AllFreeNovel
Share Us
TWENTY-FOUR
Jack and Asher were giving me a wide berth this morning. That didn’t preclude Jack from giving me dirty looks but so far he hadn’t said anything. Instead of scowling at me, Asher had decided to put distance between us and had left to scout the route to the auction house.
But the day was young and I knew Jack was itching to lay into me. Though there was nothing he could say to me that I already hadn’t said to myself as I’d tossed and turned all night.
As soon as I finished going over the blueprints of the new property I was going over to Atlee’s condo.
The last thing Jack had said to me the night before he’d locked himself in his bedroom was to tell me he’d followed Atlee’s Uber home and watched her walk safely inside her building. He hadn’t elaborated when he updated me on Martin leaving the mansion in favor of the house we’d secured. He hadn’t given any indication of how she was doing when he blandly rapped out she’d been in Martin’s villa and saw Catarina and gave Jack a potential last name for Dale, which had turned out to be correct.
I was lost and going in blind to her mental state—something that made my gut roil.
Jack’s phone rang. Before he could grab it off the coffee table, I caught sight of Atlee’s name. The bastard smirked, snatched it up, and left the living room.
A moment later, mine vibrated.
Rhode.
Just the man I needed to talk to.
“Find anything on Dale Weaver?” I asked.
Rhode cut straight to it and not because we were on a time crunch. He was still pissed at me for the other day and by the sound of his clipped tone, Jack had called in the state of play with Atlee and he was now more pissed at me.
“Dale Weaver’s wanted in Poland for the unlawful abduction and confinement of six women. I called our contact at Interpol. There hasn’t been a Red Notice issued but they’re aware of him. He’s also suspected in the abduction of four Ukrainian women and three Hungarians.”
“Why haven’t they issued a Red Notice?”
“Because he has ties.”
“To who?”
“Rohan Gupta.”
Cold seeped through the layer of pain that had blanketed me after yesterday’s monumental fuck-up. An icy chill I had learned a long time ago never to ignore.
Rohan Gupta was the head of a three-thousand-member criminal syndicate—everything from contract killing, narcotics, money laundering, to sex trafficking. He was Indian but living in Pakistan. The man was untouchable; he knew it, the Indian government knew it, and he liked to use social media to send taunts and not so veiled threats.
“Fuck,” I hissed. “This isn’t good news. Rohan being involved is the last thing we need.”
“Correct. But ties doesn’t mean Rohan is directly involved. Shep’s digging deeper but I didn’t find anything that would suggest a partnership. Weaver is more of a gofer for Rohan in Europe. He’s also American and it’s widely known Rohan has no allegiance to Americans. He’ll use them, he’ll pay them, he’ll use his power to keep their movements unincumbered, but he will not extend blanket protection.”
As true as that was, it didn’t make me feel any better.
“Where’s Weaver’s money come from?”
“Tech billionaire. He got in early on blockchain engineering. Not that he understands DLT but he found people who did and started the company using funds from his software and video game development. Again, he didn’t do the programming, he hired the right people. I haven’t traced how he got the startup capital for that yet. He doesn’t come from money, so my guess would be investors and anyone willing to give a no-name a shit ton of money to start a business with a high probability of failure could mean money laundering but I haven’t gotten that far.”
“Good work, Rhode, thanks.” I paused, knowing I needed to say something about the other day. “Listen, I know the other day you were trying to help and I was a twat. It was a dick thing to do. I’m sorry.”
My apology was met with silence.
“Rhode?”
“I was trying to remember something Cole had spouted off about thoughts are shadows of our feelings and they’re always darker and emptier. You’ve spent over a decade with your thoughts; it’s time to stop thinking about the past.”
Nietzsche.
“You know you’re quoting a man who also said women were God’s second mistake,” I informed him.
