Page 57 of His Deadly Lies

I clear my throat. She has to know that a bodyguard will tell his employer everything he sees. Doesn’t she?

“While I appreciate loyalty, we are a unit,” she continues. “We might as well start acting like one since our secrets are out in the open.” The flash of warning in her face says I’ll be in for it whenever the two of us are alone again.

And I have a gut-punch feeling she’ll be after a few of my secrets in return.

“Did you have the reporter killed?” Mia asks the question of Ricardo and turns her back on me this time around. Dismissing me.

She fucking dismissed me. This tiny, infuriating princess thinks she can act like I don’t exist?

“No, we didn’t have the reporter killed,” I answer for both of us.

Mia gives me a once-over and looks back at Ricardo. “Did you?”

So my answer isn’t good enough for her, either.

It’s infuriating. It’s degrading. It’s—

“Carter knows more than anyone in our syndicate,” Ricardo replies, butter smooth. “No, we did not have the reporter killed. But we will both have to face consequences if the police try to pin it on us.”

“I understand,” Mia says.

So easily we both skip straight to murder. As though the disappearance of our reporter friend Alice is only a placeholder word while the police begin their investigation. We all know what’s happened. We all know…someone struck.

“I’m sure we all appreciate your offer of extra security,” Edward adds. “Deep down.”

Playing the peacemaker now?

“If we plan on a club visit of any kind, it would be a good idea to have extra men at our disposal. Men we trust,” I say. “In the meantime, we need to figure out where your reporter has…disappeared to.”

In other words, it’s time to go hunting for a body.

Mia takes over, just like that, ordering people around. If she hadn’t unleashed her truly frightening tongue, I might have admired the vista. The shorts she wears show off the long expanse of her legs, and the softness of her dove-gray top practically begs a man to run his face along her front. Her hair, still wet from the shower, hangs in a braid down her back with small tendrils curling loose around her chin.

“Papa, I’ll have Archie review any footage he can find of us leaving Meridian last night. See if he can hack into the city traffic cams to track the progress of our reporter once Alice exited the compound.” Mia shrugs. “It’s the best we can do with such short notice.”

Fuck, I’ll have a few of our contacts look into her now as well. It doesn’t hurt to cover the same ground twice.

I trust my men.

More than I trust anyone on the Balestra container, considering the issues they’ve been having.

Their operation has been impenetrable until now, though. What changed?

Through the course of the conversation, Daddy Balestra says nothing to shed any light on the inner workings of his syndicate, not like I’d hoped he would. The kind I’ve been scouting for since the beginning.

Either way, I hope the strings he and his daughter plan to tug aren’t nearly as pathetic as the punks I’d questioned about Mia’s whereabouts the other day.

“Oh, come now. Neither one of you plan to question me and tell me how you can do it better?” Mia quips.

We stare each other down for the longest time until the door to the office swings open hard enough to slam into a nearby table. The knob rattles, and several picture frames on the table topple over as a tornado enters the room disguised as a beautiful woman.

“What did I miss? Mia! Are you okay?” The human cyclone practically floats across the floor and drags the much smaller Mia into a hug.

“Isabella, I’m fine. I’m fine!”

I catch Mia’s hasty murmur before she pushes out of the embrace. Her coffee cup is on the edge of the desk, half full and forgotten, too close to the edge for comfort.

“What do you need me to do?” Isabella asks, her hand skittering along Mia’s face, her head, her shoulders, and her arms. “Anything? Please! I want to help my sister.”

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