Page 46 of Vicarious

“He assumed what everyone else in the public thinks,” Eileen says from where she’s been standing silently in the room until now. “That Addy Bianchi and Adrian Blake are fucking. And who wouldn’t assume that? They have no idea you’re conspiring against a crime lord. It’s a good cover. Or… at least it was.”

“What do you mean was?” I ask, both genuinely wanting to know the answer and not wanting to think about the fact that I’ve put off telling Phae about Dele and I. I’m still not sure exactly how I’m going to do that without making Phae a liability.

Eileen shrugs. “It’s still a good cover, I suppose. As far as we know, he only thinks you’re having an affair. But the problem is that we now know he doesn’t think Adrian is above betraying him.” She looks at me, “If he thinks you’ll betray him for a woman, we have to assume that he’s prepared for you to betray him regardless of the reason.”

“Fuck,” I mutter. This time when I’m about to punch the wall, Dele manages to intercept my fist, catching it in both her hands.

She gives me a tired, but understanding look as she opens my hand and runs a hand across my knuckles and joints to determine if I’ve broken something. I glare at her for intercepting me and snatch my hand from her, but don’t try to punch the wall again and settle for pacing about the room.

“So what now?” Eileen asks.

“It’s simple,” Phae determines. “You found the paper trail. Now we compile it and use it to take him, his corporation, and his drug empire down. Then we won’t have to worry about him killing Dele.”

“Your optimism inspires me,” I drawl sarcastically with a roll of my eyes before I can think better of it.

It is far from that fucking simple, and Phae is either too fucking naïve or too much of an idealist and optimist to acknowledge that. Because not only did Pray threaten Dele, he also somehow managed to get video footage of us. That either means that Pray has a broader reach than we thought, or there’s a fucking spy in my security. Both are concerning, and I’m not sure which one I’d prefer to be true.

Either way, I’m going to have to act on that. Do some subtle asking around about any expansion projects or feelers that Pray might have been sending out beyond his territory in the western US, and get Eileen to comb through everyone on our security to find out whether someone has been compromised. And while she does that, get Dele’s intelligence team on investigating Eileen to make sure she isn’t the fucking spy. I doubt it. She knows too much. If she were, Pray would have made a move by now. She would have sold us out at the fucking vineyard. But I can’t be too fucking careful at this point. Everyone is a suspect.

“Viper,” Dele begins in a warning tone.

“It’s okay,” Phae says.

“It’s really not,” Dele disagrees.

“Well I’m not going to sit here while you argue about it,” I declare before I storm out the room lest I lose my temper against both women.

I initially felt the weight of our trip and the exhaustion that comes with maintaining an act and pretending that I’m loyal to Pray. But then Dele revealed that Pray threatened to kill her, and now anger and adrenaline are pumping through my veins, and I need to work it out or else I’m never going to be able to do anything.

Before I can decide what that thing is going to be, I hear a knock on my bedroom door. Not in the mood to deal with Dele pointing out my personality flaws, I snatch the door open and say, “I’m not in the mood.” Then I register that there’s a petite woman with short spiky black hair standing at the door and not a taller than average, long and wavy dark-haired woman.

“In the mood for what?” Phae asks.

“Sorry,” I grind out. “I thought you were Bell.”

I let Phae into the room.

“What would Dele have done that you’re not in the mood for?”

I shrug and say, “Something about controlling my temper and finding a better and more productive outlet to channel it rather than senseless violence.”

Phae hummed. “I suppose that’s an angle.”

“You don’t agree with her?”

“I think maybe we just have different perspectives. In my experience, that only feeds the monster. It’s self-destructive, dangerous, doesn’t make the situation better, and usually only plays into the hands of the person making you angry. Shows they have control.” Phae furrows her brow and continues, “I don’t remember you being this angry before. Your temper has gotten worse.”

I shrug. Nothing to deny there, so I say, “It has. I have a lot to be angry about.”

“Maybe that’s true,” she replies. “I still don’t like it.”

“Tell me something I don’t already know.”

I expect her lips to purse in displeasure and for her to say something biting right back. To rise to the challenge my temper presents. But that’s never been Phae’s style. She’s always liked to ignore or sidestep my temper. Pretend it’s not there while simultaneously making me more angry and forcing me to shove a lid on it until it exploded later and led to the rare times Phae lost her temper and to our all too common explosive fights.

Instead, Phae holds up the folder with the copies me and Cres made of everything we could in the time we had at Pray’s vineyard.

“Come on,” she says. “Let’s look through this stuff and come up with a game plan. The sooner we get through this, the sooner Pray isn’t a threat to Dele, and the sooner you can get from under his influence and out of this business.”

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