AllFreeNovel
Share Us
“I’m…touched?” He looks at me with loathing. “Fuck you, Agnossio.”
“But you do want me dead.”
“MG wouldn’t like it.” He paces a bit. “Why are you here?”
“There are a lot of low lifes speaking smack about you,” I say.
“You, too.”
I half smile. “Figured. Someone’s trying to pit us against each other and using Magdalena.”
“Fuck. I agree, but what are we going to do about it?” he asks.
I refill my glass. “What do you think? What we’ve been doing, look on our own, but…we should work together, on the down low—properly. Share everything, not just the things that help ourselves. And we should tell the other Quinate.”
“And again…why are you here?”
“We need to work something out. She wants us both. And if we keep pushing her, we’ll lose her.” I go to the sofa and sit.
He sits opposite. “What? We share her?”
“She’s not a fucking prize, Jac.”
“You’re wrong. She is, and you’re fucking soft. How you got to be at the Quinate table’s beyond me.”
“Nepotism.”
He doesn’t laugh. “Soft. Is that why she likes you? All that fucking goo?”
“I see the way you look at her, how you are around her,” I reply. “I don’t think you think she’s just a prize. You’ve got feelings for her.”
“So do you.”
“Never said I didn’t. But we keep trying to get her to choose, even if we don’t say it, she knows. We’ll lose her.” I take a breath. I don’t want to lose her.
“She has to choose,” he says. “Eventually.”
I nod. Because it’s untenable otherwise. She’ll end up choosing.
“It’ll be me.” He leans back and crosses his legs. “I’ll win her. We need stakes.”
Stakes. Jesus.
“Like what?” I ask.
“The ultimate prize. The ultimate win. We share, clear the threat, and I mean, eliminate it—”
“We have to uncover that,” I say.
He waves a hand. “As you suggested, work together on the DL but make it look like we suspect the other. And then, when we kill the bastards behind this, whoever wins gets the ultimate prize. The girl, the jewels, and the Quinate.”
“You can’t win the Quinate.” I sigh. “The loser steps away, and the next in line take their spot.”
“As I said, win.”
He’s right and wrong with the winning bullshit. She isn’t a prize, but the chance to have her and him out of that picture is so sweet, I’ll risk it. We both know the threat at play is against her, and only the Quinate knows how someone’s replaced. It’s through careful vetting. The names are in the vault.
My replacement is an old, neutral family who has the stamp from the others. This family, or rather, the daughter, is perfect and has no alliances with any of us. My share would be split, and she’d set up her own.
