Dead Drop (The Guild #2)(49)
He made it seem like a joke, but I knew he was serious. I loved it. Leon had never underestimated my capabilities, so I had to trust that he wasn’t playing protective caveman over this Blanchet business. Clearly he had another plan, and it was something we could do together.
“What about yours?” I asked, loving our fucked up conversation because, to us, this was just normal. This was our lives.
He huffed an irritated sound. “No idea what the price is, but they used a car bomb. Zed called to give me a heads-up, and I used my remote key to check. Sure enough, boom.”
I tucked my arm behind my head, staring up at the ceiling while we talked. “Was it a nice car?”
“Nothing that couldn’t be replaced,” he replied, his turn signal ticking rhythmically for a few moments. “I have to catch a flight in a couple of hours, and now I’ll have to get there early enough to check for more bombs. Feels like maybe the Turks have taken my hit.”
“Explosives do tend to be their thing,” I agreed. Then a thought occurred to me. “Hey, maybe you can help me out on something else?”
“So long as it’s nothing to do with the Circle,” Leon reminded me, “then I’m sure I can. What do you need?”
I frowned, scratching the bridge of my nose. “It’s Carlos. I haven’t been able to get in touch with him for… fuck, I don’t even know how long. Since you rescued me in Venice, I guess.”
Leon scoffed. “You rescued yourself, mon cœur. We just picked you up.”
I smiled at the ceiling. “Well, whatever. I’ve been trying to call, but he’s not picking up. I even tried his office line, but his petty bitch of an assistant Tito refused to put me through to him. I’m worried something bad has happened.”
Leon didn’t respond, and a trickle of dread ran down my spine. I sat up on the bed and ran through it all in my mind again. The last time I saw Carlos was on the plane… then when I woke up, he was gone and Leon told me he’d gotten off in Toronto. But had he?
“Leon,” I murmured, cold sweat beading on the back of my neck. “Have you done something to Carlos?”
Again, silence met my question. Then when I was questioning if our call had disconnected, Leon sighed. “Would you be upset if I’d killed him?”
22
The blood rushing to my head made it hard to hear, but I retained just enough sanity to repeat Leon’s words back to myself. He was asking a question, not admitting he’d done it.
“Yes,” I choked out. “Yes, Leon Marx, I would be very upset if you killed one of my only friends on this whole godforsaken planet. I would be fucking furious if you did something like that. And you could actually lose my number because this time I really would be done with you.”
He hummed a thoughtful sound, not even remotely panicked. “I figured as much,” he admitted, “which is why I haven’t killed him.”
The breath rushed out of me in a tsunami, and I sagged back against the pillows. “What the fuck?” I barked. “You fucking worried me!”
“I can hear that,” he observed. “And I find it intriguing. How did you meet Carlos, mon cœur? Were you romantically involved?”
I gave a shaking laugh. “Me and Carlos? Fuck no. No way. Our relationship is purely platonic.”
“You met on a contract, didn’t you?” Leon asked, sounding vaguely relieved.
I wrinkled my nose. “Yeah, sort of. I was dating his brother, Ricardo, a few years ago when our paths crossed.” I ran the story through in my mind, flashes of that year at Ricardo’s estate in Belize conjuring up sour emotions along with bittersweet. If not for my time with Ricardo, I wouldn’t know Carlos. “My thing with Ricardo wasn’t business. We met in a bar and hit it off… He never knew what I really did for a living, and I was happy to keep it that way. Until I wasn’t.”
Leon hummed a thoughtful sound. “I trust this Ricardo is dead now?”
I chuckled. “Very. Carlos and I became friends at family events, and it was pretty clear he was their father’s favorite. His golden child, being groomed to take over their business. Ricardo hated him, and it only got worse when their father died. Turns out, Ricardo had been cut out of the will entirely, with his portion going to Carlos’s son instead.”
“Carlos has a son?” Leon sounded surprised. I bet he hadn’t found that information in whatever background searches he’d run.
“Mm-hmm,” I confirmed, yawning. “Anyway, long story short, I walked in on Ricardo smothering Victor with a pillow. I intervened and killed him but not before he shot me in the struggle.”
Leon sucked a surprised breath. “You got shot? How did I not know this? I thought Prague was the first.”
I snickered. “Far from it. I just don’t advertise when I’ve taken injuries, because I’m not a fucking moron. Reputation is at least sixty percent of our price. Anyway, Victor was okay, Carlos was grateful, but his wife was dead. Apparently, Ricardo had visited her first.”
“I see,” Leon murmured. “That does explain the way he seems so indebted to you.”
I hummed a sound of agreement. “We’re also friends. He took my recovery pretty seriously, and there was a lot of shit to work through about Ricardo. Turned out that he’d been fucking Carlos’s wife for years, and killing her had been an escalation of an already abusive affair. The most ironic thing, though, was that Victor was actually Ricardo’s son. Carlos knew, and so had their father. That was why Victor had been assigned Ricardo’s inheritance.”