Brutal Vows (Queens & Monsters #4)(98)

Groaning, Quinn leans over and drops his head into his hands.

“Does your brother know you’re making demands on his behalf?”

Holding Declan’s freezing blue gaze, I say calmly, “I’m making demands on behalf of my family and my new friend Sloane, not Gianni. If he had half a brain, he would’ve negotiated a better contract himself, but since I’m the one sitting here with a wedding ring on my finger, I’m the one you’re dealing with.”

After a long moment of silence, Declan smiles.

“All right, lass. We’ll take out the Stavros section.”

“Thank you. Now, concerning section twenty-four A. We’re going to need a better payment schedule on those overseas shipments.”

Into his hands, Quinn mutters, “Dear God in heaven.”

But Declan doesn’t seem at all surprised to hear I’m not finished making demands. He simply says, “Why don’t you put it all in writing and send it over? We’ll have the attorneys draw up a new draft and we can go over it then.”

Quinn lifts his head and stares at Declan as if he’s lost his mind.

“I’ll do that. Thank you.”

“Any other surprises you’d like to spring on me?”

“Not at the moment.”

“Can we get to the reason you’re here now?”

“There’s no need to be snippy.”

Declan looks at Quinn, who puts his hands in the air and shakes his head.

Declan takes the laptop sitting to one side of the desk and turns it around so the screen is facing us. He hits a button, and a video starts to play. It’s a black-and-white picture of what seems to be the security camera feed at an empty loading dock in a warehouse.

“What am I looking at?”

“Just watch.”

Frowning, I watch a white van back up into the dock. Its rear doors open. From somewhere off camera, seven men emerge. All of them are in identical black uniforms of combat boots, tactical pants and vests, and long-sleeved shirts.

They’re all also wearing black ski masks and carrying rifles.

The hair on my arms stands on end.

The men enter the van. The back doors close. The van pulls away from the loading dock.

I glance up to find Declan watching me closely. He says, “Notice the sign over the door in the background.”

I squint at the screen. There’s a door off to one side of where the van pulled up. The sign above it reads, “Caruso Industries. Employees Only.”

Something dark and ugly forms in the pit of my stomach.

I say quietly, “No.”

Declan doesn’t respond. He hits another button. Now I’m looking at a white van racing down a country road. It’s the same van from the video. The view this time is from above.

The screen splits into four different views, all of the same van speeding down roads, driving erratically.

In Scarsdale.

Away from the house.

Declan says, “Traffic cameras. Recognize the area?”

With dawning horror, I whisper, “He wouldn’t. He couldn’t have.”

“Look at the time.”

There’s a time and date stamp on the bottom right side of each picture. All show the day and time of the home invasion.

Declan hits another button. Now I’m listening to a recording of a man’s voice I don’t recognize.

“Mission Charlie Foxtrot. Oscar Mike.”

Declan says, “That’s military slang for the mission was a clusterfuck, I’m on the move.”

“Mission,” I repeat faintly, feeling sick.

“The message was left on your brother’s voicemail five minutes after the time stamps on the traffic cameras.”

“It can’t have been. Gianni has excellent encryption. All his communications, his email, everything is secure…”

I trail off when Declan hits the button again and a new screen shows up. It’s an email, dated two weeks ago. Sent to Gianni from someone named Hangfire. The body of the email says only: Funds received. The balloon has gone up.

“That means trouble is coming,” says Declan, watching my face. “That date at the end is when the op was to go live.”

It’s the same date on the videos of the white van.

The same date the men in black invaded the house.

My heart thudding against my rib cage, I say, “This doesn’t make sense. Why would Gianni set up an attack on his own home?”

Declan’s voice is level when he says, “Why does your brother do anything?”

He’s not asking a rhetorical question. And I don’t have to think very long before I come up with an answer.

I whisper, “Money. Oh God.”

“The plan was to kidnap Lili and hold her for ransom.”

“But he’d be putting up his own cash for ransom!”

“Unless I offered to pay it,” says Quinn quietly. “Which I would have.”

Declan says, “Then that money would’ve gone right back to Gianni. So either he made a calculated guess Spider would put up the money or he didn’t care if he did, because there was a bigger target.”

“What target?”

When Declan only stares at me in silence, I know what the target is.

Or rather, who.