Total pages in book: 59
Estimated words: 55912 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 280(@200wpm)___ 224(@250wpm)___ 186(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 55912 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 280(@200wpm)___ 224(@250wpm)___ 186(@300wpm)
“I may be able to help you,” I say, switching back to English.
“Is that so, gringo?” He seems amused.
“I know where the wallet is,” I reply. “I was the one who helped Simone to launder the cryptocurrency.”
He nods, smiling. “Yes, okay, this is good.”
“For obvious reasons, I’ve hidden it. I’ll need time to get it.” To create it, the closest replica I can get. I need to make some calls. “In the meantime, I need to know that Simone is okay. Her daughter is worried about her.”
“Her daughter will be more worried if I don’t keep my promise to Señor Gutierrez.”
I almost go for the gun right then, like a flash of violence surging through my body. It almost takes complete hold of me. The second he threatens my woman, I almost blow the operation.
“Have you hurt her?” I ask. “How bad are her injuries?”
“Easy, easy,” Antonio says, laughing. “I haven’t touched her yet. I made friends with her. She came to the location willingly. She doesn’t smell too good. Not the best toilet facilities, but I haven’t touched her.”
He doesn’t say yet. Other men would. They’d need to assert some kind of warped dominance, but Antonio isn’t like that. I know a truly dangerous man when I see one.
“I need a video of her talking to her daughter.”
“You’re the boss now, then?”
“I’ve got what you need—”
“No, you said Simone spent it. You laundered it for her. I’m not slow.” He gets an edge to his voice. “Do I seem slow to you?”
“You said this wasn’t about money. Do I seem slow to you?”
He grins. “Not just about money, my friend.”
I’d love to punch this asshole across the face, but I have to play his game. “I only laundered a small portion of it. I’ll make up the difference and return to you with the hard drive.”
His eyes gleam at this. As far as jobs go, this is on the surreal end of the spectrum. It’s the religious zeal. “I could work with a deal like that.” His hand twitches for a glass object on the porch sill. Ah, his pipe, already dirty with its previous uses. “I will call my friend. Wait here. You can speak to her. Maybe record a little video, eh? But not a porno, eh?”
He chuckles, lighting the pipe, inhaling and blowing out nasty-smelling smoke.
CHAPTER NINE
Lena
When the front door opens, I lie on the couch and close my eyes. I don’t want him to know I’ve spent several hours going through the laptop. There wasn’t a massive amount on there, but loads of photos of Jamie when he was a kid, those bright eyes a complete giveaway. He was fishing with a man called Jack, his name on one of the rods, with a bald head and a stringy silver beard.
There was more, too, but it was confusing. A special type of internet browser that opened directly onto a website called The Answer. There was a short tagline. Are you brave enough to fight? When I clicked create an account, it asked me to deposit ten thousand dollars into some Bitcoin wallet or something.
Obviously, I couldn’t do that, so I went through the photos slowly. I found myself thinking about if Jamie and I had kids and if they’d look like him, a big grin on his face as he hefted a large fish. A few photos show a young woman, maybe his mother. They were the ones I stared at the most. She looked at him with so much love in her eyes. Hours went by like that. How sad, but it was better than wondering and stressing.
Demon walks over to greet Jamie. I sit up as if it’s just woke me. Then I quickly spring to my feet. I just wanted him to think I’d been sleeping, to explain what I did with all this time. “Where’s Mom? What’s happened?”
He sighs and runs a hand through his hair. “It’s complicated. I need to feed—”
“I fed him. I gave him the amount on the label.”
“Oh good, thank you.” He walks into the living room, sitting on the chair, massaging his forehead. “It’s complicated.”
I sit on the edge of the couch. The spacing of his furniture tells me he rarely has guests. We’re sitting very far apart. The space is so open that I have to raise my voice. It would be better if he were sitting over here, and that’s not for selfish, steamy reasons.
“Complicated how?”
He sighs. “Antonio thinks your mother has a hard drive with a cryptocurrency account on it.”
“What? Why the hell would he think that?”
Jamie leans forward. His shoulders are tense, like round boulders pressing through his T-shirt. He stares at me with those sharp, biting blue eyes. “Because she told him in Vegas. She got drunk, stumbled over, and told him the whole damn tale, all because she found his facial tattoos amusing.”