Page 46 of The Mafia's Property

NICO BURST INTO the office like a thunderbolt. I was in the middle of a meeting, but the anxiety on his face was enough for me to know whatever brought him here was important. I dismissed the team and offered him a sit. He didn’t take it. Instead, he started pacing and clutching his hair. It couldn’t be the meeting we had earlier that got him like this. He was usually calm and let a little rattle him, but our earlier talk might have made him even angrier. If that was what he was here for, then fine. I’m ready to talk to him. We’ve never had a woman cause a rift between us and I wasn’t going to let it happen, no matter how good she was at sex.

“Are you okay, man?”

Nico threw a tiny bottle onto the desk. I picked it up and read the label. “Eye drops?”

“No. An assassin’s poison.”

I slowly turned the bottle around, seeing nothing suspicious about it. My brother tended to have some flights of fancy when describing mundane things. “You sound a little medieval today.”

He stopped mid pace and stood arms akimbo. “She wants to kill us, Rico. That bitch was hired to kill us.”

I dropped the vial like it was radioactive. “When you say poison?”

“I mean that thing,” he pointed at the bottle, “contains a lethal dose of some fucked up drug Sunny created and she had it the whole fucking time intending to kill us! Otherwise, why have it stashed hidden?” The last sentence he said more to himself than to me. “And now Freya has the other half of the drug in her bathroom right now. Then you have fucking Derreck! Fuck that motherfucker!”

“Stop.” I got up and went over to him. “Stop, you’re not making sense.”

Nico slumped down onto the couch behind him. He went in his tale. About how he initially got suspicious. How he then went to Sunny. What Sunny told him. His story culminating in the final revelation. The bottle contained a lethal dose of a drug used only for spiking drinks. “You were right,” he said at the end. “I should have listened to you.”

“Are you sure it’s Derreck he gave that drug?”

“Derreck and Sunny are friends. Very good friends if the CCTV footage is anything to go by. They hung out a lot when Derreck used to work at the Venom. And seemed they kept contact soon after.”

“So Derreck and Freya are working together?”

Nico nodded. “She couldn’t have gotten that drug unless it was from Derreck or Sunny. She could have gotten it from Sunny, but with what you’ve told me, it’s likely she got it from Derreck.”

“Where’s Sunny?”

“He’s in the darkroom. I left him there with Skits.” The dark room was the nickname we gave our interrogation room. We rarely sent anyone there, especially someone with a status like Sunny’s. This is serious.

“You don’t think he’s part of it, do you?”

Nico shook his head. “The man is a creep, but doesn’t seem to be involved. Freya and that fucking Derreck, however…” Nico punched the armrest. If the chair wasn’t of high quality, it would have broken in two. “I want her head.”

I understood his frustration. But we had to go about this carefully. If she caught wind that we were onto her, we could lose her. She could rush off to Derreck and tell him about it all, and they could both disappear. We had to be cautious.

“You’ll get your wish, but you have to know that we can’t just get rid of her—” my phone chose that time to ring. I was about to let the call go to voicemail when I saw the name on the phone. I showed it to Nico. Nico leaned forward. “Put the call on speaker,” he said. I answered the call.

“I hear you and your brothers have something I’ve been desperately looking for.” A gruff and raspy voice said on the other end. There was a distinct sound of ocean waves. Was he on a yacht, I wondered.

“And how are you, Volkov?”

“I hate bullshit pleasantries. I called because I want to make a deal. The jewel for fifty, how about that?”

I glanced at Nico. He raised his brow.

“If we had it, we wouldn’t sell it to you. But you’re barking up the wrong tree, old man,” I said.

He chuckled and wheezed.

“I wasn’t born yesterday. I know you have it.”

“Too low,” I responded.

“Are you desperate enough to call us instead of going about it in your usual way of stealing?”

“It’s a generous offer. No one is giving you more than that.”

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