Total pages in book: 127
Estimated words: 117363 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 587(@200wpm)___ 469(@250wpm)___ 391(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 117363 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 587(@200wpm)___ 469(@250wpm)___ 391(@300wpm)
Neil scribbled on the back of a napkin for a bit and pushed the mess his uncle’s way. Stuart considered it for a few minutes before passing it over his shoulder to a woman in the neighboring booth. She got up and left without comment.
They didn’t speak again until the waitress was back with their dishes. Neil returned the pen and a bank card to close out their table. Jean eyed his noodles while Neil signed and returned the check. He hadn’t seen nutrition information on the menu, but he’d cooked alongside Cat long enough to guess this dish would violate almost every rule in the Ravens’ tiny book of acceptable nutrition. He pushed it away in silent refusal and ignored the glance Neil sent him for that.
Luckily—or not—there were bigger things to worry about, because once they’d effectively freed their waitress from checking on them, they had privacy to speak. Stuart leaned back in his seat and said to Jean,
“The entire operation is getting wiped. Tell me now if you are going to resist.”
Jean didn’t have the right to refuse when these orders came from the top, but he’d survived far too much to hold his tongue now. Nothing Stuart could do to him for his impertinence would be worse than not even trying to save her.
“If that is what is needed of me, I will not fight it,” Jean said, “but what does this plan mean for my sister?”
Stuart considered him in silence for what felt like an eternity. Jean counted the seconds to keep himself from thinking too deeply, but he was at thirty-six before Stuart finally asked, “Did you think you were special?”
Jean braced for the inevitable violent retribution, but what Stuart said next was worse than anything Riko had ever done to him: “She was sold off only two years after you were. One of your mother’s contacts, if I remember correctly, an arms dealer down in Algiers.” He glanced over his shoulder for confirmation and got a nod from one of the men sitting there. “I have the name around here somewhere, but I expect it means more to me than you.”
Jean didn’t want to say it, but he had to know. The words crawled out of him, tearing his throat on their way: “She’s dead, isn’t she?”
“A mild term for it.”
He was so far from this moment and his body, but the urge to throw up was visceral enough he felt all his hair standing on end. He stared down at the table and through it while his heart knocked holes in his ribcage. He needed to answer, but where had his voice gone? There weren’t any words left in him; that growing ache in his chest was the start of a ragged and violent scream.
The sudden weight of another foot pressing against his startled him back to his senses, and Neil’s quiet, “Jean,” gave him a line to follow home. Jean swallowed hard against everything he knew better than to say and managed a quiet,
“I will burn the house down.”
“I had no doubt,” Stuart said. “Here’s what we’re starting from.”
He rattled off the bare bones of a story for them to make their own. Neil had apparently resisted giving up any European contacts to the FBI when they’d last brought him in for an interrogation. He’d meant to protect his uncle’s interests, but now they could reframe it as an attempt to protect Jean.
The setup was simple: the Butcher and his young son had come to France on a few trips, looking for more European alliances than what Mary could offer, and the boys had bonded over their shared love of a growing sport. Neil filled in the finer details with an ease that would have been impressive to listen to any other day, and Stuart quizzed them both to make sure their answers were complementary without being suspiciously identical.
Jean focused everything he had on the exercise, grasping desperately for anything that would hold him together for a little longer, but then there was nothing more to be said. Stuart got up and left, trusting the FBI to let him leave the city uncontested in favor of the more vulnerable marks he was leaving behind. The two booths to either side of theirs cleared out as well, with Stuart’s crew falling in line behind him. The silence that fell at the table in his absence was too deep, and Jean’s thoughts spun out of control to fill the space like a violent storm.
He didn’t remember digging his phone out or deciding to dial, but the call was picked up on the second ring with a short, “Wymack.”
“Why did you take him in?” Jean asked, and belatedly added, “Kevin.”
“He needed us,” Wymack said.
“It is not that simple,” Jean said, thinking They sold us both to monsters and slammed the door on our screams. Why? Why? Why? “You didn’t even know he was your son.”