabotaged our shipment, and my gut led me to one culprit—Tarun.

We couldn’t continue doing business like this. Every shipment we sent out was at risk of being stolen or destroyed. We had lost our client in Barcelona because of it. They had been our major distributor in Spain, and our stronghold within the country was now destroyed. No doubt they had already moved on to sign a contract with Tarun and his men. This shit would keep happening until we destroyed Tarun. There was absolutely no way we could both continue to conduct business while the other was alive, and I had no plans on dying anytime soon. I was impatient, and I needed Jai and Amelia to locate himnow.

Jai entered our suite at Nirvana just after I had finished getting details about the raid. It was daytime, so the club was closed to the public, and our employees had yet to clock in to start prepping for the evening. The suite was more private than my office at Sethi Tech to discuss our next steps.

“What took you so long?” I barked at him.

I was fed up with his tardiness whenever shit hit the fan. I had always excused it before because he was a genius. Without him, our business wouldn’t have thrived the way it had before Tarun started meddling in our affairs. But Jai was aware of his brilliance too, and his ego made him think the world revolved around him.

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