Page 150 of Unruly

“I beg your pardon?”

“Your mother,” Evira said, a bit of heat and courage coming back in her voice, “why did she let me go when she cornered me a year ago? Don’t you think I would have been concerned and more careful about my business if I thought Catrina Fucking Marcello was going to come after me? She already did—the bitch let me go!”

Catherine turned to ice on the spot. Behind Evira, Miguel’s gaze darted to meet Catherine’s with a question.

Suddenly, things became a hell of a lot clearer for her.

All at once, she understood.

This was why her mother never mentioned missing clients. This was why the girls had been brushed off again and again when they brought up their missed drops. This was why Catrina allowed Catherine—forced her, really—to handle this issue on her own.

Another lesson.

Another one of her mother’s ways.

At the moment, Catherine couldn’t possibly deal with what that meant, or how angry it made her inside. She had more important things to handle.

Evira, mostly.

“The fact remains the same,” Catherine said, cutting Evira with a cold look, “that you stole our clients after we practically handfed you all the ways to make this business work. The second you thought you could get away with it, you stabbed us in the back and ran. Your mistake, not ours.”

“You don’t—”

Evira didn’t get to finish her sentence. Catherine nodded at Miguel.

In a flash, he was behind the woman. Turning her back to either of them had been Evira’s biggest mistake next to entering that hotel room. Had she turned her back to Catherine and gave her the chance, she would have shoved a knife deep into the back of her neck, straight through her spine. A bit of a cleanup, sure, but she didn’t mind.

Instead, Evira turned her back to Miguel.

He grabbed her head with one hand, wrapped his beefy arm around her shoulders with the other, and snapped her neck with one hard twist.

Evira’s dead body hit the floor with a thud.

Wide, unseeing eyes stared upward at Catherine.

“Was she saying what I think she was saying?” Miguel asked.

Catherine sucked air in through her teeth, making a hissing sound. “Apparently.”

“You want to—”

“Nope.”

Miguel nodded. “All right.”

Catherine would deal with her feelings and what she had learned from Evira when she finally got her mother face to face. And not one fucking second before.

There were still things left to do, after all.

“That’s that,” Miguel said.

Catherine scowled. “We’re not done yet.”

She looked over at the blinking red dot hidden in the corner by a vase placed just so. A small camera about the size of her pinky finger.

“Extract the video and send it to my burner phone,” Catherine said. “Destroy the camera once you’re done with it.”

“Anything else, reginella?”