Fucking hell.
“How can you think this was all okay? We all trusted you. Me, Claire, Paul, Lucas, John. The Shadow unit, we trusted you.” That was the name given to the unit because of me, because I moved like a shadow. “Youformed the unit to hunt the Ra.” That was the fucking irony in it.
“I did but only as a request from the ministry of defense. That wasn’t me. It came about as a response to The Ra becoming more dangerous. I just positioned myself so I’d be in charge of you. I knew if I had control over a unit like yours then I’d know who’d be hunting my people and where they’d be. Then you guys got good. Better than good. We had to find a way to eradicate you. But you got away, Xander Cage. You got away. And just when I thought you might be useful to me, you proved me wrong. You were useless. We should have just gone for the girl in the first place. Well, we have her now.”
My chest tightened up with fury and all the angst from the last five years. I was the one who wanted answers and vengeance. Right now I didn’t know if I could handle hearing the confession of what really took place. I couldn’t believe I’d allowed this man to fool me.
“You’ll pay for this Ethan. You evil piece of shit, you’ll pay. Mark my word.” I turned to see Jack, who’d been looking on at me and listening in. He nodded his agreement at my words.
“Your threats mean nothing to me. It falls on deaf ears. Water on a ducks back. Anyhow, like I said, this is a courtesy call. Something in the way of wrapping things up.”
“Bastard…” I could have breathed fire. I squeezed the phone so hard I thought I might possibly break it. I couldn’t believe the treachery.
Fuck, what an asshole. He was working both sides all along and none of us could see it. Even Jack had known him from way back when.
“Yes, I am exactly that Xander. I’m a fucking bastard. Anyway, much as I’d love to chat, I have to go. This is really goodbye. My advice to you is to let sleeping dogs lie. You weren’t supposed to get involved. Maybe you should back away now.”
“Back away, are you kidding me?”
“Goodbye old friend.” He hung up.
Just like that, he hung up.
He fucking hung up and there was no damn number to call or trace. That was it, a bid of farewell to tell me shit about giving up.
I looked to Jack again but then I spotted a black Sedan approaching the driveway.
Jack ran inside and grabbed two guns. One for him, one for me.
Whoever this motherfucker was, they certainly had a death wish.
They seriously thought they could park up on the drive and come for us again?
No fucking way.
Jack and I walked down the steps guns ready to fire.
The Sedan stopped and I pulled the trigger back.
Who I saw step out of the car shocked me to shit.
Giovanni.
He’d driven.
He was driving the car and there was no one else with him. He looked like hell. Like he’d been on a bender.
He reached into the car and from the passenger seat he pulled out the all too familiar to me tube that contained the blueprints.
The fucking blueprints.
The thing this whole saga was about.
He held them up in the air, pulled his gun from his back pocket and tossed it on the ground.
The man shocked me further by walking up to us and holding out the prints for me to take.
The last time I was this close to him he’d been torturing me. He’d dropped a queen of hearts playing card on the floor before me and told me it was Jia.
Yes, he was right. She was the queen of both our hearts.
Now he was staring me down, and looked me deep in the eye.
“They have my little girl.” He spoke and his eyes clouded. “They want the prints in exchange for her, but I know how this works. I won’t get her back alive. I need you to help me get her back because you’re the only person in this world who loves her as much as me.”
A tear ran down his cheek and the Vegas king pulled the queen of hearts from his jacket pocket and held it before me.
I lowered my gun.
