AllFreeNovel
Share Us
His eyes flick up to mine. “Leave it with me. I’ll have my head of security determine who it belongs to and take care of it.”
“How?”
“They’re chipped. Beneath the ruby.” He touches the gemstone. “It’s a sort of magnetic keycard.”
“Fancy,” I say.
“It is. You should visit sometime. I’ll give you a trial membership. Cancel anytime.”
“Art isn’t my thing.” I tilt my chin toward the ring still in his hand. “Tell me who it belongs to, and I’ll owe you.”
“Member information is confidential,” he states.
“Then why the hell offer to help me?” I snatch it from his hand before he can think about pulling it out of my reach.
He smirks. “I didn’t offer anything. I said I’d find out who the owner is. Losing one of these rings is unacceptable.”
Sliding it back on, I grin. “Well, unless you’re willing to take it off my cold, dead body, I suggest we make a deal.”
“I could kill you.” He smiles a deadly sort of smile that only someone like me can recognize. I can see beyond the expensive blue suit and tie, to what lies beneath.
“You could try,” I reply, my smile just as deadly, if not more. “If you fail, I will send out an open invite to every crackhead in your city to make an appearance at your exclusive club. And before you say you can stop me”—I raise a finger when he makes to speak—“remember that I don’t need this ring to do it. The damage was done when I learned what the ring is for. I can wreak havoc on your world, or you can give me the name of a man you plan on expelling anyway.”
He leans back and takes a sip of his wine as he studies me. “Your uncle spoke highly of you. Said you were…resourceful. So I believe you’lltryto wreak havoc on my world.” I don’t miss the inflection on the wordtry.
“At the very least, I’ll be a very big headache.”
A sigh of sheer annoyance escapes him. “Give me the damned thing and I’ll give you a fucking name.”
“I have your word?”
Nodding, he extends his hand, palm up. “You breathe a word of this to anyone, and I will kill you. And—” He downs the rest of his wine. “I get a no-questions-asked favor in the future.”
I frown. No-questions-asked favors always involve getting the blood of someone on my hands without knowing the reason. Kill. Get out. Live with that memory, forever wondering if the person deserved to die. If the death you gave them was quick enough or if it should have been drawn out and painful.
Those kinds of favors shouldn’t be promised lightly nor to just anyone.
Narrowing my gaze, I study Arran Maxton in the same way he did me. The son of Clive Maxton, he’s been bred into a special kind of crime family. They’re not mafia or mob. Not your run-of-the-mill gangsters. They’re something far darker and more dangerous.
The Maxtons are the type of bad that disguises itself as good. They cloak themselves in charities that give to children’s hospitals, feed the poor, and pick up every stray animal off the street and give it a home.
All the while, they wield that power to move pieces on the chessboard of the real world with drugs, politics, power-hungry tyrants willing to do anything for more of it.
Arran might not be his father, but he stands to inherit an empire. As it is, he now controls a large portion of the black market in the eastern United States. The auction house is nothing but a storefront—a doorway, if you will—into the Maxton underworld.
Great wealth and power attracts great enemies. That means the favor he’ll ask of me might be a higher price than I’m willing to pay for a name I could retrieve myself in time.
Then again, time is of the essence. The longer it takes to figure out who murdered my father, the harder things become.
I’m not sure Sylvia can handle a lengthy investigation. She needs closure.
“Done.” I drop the ring into his hand.
* * *
Two hours later, I get the call from Maxton.
“Tell me you have a name for me,” I say.
