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I perked up then. “On the Syndicate?"
"Doesn’t matter what you do, you won’t be able to read Igno’s ledger."
How did he know we couldn’t read it? “Why is that?”
“There is a third piece.”
I snapped my brows down. I’d nearly gotten Rook and his fiancée killed trying to retrieve that ledger. "What the fuck do you mean?"
"You know how obsessed Igno is with puzzles. It's a three-part cipher code. You only have two parts. So while you get some account numbers, you won't get them all. And you certainly won't get the names.”
I cursed under my breath. “Are you bloody kidding me?”
“It gets worse, mate. The third part is currently in the possession of Massimo Igno. And he's using it to get himself higher up in the Syndicate.”
"That son of a bitch. I didn't think he had it in him."
“He does. He's making a play. For a bit there, I thought he was going to try and rescue his father, but he's not. He was looking for his father to see if the old man was coming back. Now that it's pretty clear he's not, Massimo is making a plea for his seat. Rumor is he's already meeting with the Syndicate heads. And none of them are happy with how his father used to do things. They feel as though Antonio put them on their back foot by needing to be in control.”
“Well, this is interesting. I spoke to Igno last week. He seemed to think that he was in danger.”
“You mentioned that when we last spoke. Maybe that was because Massimo was looking for him. But Massimo is not looking for the old man anymore. He's got bigger fish to fry.”
“Not to mention, he's never going to find the old man. We have him.”
Drake shrugged. "You only think you do. If you have him and he's not dead, he's exactly where he wants to be. And believe me, Igno answers to the Syndicate, and he's the only one to squeeze for information about them. But now that Massimo has part of the ledger and can decode it, he'll be running the Syndicate soon. And so far, they've been nameless, faceless pullers of the strings. For once, now they are the ones being moved around the chess board if what I'm hearing is correct."
“Christ. Anything else?” I winced.
“I asked around discreetly about Gennifer Goode. You want to stay away from that. Zero field experience, but more than happy to put people in the line of fire for her own means under the guise of security. Not to mention, she has a reputation for chewing people up and spitting them back out. Several of her male agents that maybe have significant others have either ended up on the business end of a gun, or something has happened to their wives or girlfriends. Now, some of that could be coincidence. We are spies after all, but rumors and speculation point to those three women not just having nasty accidents or getting mugged on the street. Don't let that viper fuck with your operations.”
I winced. “Too late for that, mate.”
Webster's eyes went wide. "Oh, fucking hell. Have you fucked that wasp's nest?"
"Do wasps make honey? Because she’s been trying to get me to dip my wick in it," I mumbled.
He cursed low. "Don’t do it unless you have a goddamn death wish. Lucky for you, you’re hideous and don’t attract women," he snorted.
"I'll deal with the death wish part later. She’s sent us on two missions right now. One that irritated someone we shouldn’t have touched and one I don’t like the looks of."
"Is Saff the lead on those missions?"
"You care a little too much about my sister, mate."
Webster grinned. "She's a good kid. I always did like her."
"She's very married, dipshit."
He grinned then. "Mate, if I wanted her, I would have had her already."
"You really want me to hit you, don't you?"
He grinned and held up his hands. "Easy does it. I have no intention of doing that, but I did always like Saff, so I'm glad she's not fucking with her."
"No, she's fucking with another one of my agents, Tabatha Smith."
He frowned. "Which one is she?"
