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“Trouble?” He raises his eyes and I down the whiskey in one gulp and refill it immediately.
“Women.”
His smirk does little for my temper, which doesn’t get any better when his phone rings and his expression darkens in an instant.
“I’ll get back to you,” he says abruptly, cutting the call and fixing me with a worried frown.
“What?”
“That was Heather.” He shakes his head in apparent disgust.
“She went to Allegra’s apartment as arranged and all was good. Nobody got in her way and she used the key you had made. The apartment was empty, as promised, except for one thing.”
“What?”
“A box was waiting. It was inside the apartment placed on the kitchen counter.” He says with concern.
“So, it could have been delivered yesterday, and she hasn’t opened it yet.”
“No.” He sighs heavily. “There was a note on top of it. Handwritten in blood.”
“In blood! What the hell!”
I stare at him in shock, and he says in disgust. “It told her to be careful. She has blood on her hands and if she wants to avoid a similar fate, to take twenty-thousand dollars to the alley off third street tomorrow at seven pm. To leave it in a black holdall in a dumpster and if she tells anyone, the next victim will be her brother.”
“What was in the box?”
I dread to think, and he hisses, “A heart. A festering, disgusting, rank heart that must have been dead for a while. Heather said she can’t stay there. It’s unsafe and too vile and now she’s waiting for your instruction.”
“Fuck!” I run my fingers through my hair and wonder what the fuck is going on. Just imagining Allegra coming home to that makes my blood boil and I start to pace behind my desk before saying roughly, “Heather stays. Tell her to call it in. This shit is spiraling out of our control. She knows what to do.”
“Call it in?”
“Yes, Kyle. She’s a fucking cop, isn’t she? I know she’s a bent one, but she’s still a fucking cop. Tell her to call the god-damned precinct and let them fucking deal with this.”
“Don’t you want to check with your brother first?”
Kyle’s words are like gasoline on a flame, and I yell, “No, I don’t want to run it by my fucking brother, grandfather, or God himself! I make the decisions in this part of the business and I’m deciding to call the fucking cops! Got it!”
He nods and calls her back, relaying my instructions with a firm tone and as I pour another shot of whiskey, my mind fills with murderous rage.
Grabbing my phone, I call my brother, despite my outburst and when he answers, I say roughly, “We have a problem, and you arenotgoing to like it.”
“Tell me.”As always, he is calm and undeterred and as I tell him everything, the Judge’s visit, the switch I made and the subsequent discovery, he makes me wait with a long pause before he speaks.
“Fuck, Shade, you have been busy.”
“I aways am,” I remind him because while Killian is dealing with one part of my grandfather’s plan, I am left to shovel the shit as always.
“That’s a good plan, Shade.”He says after a while, and it shocks me a little into silence.
“Keep the doppelganger in place and continue. Build a case against her uncle, father, call him what you like, and I’ll get the cops on our payroll to investigate this blackmail attempt.”He says practically.“Keep her safe until I tell you otherwise.”
“Until what, Killian?” I know my brother and, like me, he isn’t averse to using anyone to further our interests at the expense of their own, and he sighs.“Until I discover a way to use her to our advantage. All the time she’s under your control, she’s safe. To a point, that is.”He laughs, but I’m not returning it.
“We’ll cut her free when the time is right and leave her to tear her family apart from the inside out. Meanwhile, I’ll increase the pressure on Jefferson and see where that takes us.”
His tone lightens.“I have a good feeling about this one, Shade. It appears that Judge Stevenson’s fall from grace is just around the corner, and I can’t fucking wait to see that smug bastard crumble.”
