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If he recognized me at all it didn’t show. My brother barely registered any emotion at all. My hug was an assault on his thin, depleted frame. In my enthusiasm, I damn near knocked him over.
“W—What did youdo to him?”
I didn’t expect an answer, honestly. Nor did I get one. The man snapped his fingers again, and two men stepped forward to flank my brother. When one reached out to pull him away I bared my teeth at him.
“Wait…” The man’s words halted his apparent henchman. He stopped reaching for me, mid-grope. “Let it be.”
The shifting in the darkness slowed, then stopped altogether. After a stretch of nothingness, the warehouse was silent enough that you could hear a pin drop.
“I’ve kept up my end of our agreement, Mr. Romero,” the man spoke again slowly. “Wouldn’t you say?”
“Yes,” Santiago replied again. “You have.”
“Good,” the man said, genuinely pleased. “Now then, I believe you were saying you had important information for me. That there was something I should know about?”
Santiago turned to regard Silas for a moment. He nodded curtly, then shifted his attention back to the man in the hat.
“The Lozanos are screwing you over,” he said, as matter-of-factly as possible. “Every which way.”
I watched the man’s face as it remained impassive. He didn’t flinch, or smile, or frown in any way. It was almost like he was frozen completely.
“He’s not lying,” Cody added calmly. “It’s been going on right under your noses, too. For quite some time.”
The man in the hat finally broke character. After shifting from one foot to the other, he brought a hand to his mouth, contemplatively.
“And I’m assuming you have proof of this?”
“No.”
Santiago’s statement wasn’t what anyone wanted to hear, including me. But the man in the hat actually grunted.
“But we can show you where tofindproof.”
There was snicker in the darkness. It was joined by two or three more, then an evil chuckle.
But the man in the hat stopped all that noise with a single wave of his hand.
“Let me see if I understand this,” he said, tapping his chin. “You give us just enough to drag us up here, then tell us you have nothing else?”
“No, not nothing el—”
“That we need to find ourownproof?” the man went on disbelievingly. His voice was getting louder and sharper with every word. “That one of our longest-standing partners is betraying us — for no good reason at all, apparently — becauseyousaid so?”
Silas and Cody had stiffened visibly. They looked coiled now, ready for anything.
Santiago however, still looked calm and relaxed.
“We have something to—”
“Show them?”
The second voice came from behind us, shattering the silence there. It was lower and snarkier. Dripping with sarcasm.
My heart sank all the way to my feet as Aimon Lozano stepped from the shadows.
Fifty-One
BRYNNE
