Page 95 of Gabriel: Duke of Bencalor

His words spi­raled through her like sparks, set­ting lit­tle fires in her body. “Okay, I’ll take va­ca­tion days,” she said.

“Bien.” He gave her bot­tom a squeeze and re­leased her. “Come look at my pro­posal for the mu­sic fes­ti­val and cul­tural cen­ter.”

“I thought we were headed up­stairs af­ter that hot trav­el­ogue,” she com­plained, but she fol­lowed him to the ta­ble.

He walked her through his pre­sen­ta­tion for the king, his voice ring­ing with en­thu­si­asm and pas­sion. “I’m still work­ing on the num­bers. Those are go­ing to take a lit­tle longer.”

“It’s fan­tas­tic. You might want to ex­pand a lit­tle on the part about the res­i­den­cies for vis­it­ing artists. I think that’s a strong el­e­ment.” She sug­gested a cou­ple of other tweaks, which he noted be­fore he closed the lap­top. “Hon­estly, I can’t wait to at­tend this mu­sic fes­ti­val. It’s go­ing to be awe­some.”

Gabriel shook his head. “There’s no guar­an­tee that I will get all the peo­ple on my list.”

“If you get half of them, the event will be amaz­ing. How­ever, you are a very per­sua­sive man.” She ran her hand over the mus­cles in his shoul­der. “They’ll come.”

He stood and held out his hand. “Come, sit with me.”

When she took it, he pulled her over to the sec­tional and set­tled her on his lap. “No pres­sure, but what can you tell me about your trip to­day?”

“Ev­ery­thing.” Mostly. “We in­ter­viewed Paul Ricci.”

She felt the shud­der run through him and reached up to cup his cheek while she scanned his face in the dim light. “Maybe you should let Mikel give you the re­port.”

He turned his head to press a kiss into her palm. “I can han­dle it.”

“I know, but it might be eas­ier com­ing from some­one else in the bright light of morn­ing.”

He tight­ened his arms around her. “I can’t wrap my arms around Mikel to ward off the mem­o­ries.”

“Yeah, he’s not real cud­dly.”

Much to her re­lief, Gabriel gave a snort of laugh­ter. She de­cided to keep her ac­count of the day short and clin­i­cal. “Ricci was black­mailed into do­ing the surgery. He has no idea who the black­mailer is. They asked for no money in ex­change for com­pro­mis­ing pho­tos. He was picked up at the train sta­tion in Brus­sels and trans­ported to wher­ever you were. He per­formed the op­er­a­tion, was re­turned to Brus­sels, and was as­sured that the com­pro­mis­ing pho­tos and their dig­i­tal files had been de­stroyed. He be­lieves they were be­cause he has not been con­tacted again.”

“Is he… What is he like?” Gabriel asked, his voice strained.

“A nar­cis­sis­tic ass­hole.” She sighed. Gabriel de­served to know more. “He was afraid his rich wife would di­vorce him if she found out about his gay lover. So he did what he did to keep his six houses and the pri­vate air­plane. I wanted to smash his per­fect nose right into his per­fect skull.”

She felt his lips on the top of her head. “Gra­cias, car­iño mío.”

Was he thank­ing her for telling him the truth or for want­ing to dam­age the sur­geon? Maybe both.

“But why cut off my…Raul’s ear? Did he an­swer that?” Gabriel asked, a thread of pain strain­ing his voice.

“He didn’t know, and he didn’t care. An­other rea­son I wanted to break all the bones in his body.” Quinn hes­i­tated. “Ev­ery­thing points to the mo­tive be­hind your kid­nap­ping be­ing per­sonal, not fi­nan­cial. Such an elab­o­rate scheme to pro­cure a sur­geon shows a de­sire to cause emo­tional pain to your un­cle or your cousin or both.”

“They are both good men. They can­not have earned that level of ha­tred.” His arms tight­ened around her. “Yet the per­son who hates them is still out there, still dan­ger­ous.”

“That’s why Mikel and I are work­ing our butts off to catch who­ever it is.”

“I know.” Gabriel’s grip re­laxed. “Did you get any other use­ful in­for­ma­tion from the doc­tor?”

“I don’t know yet. He’s mak­ing a list of all the peo­ple he and/or his wife as­so­ciate with in Paris.”

“Why Paris?”

“It keeps com­ing up. You heard Ko­dra men­tion it. Ricci’s love nest was in Paris. Brus­sels is only a few hours from Paris.”

“Pat­terns. That’s what Mikel says you’re so good at,” Gabriel said. “See­ing the con­nec­tions no one else does.”

“I could be wrong,” Quinn warned. “Not to men­tion that the black­mailer may not be im­por­tant enough to Ricci to make it onto his list of as­so­ciates.” But once she had that list, she could use the threads to cre­ate a web around the sur­geon and then fol­low the strands out­ward, tug­ging each one as she skit­tered over them like a spi­der.

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