Total pages in book: 54
Estimated words: 51825 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 259(@200wpm)___ 207(@250wpm)___ 173(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 51825 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 259(@200wpm)___ 207(@250wpm)___ 173(@300wpm)
I’m up and dressing with him, aware that he’s drawn a line. We dress, then we talk.
Then we’re back at the end of the bed, facing each other, and I wait for the bombshell, whatever it is. “I killed Miguel and then a man came out of the shadows and killed Laslo.”
I digest that with a hard punch of reality. “You’re kingpin.”
“It’s not that cut and dry.”
“Did someone else challenge you?” I ask, and as much as I want that to be true and this damn cartel to be gone, Kane’s power within that operation controls the Society.
“My father isn’t dead,” he announces.
I feel as if a tidal wave of impossible just crushed me. “What? No. No, that can’t be possible.”
“And yet, it is. He said the minute I decided to put Laslo in charge, I left him no option but to return from the dead. I also don’t think your boss dying tonight was a coincidence. He was warning me. He can get to anyone, including you. What better way to show me that than to kill your boss, an untouchable director of the FBI?”
“Would your father hire a professional hitman, because this was a high-dollar, professional job.”
“I think he’d do just about anything to control me. He’s also made a point to let me know he’s tight with Pocher, and your father will be useful. My father is going to be a problem. He’s going to use us both for his own agenda and pull us under with him. We have some decisions to make. One big decision that directs all else.”
“You don’t even have to tell me what you’re talking about. He has to die.”
“Then I become the kingpin and there is no one I can put in my place and still control the organization to check the Society.”
Ellis’ promise to offer Kane shelter suddenly comes back to me. He didn’t just know where Kane was when he was talking to me, he knew I’d need to protect Kane.
Chapter Fourteen
“I need a fucking drink,” Kane murmurs, and then he’s walking toward the bedroom door.
Taken aback by his unexpected reaction, I blink, when not much makes me blink. First, Kane doesn’t curse. He internalizes while I externalize. He’s also a man of ultimate control, the kind that comes from someone who has lived in an environment of life and death all his years. For that same reason, he doesn’t attempt to drink away his problems, but rather end them with decisiveness. But I also know from experience that when your parent is the one you face as an enemy, it brings out a different side of you.
One I barely recognized as me. One I might not recognize in Kane.
For my part, I ran from Kane when I was really running from other things.
Then I started to kill people.
If this was anyone but his father, I’d say this was about to be rainbows and unicorns because Kane doesn’t fuck around and take it, and I love that about him. But this is his father and the cartel. The complexity both situationally and emotionally, is real.
I start walking, hot on his heels, with both of our mothers on my mind for obvious reasons. They were the good that created some form of understandable humanity in their husbands. Once they were gone—no…once they were murdered—nothing was left of the men we knew as fathers but greed and hunger for money and power. I remember a quote my mom read to me once by author and inventor, O. A. Battista, who my mother almost starred in a movie about. “The best inheritance a parent can give his children is a few minutes of his time each day.” The man clearly didn’t know my father or Kane’s, proven by the fact that Battista also said, “One of the most lasting pleasures you can experience is the feeling that comes over you when you genuinely forgive an enemy—whether he knows it or not.”
Battista lived a sheltered life.
I follow Kane down the stairs, eyeing my watch that reads almost three in the morning. I catch up to him as he finishes pouring a glass of whiskey. He downs the contents and grips the edge of the bar. I step to his side, my hand settling on his arm, aware that he needs an outlet and I’m it. “We should go back to bed.”
He sets the glass down and rotates to face me. “Fucking won’t solve this.”
“Fucking solves a lot.”
“We just tried that, Lilah. It didn’t work. What part of my father being alive is a problem you can’t seem to understand?”
“We’ll kill him, Kane.”
“Then I’m cartel leader, and the boss you had to protect us both is now dead. And don’t think for a moment that my father was above killing him to up my exposure, should I decide to take over the cartel.”