Page 107 of The Woman with the Handcuffs

He wasn’t wrong.

I reached for an antacid and chewed it as the men went about setting the table and spreading out the food.

“Are you joining us?” I asked. “We have more than enough food.”

“That’d be nice,” he said, going back to grab a plate and glass. “How are you feeling?”

“Not bad, considering. Gav hasn’t let me do anything.”

“That’s ‘cause he was raised right.” There was a certain kind of pride in that, and I got the impression that the older brothers—Nico and Leo—had a big hand in raising the younger siblings in their large family. So it was no wonder he took a little credit for the good man who was sitting across from me.

“So, are we going to talk about the elephant in the room?” I asked after we all started to dig in.

Both men glanced at me.

“It’s okay. I’m not as fragile today as I was yesterday. We can talk about it.”

Leo looked dubious, but Gav nodded, knowing me well enough to accept that I knew my limits.

“It would be helpful if we had a blow-by-blow of as much as you remember about the conversation with your father,” he said.

So I launched into it, giving them as many details as surfaced. Which was a lot of them. My brain refused to let a single detail go. I guess because it was such a tense, sometimes heated confrontation.

“And this cabin,” Leo clarified. “It’s Upstate?”

“Yeah. I have the address on my ph… oh.”

“I sent someone to search for your phone,” Gav told me.

“I can look it up on my laptop too.”

“Good. That will help. We need to get in touch with your father,” Leo said. “Whatever information he has on Ira, we need. But we might need you to coax him to talk to us. He’s afraid of Ira. But I bet he’s also afraid of us because of whatever shit Ira is wrapped up in.”

I worried my bottom lip, and Gav reached across the table to touch my hand. “We are not going to hurt your father. You have my word on that.”

“But what if he stole from you?”

“Then we’ll work something out. We’re not in the business of maiming or killing the family members of people we care about.”

“We have the word from the boss,” Leo added, seeming to know it would be my next concern. “No one is hurting Daniel.”

“Okay,” I agreed.

“We want to know what Ira is into. Especially if he’s not working independently,” Gav added. “If there is another organization at play, we need to be aware of that. From everything you’ve said about your father, it seems like he was working legitimately for us. Until Ira got involved. And Ira knew exactly the right button to push with Daniel.”

“Me.”

“Yep.”

“How do you think Ira found me? Just searched my address like Zeno does?”

“I’m thinking, because he tracked you to the garage, he likely put a tracker on your car,” Leo said.

My gaze shot up.

“A tracker.”

“Yeah.”