Page 69 of Devious Eyes
“It’s cold here,” Quinn says. What the fuck? I stride past him into the interior, laptop out and on the table before he’s managed to follow me in. “You’re not gonna live here, are you?”
“What?”
“Antwerp? You hate the cold.”
“Quinn, the van plate?”
He ambles by and turns his laptop to me, opening an email box so I can see the content.
“We’re tracking the flight. It left twenty minutes ago. Van brought her here just before I landed. She went with four men and a woman. Two Japanese.” How the fuck he’s found this out I don’t know, or care, but relief floods me nonetheless.
“She okay?”
“She was alive. That’s all I know.”
“Where?”
“Course set for the States according to Andrew. He doesn’t know more than that yet.” He sits opposite me and stares. His dice come out of his pocket as if he’s got something to say that I won’t want to hear. I duck back down again and look at the screen, scanning the information available. There’s little of use short of the fact that someone saw the van and her alive in it. “You okay?”
My brow raises, head looking over the top of his laptop at him. Concern? That shit’s not gonna work. “Pissed.” At everything.
“Hmm. You know what this is about yet?” I listen to the clunk of those cubes rolling around his palm and consider the possible truth that could well set our world ablaze. He needs to know. He does, no matter how small the threat might be to us, because no amount of me analysing Gabby’s problem is going to make the potential danger to Cane fuck off. “’Cause I’m thinking you’ve got something to tell me, Nate.”
I sigh and push his laptop closed, mine following suit as I hear the doors close and the engine start up. “What did you find out from Marco?”
“Not a lot. New deal with Andreas Alves gone wrong. He’s moving into diamonds to stave off boredom in this safe world of yours.” I frown at the thought of safety. “Half the diamonds are now missing, which your woman is supposed to be looking for. For him.” My woman. The thought has the frown lifting slightly. “He doesn’t know what happened to them. I assume you do.”
“Yakuza, according to Gabby’s contacts.” He nods and grinds the dice some more. “And two Japanese guys taking her makes that more plausible.” He frowns and mutters something. “But neither she, nor I, can work out what they want with her. Aside from using her to get to her brother, and in doing that, the Miami port access. We went over it again and again. Nothing. She got mad in the end, told me to stop attacking her for things she didn’t know answers to.” I stare at him, wondering how this shit’s going to go down. “My assumption would now include something to do with us rather than just her brother.” The dice stop in his hand.
“Why?”
“Because of what you said before we fought weeks ago, and because I’m now linked to her. It might not originally have been us, might still not be us entirely, but like you said that day in the office, they’re coming for us. What’s better than a ransom? It’s the quickest way to get what they want from Cane. Pushing you hasn’t worked, so I’m thinking they’re trying to coerce it now.” He frowns. “And our drug access in and out of Chicago is just as lucrative as Miami, regardless of if we still use it that way or not.”
“But she doesn’t mean shit to me.” A smile nudges his mouth.
Asshole.
I glare and wait for an apology. None comes as the wheels leave the ground. He just returns the stare, barely acknowledging her as relevant in his life. The sneer that crosses my lips doesn’t go unnoticed.
“But you don’t have the keys to everything, Quinn, do you?” He lifts his chin at me, anger lacing every fucking feature on his face all of a sudden. Screw him. “I do.” He stands so abruptly it makes me sit back a little, my own chin lifted ready for whatever aggravated attack he might try for. Tough. I’m in control now. And I’m using it. “My codes. My deals. My fucking gamble.” The fury that grows in him brings a smile across my own lips, a light chuckle coming as I keep watching his mood swing. “Sit the fuck down, brother. This is my game now.”
Time passes, and nothing is said as we follow the plane she’s on to fuck knows where. I carry on with the last of my work, infiltrating whatever accounts I can manage and not caring if he’s pissed or not. My plan. My strategy. I’ve worked on it for days, knowing this shit might come. We will not go in with only guns blazing, and he can shut the fuck up with his attitude and posturing. It’s a standoff that’s never happened between us before—not once—and it’s about damn time it did. Love does shit like this to people. It’s the same as when he asked me to accept Emily regardless of what happened, asked me to welcome her into our home. I did, for him. And this now? This is for me and what I want. He’ll do whatever I ask of him and he’ll fucking smile as he does it, thanking me for saving his goddamn life if I can manage that. Maybe then he can have his control back.
Maybe.
“You’d give it all away for her?” he eventually says, fists still crushing those dice at his sides regardless of his calm words.
I widen my smile, remembering the way she laughs and wanting nothing more than to hear it again. On a beach. In my house. On the floor as I fuck her. Life is empty without it now. So yes, I would. I’d give everything I’ve ever made away for that sound by my side again. Cane empire or not.
“Not if I can help it.”
