“Or protective of your wife,” Jake said.
“I think Christophe is a good man,” Drake said. “From what I’ve seen of him and heard from my crew in Borneo, he pulled his weight and worked hard. But, and it’s a big but … I can’t say with certainty that he isn’t involved in this up to his neck.”
“He knew about the passageways in the halls,” Timur pointed out.
“What about Ambroise?” Fyodor asked. “Is he dangerous? Can he handle weapons?”
Drake shrugged when they all looked to him. The Tregres were from his lair and he was a man who kept close eyes on those under him. “Every Tregre can handle a weapon, including Evangeline. It’s necessary. They hunted their own food. If they didn’t go home with something, they didn’t eat. I’d bet he can handle himself, but he just doesn’t seem to be the kind of man who would plot to kill his sister and her husband.”
“Which leads us back to that damn perfume factory and Charisse and Armande,” Timur said. “We can’t seem to get away from it.”
Timur swept a hand through his hair, pushing the strands that had tumbled onto his forehead back. His hair was still wet from his shower. His gut was still in knots from having to interrogate and then kill a leopard. He made his way to the buffet and took another bottle of water from the ice bucket.
“Lazar sent the first hit team after Ashe. They had specific orders. Apparently, her grandfather made Lazar, very, very angry. Our good friend Ulisse has a nice little side business with Lazar. They trade young girls back and forth. Ulisse sends them out of the country to Lazar, and Lazar returns the favor, sending girls from our homeland to Ulisse.”
“Leopards?” Fyodor demanded sharply. “Ulisse isn’t leopard.”
“Not leopards. We have too few now for Lazar to use them that way. He gets young leopard girls from their fathers and sells them as he did Ashe’s mother, for temporary use only. They are very young, from ten to fifteen. He doesn’t like to let go of them any older than that because they might go into a heat cycle. He learned from the loss of Ashe’s mother that he couldn’t risk the girls being too old. No, the ones he sells or trades to Ulisse are wholly human.”
“Ulisse betrayed us,” Fyodor said. “He sat at my table and ate my food with my wife sitting opposite him, and all the time he plotted our betrayal.”
“According to young Gavyn, that’s exactly what happened,” Timur confirmed.
Fyodor stood up, with a surge of flowing power. He stalked across the room, turned, and looked at his brother, sheer ice in his gaze. “I want him here if possible, Timur. I would like to talk to him myself.”
Timur was silent. His gut tensed and then tied into a hundred tight knots. “Fyodor.” Just his brother’s name. He understood the need for vengeance. Ulisse was supposed to be an ally, not an enemy. They invited few people to their table, but Drake had decided to try to include him in their ring of power. It had been a mistake, one of many Timur knew would be made.
“When we agreed to take down organized crime,” Elijah said carefully, “we talked only of leopards. Going after humans increases our danger tenfold. More. We can’t take down everyone. Eli knows that.”
Eli had been a DEA agent for years. He was also leopard, but as an agent he hadn’t discriminated between leopard and human. Leopards couldn’t go to jail and had to be destroyed, and he couldn’t ever be caught doing that. He’d joined with Drake and Jake in their war against the shifters who used their abilities for criminal activity.
Fyodor shrugged. “If you want to give Ulisse a pass, that’s up to you. This man betrayed me and my wife and family to our greatest enemy. He is involved in human trafficking, which we all agreed we wouldn’t tolerate. Still, I will accept your decision.”
Like hell he would. Timur knew better. The softer Fyodor’s voice, the milder he sounded, the more pissed off he was, and he would definitely go after Ulisse.
“Don’t be an ass, Fyodor,” Elijah snapped. “No one is going to let that man go free. We’ll take him down. We just need to be a little cautious.”
“Why?” Timur asked.
There was silence and all of the heads of territories looked at him. Drake’s eyebrow shot up. “Why what, Timur?”
“Why do we need to be cautious? This man betrayed us. Every crime boss in the States has the right to go after another one who betrayed them. I say we take him out fast and hard and let the others know what we did and why we did it. We treat it as two separate issues. I know he’s in deep with the perfume factory and the opium, I got that information from interrogating the hit man and believe me, by that time he was telling me the truth without hesitating.”
Timur moved farther into the room, right into the middle of the men he considered to be powerful. “Ulisse is part of whatever this is against Fyodor and me. The Tregres want Evangeline’s bakery to widen their distribution of opium. Ulisse gave us up to Lazar in order to incur his favor. If Lazar wants something, what does he do?” He turned to his cousin. “What does he do, Mitya?”
“He doesn’t take no for an answer,” Mitya said. “If he knew who Ulisse worked with, such as the Tregres, he would approach them and offer the deal of a lifetime. Of course, that deal would never quite come to pass. He always comes out on top.”
“Right,” Timur nodded. “Ulisse is already beginning to be worthless to him. He’ll need another source for his trafficking, so who would he approach next?”
“Me,” Elijah said, “although my views on the subject are fairly well known.”
“Exactly,” Timur said. “So, then who? If he has the Tregres in his pocket and they can give him the opium source, which has to be that factory and either Charisse or Armande, maybe both, then who to keep his most lucrative business going?”
There was silence. Fyodor let out his breath audibly. “Me. He’ll approach me, but he’d need all his ducks in a row. He’d need to have Evangeline in his pocket. Either physically have her or blackmail her into making me cooperate. That’s Lazar’s style and his twisted revenge. He would want me to suffer, to think any minute he would kill me, which he would, once he found another to do business with.”
“We’re back to why Lipin tried to kill me,” Timur said. “If Lazar wants to persuade Fyodor to do business, he wouldn’t want me dead. Fyodor would be out for revenge.”
They looked at one another, and then Timur shrugged. When there was no answer, he was forced to shelve it, but he knew the question would continue to nag at him.
Fyodor sighed. “You’re going to have to question Evangeline’s family, Timur.”
Timur knew that was coming. Either way he was screwed. “All of them?”
Fyodor nodded slowly. “I don’t think we have any other choice. We have to know which ones are in this, if not all of them.”
“Ambroise is very … sensitive,” Drake settled on the word. “He’s more of a dreamy artist type than a gun-toting soldier.”
“But he was a soldier,” Fyodor said. “I asked last night at dinner and both of the Tregre boys served. One in the Army, the other the Navy. Ambroise was a Navy man.”
“But he was in an office,” Drake said.
“Are you saying there’s no possibility that Ambroise Tregre is engaged in selling opium and that he isn’t, in any way, helping his family to take over Evangeline’s business at the bakery?” Fyodor’s voice, for the first time, was confrontational. Timur had never heard him use that voice on any of their allies.
Drake shook his head. “No, I can’t say that, Fyodor, but I did want Timur to understand the kind of man he’s going to be questioning. He’s going to have to handle him differently than he might Gilbert.”
“What was that last night?” Eli asked. “Why in the world would that idiot think to challenge Timur’s leopard for his female? They’re a bonded pair.”
“I don’t think Beau or Gilbert understand what a bonded pair is, which means, they were never with their real mate,” Drake said.
That was interesting and something Tim
ur hadn’t considered. Most leopards outside the bratya lairs sought their true mates and lived with them. They sometimes hunted the world over. Wherever leopards thrived or lived in small pockets, they often could find females. Now that more and more were being integrated into society and lived in cities or near them, it was becoming much more difficult.
It was very possible the Tregres had married women with leopards, but those women weren’t their true mates. If those men were more like their father than previously thought, men who thought women should serve them, and they had the crueler traits of their leopards, they could be very difficult to deal with. Add in cunning and shrewd, just as their father had been, and the two men would make vicious enemies.
“I’ll be careful with him,” Timur said, although what did that mean? That he wasn’t going to pull off his fingernails one at a time or use shock therapy on the kid? If Ambroise’s father could fool everyone into thinking he was not quite bright and beaten down by his father when he really was a mastermind, then the kid could be just like him.
“Evangeline doesn’t have to know,” Fyodor said.
“She’ll know, don’t fool yourself. Most likely, Ashe will know too.” Timur wasn’t looking for sympathy. This was his job. He didn’t have to like it, but that came with the territory. “Hopefully, they’ll eventually realize I do whatever it takes to protect them.”
Joshua came out from where he’d parked himself in a corner. The light fell across his face and there was something there that Timur had never noticed before. Shadows maybe. Joshua was a hard man, the kind of man one didn’t cross, but he’d always seemed a fair one. He was quiet and cool under fire.
“Beau and Gilbert are not the men they seem. I can only go by what my mother told me, and it wasn’t much, but don’t trust them for a minute, Timur. They fool people and it costs them. I know my father loved them both very much, and they betrayed him. I know my mother was afraid of them and afraid for their wives. She never elaborated, but I know she never wanted me to go near that family.”
“I’ll know if they lie,” Timur assured.
“Will you?” Drake asked. “I wonder. If they’ve managed to fool everyone, that means they were fooling leopards. That isn’t easy. They had to be able to tell lies and not have them heard.”
“Ashe tells me there is a trick to that,” Timur said. “One her father taught her.”
“Great thing to teach your child,” Eli murmured. “How to lie.”
“I’ve learned to rely on other things besides my leopard for the truth,” Timur assured.
Several of the men went to the sideboard and put food on plates. Timur reasoned that they thought the discussion over. He wasn’t so certain. He had a wide range of suspects, but those suspects were all connected.
“What are we going to do about Ulisse?” Elijah asked, proving he hadn’t forgotten the man who had aligned himself with Lazar against them.
“We’ve wanted Emilio Bassini to strengthen his territory. He runs guns, but despises human traffickers. He’d shut that end of the business down fast,” Jake said. “If you take out Ulisse, you could propose to the council that Emilio take over his territory. That way, we wouldn’t be spread so thin, and so far, we haven’t been able to find anything on him to suggest that he’s a shark in the water circling us for our blood.”
“With Ulisse’s businesses, that almost doubles Emilio’s territory,” Drake pointed out.
“True,” Jake agreed. “But his financials are a mess. He’s weak and very vulnerable. If he wasn’t allies with all of you, he’d be eaten alive by some of the other greedier bosses. He knows that. He would be more careful and perhaps even ask for your help, Elijah. In fact, when the council meets, you might offer that as a suggestion when you put Emilio’s name in the ring to take over that territory, that you would be willing to help him sort out Ulisse’s businesses.”
“How do you want it done?” Timur asked the question to the room, but he looked at his brother.
“I want him brought here. I want him questioned, and then I want him to die here,” Fyodor said. “I’ll be in attendance and I’ll ask him myself what he was thinking selling me down the river along with my wife.”
“That’s fair,” Elijah said.
Drake shook his head. “Just kill the bastard and get it over with. You take too many chances, Fyodor. Nothing can be traced back to you. Kidnapping him and prolonging his life adds to the margin something could wrong. The less time you have contact with him, the odds go down that you could get caught.”
“Also,” Eli added before Fyodor could react, “there’s always a good chance the Feds have him under surveillance. You don’t want to get caught on tape. Let me nose around a little. I have quite a few friends that will give me the information. I feed them tips every now and then, and it works both ways.”
“I’ll need that information immediately, Eli,” Fyodor said, “because I’m not waiting.”
“What does that mean, Fyodor?” Timur asked. “My woman’s leopard is still in heat. I can’t just leave her alone.”
“I’m not incapable of picking up this bastard myself,” Fyodor snapped.
Timur sent him a quelling look. “Don’t be an ass. I’ll do it. I just have to time it right.”
Fyodor nodded. “You’re right. And you’re right about Ashe. Of course, you have to be with her.”
“She’s sleeping now,” Timur glanced at his watch. “This evening, after her leopard calms, I can pick up Ulisse. In the meantime, Drake, get Ambroise and Christophe back here. Christophe wants a job. He’ll know by the end of our interview whether or not he thinks he can work for me. He’ll come back for the chance at a job. You’ll have to get creative to get Ambroise back here. Make certain to separate the brothers once you have them here.”
“No problem,” Drake agreed. “I’ll get on that now.”
“What about Beau and Gilbert?” Joshua asked. “When do you plan to get them here?”
“After I speak to Ulisse,” Timur said. “I want to make absolutely certain they’re the guilty parties, and I want to know what they want from Evangeline. We can pick them up after my interview with Ulisse. That’s going to take some time.”
Even if they cut off Lazar from Ulisse, Lazar would reach out until he found someone who would work with him and then he’d be a threat again to all of them. Still, as long as Lazar was afraid of them, and Timur was going to make certain his uncle was very afraid, then the man wouldn’t make the trip to the States. He would bide his time and wait for the right opportunity. Timur just had to make certain that opportunity never came.
17
TIMUR stretched out beside Ashe, his body feeling as if someone had beat the living hell out of him. He remembered that same exact feeling from when he was a kid and his father kicked the shit out of him, just to make him strong. The man didn’t want a whining, whimpering candy-ass baby for a son. Kicking the shit out of him nightly was his way of making certain Timur became a man.
“Honey,” Ashe murmured sleepily and turned to him.
“Go back to sleep, baby.” He had pulled all the privacy screens to darken the house so she wouldn’t wake with the sun in her eyes. He hadn’t meant to disturb her, but he needed her. That bothered him, but not enough to stop him from lying beside her.
She didn’t have a stitch on and he was fully clothed, but it didn’t matter. Whenever he was near her, his body knew immediately who it belonged to, and it wasn’t him.
“I didn’t mean to wake you,” he added when she continued to blink up at him with sleepy eyes. She looked drowsy and sexy all at once. Her hair was braided, but was far looser than when he’d woven the thick mass together. He couldn’t resist brushing the tip of her nose with a kiss. “Really, baby, go to sleep.”
Those eyes saw too much. He knew because she laid her head on his chest and wrapped her arm around him. “Tell me what’s wrong, Timur, and don’t lie. There’s no need to. Whatever you’re going to tell me isn’t going to send me
into some tailspin where I run for the hills. I made a commitment to you. My female is committed to your male. Just talk to me.”
He sighed and stroked a caress down the back of her hair. His fingers caught in the braid and rubbed the silky strands together. “We think Evangeline’s family is involved somehow with the hit men. With my Uncle Lazar and a human trafficking ring. With selling opium, using a perfume factory to distribute and trying to get Evangeline to allow them to use her bakery the same way.”
She was silent, her fingers swirling letters on his chest, beneath his shirt. He felt every stroke as if she was writing her name and it was sinking beneath his skin to brand his bones.
“I’ll admit, I didn’t much care for her father,” she said slowly. “Her uncle was disgusting, trying to force Godiva to mate with his male. He knew I was with you, and yet he still did it. So, yeah, I can see that they’re both maybe not the best men, but do you think they would really have anything to do with drugs and human trafficking and betraying her to Lazar? That’s a big leap from just being disgusting.”
“Unfortunately, I’m not the only one who thinks it, Ashe. There are signs that point to their guilt.”
“That will be so terrible for her. What about her brothers? Do you think they’re involved?”
“It’s possible, but I don’t have an answer for that.”
She was silent again. He felt her every breath, as if the two of them breathed the same rhythm. It might have been an illusion, but he heard her heart beating in sync with his. Just being with her soothed him. He stared up at the ceiling, wondering how his life could be so fucked-up, yet he had her. Ashe. A woman who walked into his life and gave him a sanctuary, a haven. It was no longer about her body. It was about her heart.
“You’re head of security.” She was puzzling it out, the way she did everything. “That means Fyodor is going to want you to talk to them. Question them, right?”
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