Page 60 of City Of Thieves
“Then enlighten me.”
Killian’s stare never wavers as he digs in his pocket and retrieves his phone. After pressing a sequence of buttons, he holds it up and shoves the screen in my face. Keeping a watchful eye on him, I glance at the bulleted list with disinterest.
“Your father found an encrypted file on Nero’s phone,” he explains. “Since he knows I have a talent for extracting the unextractable, he sent it to me.”
Knowing his black hat background like I do, I don’t bother asking stupid questions. I already know he’s cracked it.
“What did you find?”
“Names of ten paintings he’d been chasing down,” he says with a frown. “‘Atonement’ being one of them... I’ve pulled up pictures of most of them.” With utter disregard for the gun pressed against his skull, he glances down, scrolling through his phone again until he finds what he’s looking for. “Look for yourself.”
Keeping my finger on the trigger, I glance down, my heart jackhammering against my ribcage at the image filling the screen. “That’s a near-identical painting to the one I bought out from under Tatiana atRegency’sin New York.”
He nods, the movement sliding the muzzle up to his hairline. “That makes sense, considering he also had a file on the entire Sanders family.”
Shit.
There’s a bad feeling in my gut. A raw, churning that warns me things are about to go really wrong, really fast.
“What the hell were you up to, Nero?” I murmur, lowering the gun.
“It goes deeper.” Killian pockets his phone. “Who outside of the family knew Nero had pulled you into his side venture?”
“No one.”
People assumed we were still at odds. The prince and the fuck-up, sharing only a mutual name and loathing.
“Exactly,” he affirms, swinging his index finger at my chest. “You said Vasily came to you saying he’d heard Nero was looking to offload a painting, and that his brother, Oleg, had an interested buyer. It’s common knowledge that Vasily and Nero had prior dealings, but did Nero ever mention he’d shared your involvement with him?”
“No.”
“And who were the only ones with both access toYamaand knowledge of that painting being in Nero’s possession?”
“My family, but that…” I stop, the implication of what he’s saying sinking in and taking hold.
“You have a traitor, Renzo,” he says with blunt finality. “Your father wants to find Nero’s killer as much as you do, but he needs you in a seat of power to do it.”
“Then why call you?” There’s a rising tide of resentment brewing inside my chest. “Why not tell me this himself?”
Killian’s cool expression lifts slightly. “Would you have listened?”
Fuck.
No, I wouldn’t have.I would have dismissed and cut him off, my own selfish guilt riding shotgun above all else. As much as I want to fire a bullet into the mirror he’s shoved in front of my face, I can’t ignore the reflection.
As the countdown clock starts ticking again, the sound of my father’s voice rings in my ear. A veiled warning that I ignored.
“Questions are being asked, and I can’t keep making excuses for you.”
“Then don’t.”
“I’m done waiting. Renzo. You’re my son, but I’m the boss of this family, and I won’t have it weakened by a hole in the infrastructure.”
A hole in the infrastructure.
Betrayal.
“Nero was killed over more than just the painting,” I say flatly. “He’d stumbled onto something else.”
