“Yeah. We can use the port here as always. Shipping containers go out on fortnightly runs anyway, so short of your load tripling the weight, it should run smoothly.” Both brothers frown at me, Quinn still spinning his fucking dice.
“Do they ever leave your fingers?” He shakes his head at me, thinking through my plan. “I don’t give a fuck what it is. Just make it big enough to lure those cunts out.”
“The Feds, though? And you want to use your own usual run out?”
“You leave that shit to me.” I’ve been doing this long enough to have my hand in every pocket on that dock. “We send it, make it look like it’s running through, and then we let the Yakuza know it’s happening, quietly. They’ll think they can take it, and we’ll be fucking waiting. All of us.” I look at Nathan, who is still frowning. “Apart from you. You get your shit together and stay at my offices.” Too much fidgeting. “You can use the server to run surveillance on the docks at the same time. Not like you’re not in my fucking ass already.”
“On the docks? You wanna kill them all on the fucking docks?” Quinn asks, surprise in his tone. I glance at him, wondering what his problem is.
“Yeah.”
“So the goddamn world can see?”
“No one sees anything in my fucking city. Not unless they’re allowed to.”
He leans back and smiles, hands crossed over his chest.
“A fucking bloodbath on the docks and you think you can hide it?”
How little he fucking knows of what my name really is here. “I can make anything disappear. It’s called power, Cane.”
He smirks, a tilt on his brow that shows some fucking deference for the first goddamn time. “About time. Good to have you back.”
Dick.
Twelve
The burner phone Andreas passed me has lain silent since I stashed it in my side drawer. After hearing a few pieces of information this evening, though, I know I can pass something on, gain some credibility to help bring the Cane empire down. The thought turns my stomach despite it being my goal for all this time. Now it’s real. Now it’s here, and there are consequences wider than I had ever considered.
Benjamin has been distracted all day—first at lunch and then when he came back with the brothers. He spent half his time staring at me from the open door. All I had to do was act normal and try not to appear to be eavesdropping. It was harder than I thought—isn’t everything when you finally have something to aim for?
Quinn’s eyes were never too far away from mine. I couldn’t read him—something I’ve always been able to do, especially the men I had to entertain during the time before Benjamin. Another point to add to the reasons to hate the man.
Nathan is completely different, the opposite side of the coin from Quinn. He seems more logical, more planned and much more cautious. With that in mind, they both fit their wives. Emily is the sweet, reserved and very innocent Brit, while Gabby is feisty and full of fire. I entertain a vision of the three of us all getting along. After all, we’re family. But as soon as it’s complete in my mind, my defences tear it down. I can’t think like that; I’d be betraying my mother.
“Why is your face like that? What man is going to be interested in paying when you look like that?”
“They hit me. It’s not something I chose to do, Mother.”
“Then you’re clearly not giving them what they want. Do you think I reached a man like Cane by choosing what I did and didn’t do? No. I damn well took it, and so should you.”
“I need to get ready for school.”
“Aren’t you done with that yet?”
“I graduate next summer.”
“Well, you can work as well as study if you’re so precious about it. Now, get me another bottle.”
I have to choke back the tears as the memory hits. That night will stay with me forever. It was the first time I was hit—smacked across the face, just because he wanted to. I was sixteen years old and my mother didn’t care what was happening to me as long as I could pay for her booze. All because of Cane.
The memory doesn’t deter me, and I shake away the cloud, focusing on the information I’ve gained over and over in my mind, so I know I’ll remember it. The scraps I heard add up to enough to form a plan of sorts—a ruse to ensure the Yakuza will be taken out.
Now I have the information, a hollow ache forms in the pit of my stomach. Benjamin still trusts me enough to discuss business in my presence. After last night, I wasn’t sure if he still felt that way. By passing this information on, I’ll betray him and become everything he despises in the world. On the other hand, I’ll finally be a step closer to ruining the Cane world. After all, when I first put this plan together, I was an eighteen-year-old whore who had just lost her mother and was struggling to pay rent. All I could see was hate and pain, and I wanted the source of that pain to feel what I felt.
How I would achieve my goal? That was a little hazy at the time. It took years of hard work—opening my legs to whichever businessman wanted to pay me to get his cock hard—to find a route. My battle was with myself. I had to improve, look better, act better in order to earn the right to walk into the clubs and casinos the likes of Cane and Benjamin frequented, without being tossed out on my ass and having to resort to working street corners again.
And I did it.
