Page 29 of The Consequences of Love and Vengeance

He’s not doing a good job hiding his nerves. I step closer so that I’m within touching distance. He tenses up almost immediately.

“Sir, I can see you’re busy and Miss Barr—” He’s cut off.

“Tell Rebecca to be in my office in twenty minutes. I want the driver’s logs as well as a print out from our security company showing all GPS coordinates and stops.” Acerbi leaves no room for argument, but his employee doesn’t see it that way.

“I don’t understand, sir.” He scrunches his eyebrows in confusion. “You need all that because one of the guys misplaced a pallet? I can assure you, Mr. Acerbi, we’re searching for it now. If it’s not here, we’ll check with the other drivers. It was probably loaded onto the wrong truck. The customer will get their whole order in no time.”

He steps away from me, taking a step closer to his boss.

“You don’t have to understand.” Drago hands the clipboard and pen back over without signing. “Rebecca should have caught the arrival weight and the departure weight. Both are the same. All the customer’s merchandise left on the truck together. Twenty minutes,” he barks with a firm look then moves his eyes to me. “Come. Looks like you only have my time for a few minutes, detective.”

With that, he proceeds up the stairs, leaving me to walk around his employee in order to follow him up.

By the time I enter his office, he’s rounding his desk. I close the door as he sits, then I look around. It is larger than it looked from below. There are waist-to-ceiling high windows on two out of the four walls looking out into the warehouse.

“Please. Sit,” he tells me, so I do, crossing my legs as we both stare at each other. His eyes are brown, and I can’t tell if he’s pissed or amused by my presence. “So, detective, why don’t you tell me why you’re here?”

“You asked me to come to your office, Mr. Acerbi.”

“Call me, Drago, please. Mr. Acerbi is my father. I’m not my father, detective.” He smiles, making me think he’s toying with me. “Now, about why you’re here.”

He leans forward, laying his forearms on his desk, and as he does his eyes begin to harden.

I’m not scared of him. Maybe I should be, though. He certainly wants me to be frightened. Either way, I’m not showing him any emotion.

“Tell me, Drago, what type of relationship do you have with Sebastian Diaz?”

I don’t see a need to play games. The deputy police chief wants evidence that the Acerbi family is indeed smuggling illegal drugs into the United States. If they are, I’ll find it. If not, I won’t.

No need to drag this out. The sooner I wrap this up, the sooner I can get out from under Houston’s thumb.

“I don’t”—he breathes heavily—“have a relationship with Diaz, detective.”

“I think you do. I think you have a business relationship with him.” I raise my eyebrow. “An illegal business relationship.”

His jaw ticks as his eyes bore into mine.

“Don’t you cops have enough crime in the city to clean up instead of looking for things to pin on my family? You have nothing on me. We both know that. If you did, we wouldn’t be sitting in my office. I’d be in handcuffs and this conversation would be reversed.”

He laughs, but it’s the dark, sinister kind.

“But if handcuff play is something that turns you on, detective, I’m not opposed to that. It just won’t be me wearing them.”

“I wouldn’t be sitting here if what I said didn’t have merit.” I purposely ignore his inappropriate remark.

“By all means.” He raises his hands, gesturing toward me. “Please share this merit you have.”

This is where my job gets tricky. Do I tell him about Gabe’s mother or just the sighting with him and Marino? Whether I believe Miss Carlisle or not, I don’t want to risk Gabriel’s safety—or my own—more than necessary.

No, I think I want to stay hush-hush about the boy for now.

I pull my smartphone out of my suit jacket pocket. Once I locate the photograph, I lean forward, placing the phone, screen up, on his desk in front of him.

“Care to explain this?”

He glances down. His face is an unreadable mask. For a moment, I don’t think he’s bothered by the photo showing him with Sebastian Diaz’s right-hand man until the index finger on his hand starts tapping on the wooden surface of his desk.

The moment my gaze flicks down he stops the tapping by fisting his hand and then sits back in his chair. Crossing his arms over his chest, his eyes move away from my phone, meeting mine.

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