Illya
“You need to get down here. Now.” Carlyle didn’t respond, simply hanging up at the graveness that roughened my tone, and I sat back in the kitchen chair to sigh heavily as I set down my phone. “Do you think I can talk to you about this shit?”
“Who cares. What’s up?” Standing over the stove, lording over sizzling bacon and eggs, Theo twisted to frown at my under furrowed brows. “Did you really have to call Carlyle down here? He always ruins the mood.”
For a second, I debated what to say and waved my sheath of papers around absently. I’d gone through about half of the boxes of translations and hard transcripts, and I nodded at Theo’s second question.
“These are all wrong, Theo. How come no one saw this? The translations are off. There’s no way these mistakes should happen.” Scanning the page, I held my forehead on my palm, and Theo grunted softly as he turned back to the stove. “I don’t get what’s going on. No one with a grasp of the language would make these mistakes . . . unless they were deliberate. These aren’t regional dialect mistakes. They’re just . . . mistake mistakes. Slight ones, but obvious. To me, at least.”
“Well, you’ve never met these guys. Maybe they’ve got their quirks.”Maybe, but no.That objection was reasonable to a point, but it didn’t account for the blatant mistranslations of simple words in simple context. My mind churned, and I flipped over to the next page before a shrillbeepechoed out from the front door. Carlyle was leaning over my shoulder within a second, and I didn’t hear the door shut, but that didn’t matter.
The hairs on the back of my neck stood up, and I licked my suddenly dry lips with a thick tongue before parting them.
“These conversations are all translated by different people, right?” Reaching to grab the sheet of paper I’d been scribbling on as Carlyle nodded curtly, I held it up for him. “I wrote down all the wrong translations, and this is what I found.”
“What is it?” To be honest, I didn’t expect to find anything so incredibly brazen in these records, and I twisted as Carlyle rocked back on his heels. “These are just mistakes made in translation. It happens all the time.”
“Read every third, first, and second word, in that order.” Now, this was the troubling part, and I held my breath as Carlyle’s expression tightened with irritation. His eyes narrowed before snapping to mine, and my heart stuttered under the force of his glare. “It’s a code. The people doing your translations are working together through the transcripts. They all have access to it, right? From anywhere they’re called to work.”
Carlyle’s light eyes flashed almost reptilian as he reset them against the page, and he cupped his chin even as his foot tapped rapidly. After I started cataloging the mistranslations, it became obvious that the people doing the translating were trying to do some clandestine bullshit. Who mispronounces the word ‘money’ in any language?
Especially considering that they were working for Carlyle’s family, they had to be good.
“This is all you’ve found so far?” I nodded mutely, and he tapped his cheek as he turned the paper over, his eyes bouncing from word to word in rhythm. “How many transcripts have you gone through?”
“A little less than half, but I have a feeling that your father’s and brother’s records contain a majority of the conversations. There’s definitely not enough here, and you speak Spanish fluently, which cuts out your need for a translator for most of your business.” Even though it’d been months, I had no knowledge of what that ‘business’ actually was, although I assumed it was illegal. Nodding with a troubled crease between his brow, Carlyle turned the paper to the front to read it again. “I suppose it doesn’t matter what they say— this is enough to do something about the translators that are doing this.”
“It is. I didn’t expect this. It’s actually pretty sophisticated. Now . . . ” Carlyle palmed my crown thoughtfully, and heat crept up my neck when he started stroking my hair. His hand was warm and hard, and I watched him stare into space for a long moment before speaking up again. “What to do? I hadn’t planned on you figuring this problem out so quickly, Illya.”
Pride thickened his tone, and my face flamed as Carlyle’s gaze flickered to mine ever so briefly. Despite what he’d done to Mateo, I found it hard to believe he had such a soft spot for me. The genuinity in his eyes said differently, though, and I blushed fiercely as my scarred chest tightened.
“Wait a minute. ” Turning to Theo, momentarily forgotten by the stove, my face flamed at the amusement that glimmer in his dark orbs as they trained on me. “What do you mean ‘what to do’? Isn’t it obvious? Fucking shoot them and get it over with.”
“That’s boring.” Carlyle scratched my scalp even as he shot down the idea, and Theo grimaced darkly. “I have something much, much more satisfying in mind. Although I’m sure you’ll enjoy it just as much, Theo. Speaking of satisfying, have either of you heard the maids talking about Mateo today?”
“He’s all they ever talk about since word got around that your father’s coming. They’re placing bets about what’ll happen.” Speaking up as Theo busied himself, flipping the bacon, I scrunched up my face in distaste as Carlyle’s fingers flexed against my crown. “I feel kinda bad for him, but . . . ”
“Don’t. He’s been locked in there for weeks because of his own inadequacy. As usual.” Taking his hand off my head, Carlyle pulled a chair out and twirled it around to straddle the back with a heavy sigh. “Illya, you’ll need to finish this another time. As you said, the rest doesn’t matter. This is more than enough to implicate, which is more than enough for me. I’ll inform my father and brother about sending me their records, but it’ll be a while before we can set something up to deal with this. So, for now, I have another job for you. I was going to wait, but seeing as you’re truly exceptional . . . ”
“You lay it on thick for a dude who thinks I’m disgusting.” My cheekiness earned me a smirk, but it didn’t last before Carlyle shook his head. “What’s the job?”
“Technically, it’s a job for you both.” Gesturing to Theo, his eyes didn’t leave me, and my brows rose in surprise. “I’ve told you why you’re here. You’re going to infiltrate a party hosted by the Italian Mafia and drug someone for me.”
“Infiltrate?” Nodding firmly, Carlyle gripped the low back of the chair to lean away from it, and I gulped down the dense lump that formed in my throat. “I mean, okay. What does that entail, exactly?”
“I’ll give you the details after my dad and Oran leave. It’s not for another few weeks, but it’ll probably happen before we can set up the translators. You said it before, we can’t arouse suspicion. The next planned function between us all that requires all the translators is around Christmas. I thought you’d appreciate a heads up.” Gnawing on my inner cheek, I only nodded at that, and Carlyle tapped the flat top run of the chair. I could see the cogs working in his eyes, and he cocked his head back a little. “Make yourselves presentable. We’ll talk more during lunch.”
“Righto.” Tapping two fingers to my temple, I couldn’t help but smile when Carlyle chuckled before standing up and pushing the chair back in. “What should I wear?”
“Whatever makes you comfortable.” Leaving me with that, Carlyle sauntered out of the kitchen and then my apartment, and I reached to ruffle my hair as my mind raced. To me, it was so easy to spot, such a simple concept to use a code in plain sight. No one double-checked this stuff but the translators themselves, so no one faulted someone for making an occasional mistake, days and weeks apart, especially if they didn’t know it was a mistake.
“I wonder if anyone caught onoutsideof this?” Throwing my question out there, I grabbed a short stack to flip through it, and Theo grunted from over the stove. “These translators are pretty much cycled around depending on where they’re needed, so they have conversations with the same people. Do you think any of them noticed the slip-ups?”
“How would I know? I only speak English.” My lips twitched up at that, and Theo shook his head before gesturing to me from over his shoulder. “Anyway, it doesn’t really matter to me. All I’m good for is being a meat shield, and I’m okay with that.”
Watching the muscles roping just under his tanned skin play along his back, I propped my cheek on my fist on the table. I hadn’t gotten a chance to ask whether or not Theo had been threatened by Carlyle, but I got the sense that he hadn’t.Which meant he came and apologized on his own.
I wished I could say the same, but Theo would never have to know that it wasn’t my choice to take off my bandages. Everything turned out fine. I was fine.
And I had the sneaking suspicion that things would only get better from here, regardless of how crazy ‘work’ would get. We— us— Theo and I, we would be good together.
