Page 32 of Sinful King
I turned on the monitors along the back wall to check the security feed outside. It gave me something to do while I explained the situation to him as best I could.
“Augusto asked me to take it on and I accepted, not knowing it involved your family until the details were sent. I could have backed out and clued you in but someone else was going to take the job no matter what I did, Oisin.”
When met with silence for too long, I glanced over my shoulder to see he’d already powered on the phone and computer.
“How’d you figure out it was Landell?” he asked, pulling a chair out to sit.
The fourth floor was nothing but a gutted office space turned security and safe room.
“Every coder has a signature,” I said, walking up behind him. “I recognized Niamh’s immediately in the source code. When I sent proof of completion I added a bug to the URL. Once clicked, it exposed his location and IP address to me.”
He hummed and swiped through the correspondences.
“Elaborate on Constanzo’s transport issue.”
Maybe I took too long to respond because Sean looked over his shoulder and lifted an eyebrow, almost as if he were challenging who I’m most loyal to.
Had I really lost so much of his trust?
“All of their ground routes were compromised when Esmeralda’s dad was murdered,” I said, shaking off my feelings to get this over with quickly. “Three shipments from New York to Florida were hijacked and the transporters killed before they caught on. None of them were picked up by police or feds. Someone is making moves but Landell isn’t smart enough to do it on his own. I think he has a backer and tried to figure it out but Niamh caught onto the flaw in her code before I could.”
“Do you know who Meechie is?”
“I only heard his name recently from some of Esmeralda’s men. Right now it looks like he’s the middleman between Landell and the mystery backer.”
“Word on my side is he’s Landell’s son, what do you think about that?”
I slipped into the chair beside him, drawn to the way he picked my brain for information. Or maybe he was testing me.
“It could be a fluke to explain his sudden presence,” I said, wanting him to challenge that, to make me think of the bigger picture. “What… do you think?”
“I think had you come to me we could’ve worked together on this,” he said, almost solemnly.
Was that…
“I—”
“Tell me…” his eyes met mine and I got lost in them. “What is it you want from this, Blair? To be the best version of yourself for me in what way?”
He never missed a thing I said, no matter how insignificant I tried to make it.
“I want to be your second-in-command,” I confessed, throwing all caution to the wind. “Been working toward it since the day I asked to change our plans.”
Sean set the phone down and faced me, a slight twitch in his lips I would’ve missed had I not been watching him.
“You want in the mob?”
I nodded, afraid but not as much as I thought I’d be.
“That’s where you are.”
“And you want to take your dad’s place?”
That question made me smile.
“It’s as good as mine once I really get started,”
I said with confidence.
