I’m dragged through a very nice apartment and back into the office I was in earlier.
Except this time, we have company.
“Enrique!” I gasp in surprise, my heart soaring that he’s come for me. But the look on his face is anything but encouraging. In fact, he looks at me the way he did back on the boat, when I was nothing more than a fly in his ointment.
My eyes dart to Richard and find him smiling darkly, for some reason, focused on Enrique.
The man holding me walks me over to a chair and throws me into it.
“You can go, Simon,” Richard says. “I don’t think these two will be trying anything.”
So he wants privacy for some reason.
Once the three of us are alone again, Richard glances back and forth between the two of us. “A veritable Romeo and Juliet, it would seem.”
“How do you know my father?” I ask.
“Leira,” Enrique says in a warning tone.
“You had your chance for quid pro quo earlier; now I’m moving on to blackmail,” Richard says.
Before I can ask what he means, he has a drawer open and a gun in his hand, pointed directly at Enrique.
“No,” I exhale.
“It’s fine, Leira. He’s not going to shoot me.”
Richard laughs. “And why the hell not?”
“Because I already have all of your information. I had it less than a minute after I walked through those doors.”
Richard’s hand falters and he narrows his eyes. “What the fuck are you talking about?”
“It’s amazing what modern technology can accomplish these days,” Enrique says, pulling out his keys. He holds up one in particular. “By all accounts, this is nothing more than a simple key. In reality, it copied everything from every encrypted device in this place and sent it out.”
“My man scanned you before you came in. Besides, this room blocks all signals, in and out.”
“Almost all. When was the last time your security team updated this place? Unless it was recently, they probably don’t know about epsilon wavelengths. Nanotechnology is an amazing thing, isn’t it?”
“You’re bullshitting me,” Richard says through gritted teeth, though that perfectly tanned skin has gone a few shades lighter.
“Let her go, and I’ll have my people delete every bit of it.”
“Or I could just get it another way,” Richard says, pointing the gun my way.
Enrique remains as cold as ice, his gaze like obsidian lit on fire. “You do that, and the feds will be knocking on your door in less than twenty minutes.”
“Just enough time to get rid of anything problematic,” he says, switching the gun back to Enrique.
I can see that he’s being wary of what he says, afraid of being recorded. Which means he might just believe that Enrique is telling the truth.
“Aren’t you at least curious as to why I walked right in the front door rather than a surprise attack like I did with most of your clients?” Enrique says, as cool as a polar bear’s toenail, as my Dad sometimes puts it.
What game is Enrique playing here? More importantly, what’s the exit plan?
“It crossed my mind. But I’ve decided I don’t give a shit. One way or another, I’ll get that information back.” Richard turns to me with a sneer. “And I’ll get the information I need from you too. And then, just for shits and giggles, I’ll get rid of any headaches in my life…as slowly and deliberately as possible.”
Enrique just sits there, but I see the pulse in his neck quicken.
“How good are you when it comes to track and field?” Richard says, pointing the gun at Enrique’s kneecap with a look on his face that all but signals his intent to pull the trigger just to give him a harsh warning.
“I’ll tell you!” I scream.
They both snap their attention to me, equally irritated at the interruption. “I’ll tell you what you want to know.”
“Is that so?” Richard says in a droll voice, happy to indulge me for his own sadistic amusement.
“Yes,” I say, giving him a level gaze. “But you have to tell Enrique how his mother died, and where her body is. Quid pro quo, no? It’ll be much easier than torturing it out of me. If you think my sister, Layla, was stubborn, wait until you have to deal with me. Or, I could just tell you.”
Richard considers me for a long moment, mulling that over.
“Leira, don’t,” Enrique warns. “If you tell him, your father will have nothing left to protect himself. And this man will kill you all the same.”
“Shut up!” Richard roars. I can tell he’s rapidly losing it. He’s a man that’s quick to panic, which can be useful if manipulated just the right way. Or it could be deadly.
“Come on, you know you want to tell him,” I say with a hint of taunting in my voice. “Watch the look on his face as he learns firsthand what you did to her. All because she dared to stand up to you. All because he learned something he shouldn’t have.”
I force myself not to look Enrique’s way. This facade of keeping Richard hooked by his own twisted ego, the one that might just get off on telling his own son how he killed his mother, it would crack if I had to look at him after being this casually cruel about his mother’s death.
“You’re going to kill both of us anyway, you know it,” I say, trying to sound defeatist, which is easy since I have no idea how this will end. At the very least, I’ll have done this for Enrique. “He deserves to know the truth.”
“What he deserves is a slow and painful death,” Richard says, obviously no longer caring about being recorded. An evil smile spreads his mouth. “But quid pro quo is quid pro quo.”
Chapter Fifty-Five Enrique
I’m down to my underwear. After Richard’s men scanned me once again and took everything on my person, he at least afforded me that one dignity. Or maybe looking at a
