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Gutierrez was no fool, but he was an arrogant bastard who had several concubines he traveled with. They all hated him, but their fear of reprisal kept them from leaving or acting against him. Watching them as they resided in the Garden District, Bodie began to plan a two-pronged attack. One small team would enter the cathedral’s private communion and confessional and replace the sacred wine with wine laced with ricin—a deadly poison made from castor beans with no known antidote. As soon as the wine had been consumed, it would be replaced with the original toxin-free wine. Gutierrez wouldn’t die immediately nor inside the cathedral, but his death would be brutal and would take place in thirty-six to seventy-two hours.
Two days after they dosed Gutierrez with the ricin, they planned to implode the warehouse where his people were making and storing the drug intended for distribution. Bodie’s men had managed to track Thibodeaux to the warehouse that Alvaro and Quinn had been investigating and tie it to Gutierrez.
“You can’t prove nothing,” said Thibodeaux when Bodie confronted him.
“That’s the beauty of being a gangster,” said Bodie. “I don’t have to prove what I know.”
He held the corrupt cop by the scruff of his neck and made him watch as the building collapsed in upon itself, not causing any damage to the other buildings around it. The one good thing about the cartel’s new drug was that it was highly flammable, and it would explode with enough heat, creating a fire that would make the components inert and the fumes and clouds it produced completely harmless.
As the building seemed to implode like some kind of toxicsouffléthat had not been cooked properly, Thibodeaux said, “He’ll kill you for sure now.”
“He won’t live to see another sunrise. He’s been dying for the past two days or so. He may only just now be realizing that he has been poisoned. You tell those who remain that my quarrel with Gutierrez was just that—with him. If they leave and never return to the Crescent City, they have nothing to fear fromEl Tigre.” Bodie tossed Thibodeaux aside as if he was nothing more than garbage, which he was. He stopped and regarded the man. “You need to never let me hear or see you again.”
Bodie returned home and found his mate lounging poolside with Larisa. The two had formed an unlikely friendship. Quinn needed to work to make a difference in the way only a journalist could and intended to lean on Larisa to help her lead the tigresses and take on some of the more mundane tasks usually performed by the first lady of the clan. The bright sun shone on his face as he made his way to her, stepping over the back of the chair and sliding down the back as he scooched her forward, so she was sitting between his legs.
“It’s done?” she asked.
“It is. On the way home, I received a call on a burner phone from Gutierrez’s son, Enrique. He thanked me for my assistance in helping him take over his father’s business and swore we would never see them on North American soil again. He plans to confine his business to South and Central America. He said his father had taken ill, and they would be flying home this afternoon.”
“Do you think he knows who killed him?”
“Enrique? How do you think we found out when Gutierrez would be visiting the cathedral, and who graciously disposed of the wine as a token of his friendship and good faith—his words, not mine. Do I think it was Enrique? Absolutely. But I don’t know, and I don’t care. As long as Riccardo’s dead and the Gutierrez Cartel never shows its face in my territory again, I’m good.”
He could sense a sliver of sadness that she was trying to hide from him. He nipped her earlobe.
She sighed. “I spoke to Levi this morning. He’s sold the Gazette, and the new publisher doesn’t want me anymore. I’m happy for Levi, as the sale set him up for life, but I really loved the Gazette and I’m going to miss it. I guess I understand, what with you being my mate and soon-to-be husband. I guess I’ll just write freelance, or maybe try to be a stringer for the Associated Press.”
“If that’s what you want.”
“I don’t have much choice.”
He handed her a pendant in the shape of a glass slipper hanging from a beautiful silver chain.
She looked at it curiously. “What’s this?”
“The way I always heard the story, the only thing that survived from Cinderella’s grand night at the ball was her glass slipper—the one she left behind as she fled at midnight.”
She smiled, wryly. “I get it, this is supposed to remind me of the night we met.”
“More than that. It is to remind you that you have a fated mate who loves and adores you and even before he held you in his arms took on the role of fairy godfather—which is only appropriate, as he is a gangster.”
Quinn laughed—her happiness lacing the sound with her joy as it rolled down the bonding link to him. “I take it you’re my fairy godfather?”
“Let anyone else try to fulfill that role and I will rain hellfire down on their heads. I’m a notorious syndicate master, you know.”
She wriggled around so she could face him but couldn’t manage to wrest control of their positions from him. Bodie felt her body go still before she wrapped her legs over the top of his thighs so that she was staring up at him. “You! It wasn’t Levi who paid for my night at the Beignet Ball. I wondered how he afforded that with the paper failing.” She slapped his chest. “I should have known it was you. It had your Machiavellian fingerprints all over it. I can’t believe you did that.”
Bodie fisted her hair dragging her head towards his. “Then believe this, my mate. You are no longer a journalist at the Gazette, because you are now its chief editor and publisher.”
“You? You bought the Gazette?”
Quinn burst into tears, confusing Bodie.
“I thought you’d be happy. I thought you could make the paper all you’d ever hoped for. A paper not beholden to advertisers and one that could prove to be a beacon for truth and justice.”
“I’m not sure how legit people are going to think it is…”
“Levi and Rosie…”
