Page 81 of Gabriel: Duke of Bencalor

Raul’s face set­tled into grim lines. “You’re here to talk about what you learned from your meet­ing with Dupont.”

Quinn nod­ded. “Based on the in­for­ma­tion he shared, Mikel and I be­lieve that who­ever hired Dupont was mo­ti­vated by more than the ran­som money.”

“Why do you think that?”

“Be­cause the ear surgery was not Dupont’s idea.” She soft­ened the de­scrip­tion be­cause she knew Gabriel’s mu­ti­la­tion had struck deeply at Raul too. “It was his em­ployer’s. In fact, Dupont did not ap­prove of the idea.”

She and Mikel had al­ways thought it overkill that the kid­nap­pers had sent the bloody ear with the first ran­som de­mand. As Dupont had com­mented, that level of bru­tal­ity was used only when nec­es­sary. “That would in­di­cate that his em­ployer had a per­sonal mo­tive as well, some rea­son to strike at more than your fa­ther’s purse.”

“I see.” Raul hooked his fin­ger into the knot of his red tie to loosen it. “So some­one hates me enough to cut off my ear as pun­ish­ment or re­venge?”

“You or your fa­ther. Strik­ing at a child can be worse than strik­ing at the par­ent.” Quinn pushed her glasses up on her nose. “How­ever, let’s start with you…and the time frame. Some­thing set off this per­son roughly five or six months be­fore the kid­nap­ping. Think back to that time and tell me what you were do­ing then.”

Raul frowned. “I was part­way through my year of mil­i­tary ser­vice, as was Gabriel.”

“Was there any­one in the mili­tia who dis­liked you for any rea­son?”

In­stead of do­ing what most peo­ple did and deny­ing that any­one dis­liked him, Raul stared into a cor­ner of the room for a long mo­ment. He shook his head. “No one who would want to do that kind of dam­age.”

“Don’t try to gauge the depth of their feel­ings. Just tell me any­one who wasn’t a fan of yours.” She was also look­ing for the source of the in­tel Dupont had been given about the prince’s move­ments.

He gave her a wry look. “That could be a long list. Some peo­ple don’t like me sim­ply be­cause of my ti­tle. Some have po­lit­i­cal dis­agree­ments with the crown that I rep­re­sent. Some ob­ject to my wealth.”

“More per­sonal than that. They don’t like you. They want to get at you as a per­son.”

“Okay, I can think of a cou­ple from that pe­riod of time. One was a fel­low mili­tia­man, Hec­tor Alonso, who took it per­son­ally when I beat him through the ob­sta­cle course. He thought he had it in the bag, so he did too much hot­dog­ging.” The prince twisted his bot­tle in his hands. “Hon­estly, if I’d known I was win­ning, I would have slowed down. He was stronger and fit­ter than I was and de­served to fin­ish first.”

Quinn typed the name. She could track Alonso down through his mil­i­tary records. “The other one?”

“Francine Dubois. We dated.” A slight flush rose on his cheeks. “When we broke up, she wasn’t happy and did some…strange things.”

“Strange?”

“Er, a dead bird left on the hood of my car. A pho­to­graph of me, um, mu­ti­lated in cer­tain places and taped to one en­trance of the palace. A cou­ple of other sim­i­lar in­ci­dents. She was caught on video ev­ery time. In fact, she made rude ges­tures at the cam­era. It was un­pleas­ant.” He took an­other swal­low of wa­ter be­fore he met Quinn’s gaze. “I knew she was prob­lem­atic, but”—he shrugged—“she was very at­trac­tive.”

And sex­u­ally ad­ven­tur­ous was the sub­text. Mikel would have her con­tact in­for­ma­tion since she had threat­ened the prince. “Was she charged with any crime?”

“No. Just warned that she would be the next time. That stopped her.”

She would have been watched af­ter that and kept far away from Raul, so she wouldn’t have been privy to his move­ments.

“Did she come from a wealthy fam­ily?”

“Not par­tic­u­larly. Just com­fort­able, I think.” Raul looked puz­zled.

“Dupont’s em­ployer paid his ex­penses up front,” Quinn ex­plained. “What about the mem­bers of the Lily Ca­bal? I know it’s a po­lit­i­cal group, but maybe there’s also a per­sonal vendetta?”

“Funny you should men­tion that. The youngest mem­ber, Ed­uardo, el Mar­qués de Riva, dis­liked me in high school. He’s a year older and thought he should be cap­tain of the fenc­ing team. Un­for­tu­nately, I was awarded the po­si­tion. But that was over a decade ago. I don’t think he would de­cide to slice my ear off all these years later.” Raul made a wry face. “In fact, right now he’s more up­set with Gabriel.”

“Gabriel? Why?”

“It’s al­most funny. He thinks Gabri has as­pi­ra­tions to be the next Por­tavoz del Con­sejo de los Señores when noth­ing could be fur­ther from the truth. Be­sides, that’s a re­cent de­vel­op­ment. A year ago, Gabri was fo­cused on his mu­sic and noth­ing else.”

Quinn made a note, but she agreed with Raul’s anal­y­sis. “Let’s move on to your fa­ther. Mikel will be speak­ing with him, but can you think of any­one who was hos­tile to­ward Su Ma­jes­tad at that time?”

“Dios mío, many peo­ple are hos­tile to­ward Pa­ter. He has power, and there­fore, some­one is al­ways un­happy with him.”

“Elim­i­nate the po­lit­i­cal again. Who had a prob­lem with him as a per­son, rather than the king?”

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