“How much money?”
“Twenty million. Plus Miami operations.”
Alaric scowls. “Fuck.”
I can count on one hand the times I’ve heard him this frustrated.
“There’s another option,” Benedetto continues. “We could meet them on neutral ground. Hash it out face-to-face.”
“Where?”
“Miami. They’ve got people there, but so do we. More balanced.”
Alaric is quiet for a long moment, thinking. I can practically see him weighing options.
“How soon?” he asks finally.
“Tomorrow. They want an answer by morning.”
“And if we don’t go?”
“Then they start picking off our people one by one until we do.”
The room falls silent. I understand now why this is calledthe life. Death is always lurking at the edges, waiting for a moment of miscalculation.
“Book the jet,” Alaric says. “We leave in the morning.”
“We?” I ask.
He looks at me like he’d forgotten I was here. “You’ll stay here until?—”
“No.”
“Kasimira—”
“No. If you’re going into danger because of what they did to me, I’m going with you.”
“Absolutely not.”
“You said I’m not made of glass. Prove it.”
“This isn’t about glass or steel. This is about keeping you alive.”
“I’ll be safer with you than here alone,” I insist. “And you’ll need someone who speaks Russian if you’re negotiating with them.”
“She has a point,” Benedetto says quietly. “Having a translator we trust could be valuable.”
“She’s not trained for this kind of situation.”
“I wasn’t trained when they took me the first time either,” I say. “But I survived. I’ll survive this too.”
Alaric’s expression shifts through about five different emotions in the space of three seconds. None of them look particularly reassuring.
“Miami,” he says finally. “Twenty-four hours. In and out.”
21
ALARIC
