I didn’t realize I hit him that badly.
My body stiffened. I looked at what I'd done, yet felt nothing I could afford to name.
Satoshi stepped back to his position against the wall, hands clasped behind him—parade rest, even now.
I folded my arms. "Any word on my father?"
"The Butcher has rescheduled their conversation.”
“When will it be?”
“Tomorrow at 12pm Paris time.”
“The Butcher is still hunting for my spies.”
“He is.” Reo discarded the towel and slipped into the clean shirt. The movement pulled tight across the bruise. Reo’s jaw flexed, but his breathing stayed even. “As always we’ll continue to monitor the Butcher and his men.”
Jean Pierre.
The Butcher and leader of the Corsican syndicate.
Most important, he was my father's most likely source of salvation after we'd bombed his weapons caches across Tokyo. We had hackers in Paris waiting for that call—waiting to trace it, to finally pinpoint where the old man was hiding.
Now we have to fucking wait some more.
I gritted my teeth.
I’m ready to kill him today.
Reo glanced toward the wall. “Rin, whiskey.”
Rin quirked his brows, yet moved immediately, white suit cutting cleanly through the room as he crossed to the sideboard.
All knew that Reo barely drank. For him to have a glass in the morning was truly odd and spoke to the amount of pain he was in.
Reo turned back to me. “Besides the Butcher hunting our spies, there’s another worry that I have with his rescheduling.”
“What is it?”
"Could be a trap."
"Do you think the Butcher knows that we're listening?"
“His cousin, Louis is smart. Not as good of a hacker as Misha, but he could hold his weight in that world.”
“Louis would advise the Butcher with caution.”
Reo nodded. “Your father and him may use codes in their communication.”
I hated that response. Hated the uncertainty and all the variables I couldn't control. The sense that pieces were moving on a board I couldn't fully see.
Annoyance settled in my chest. “Still, we don’t care. We only want my father’s location.”
“We just need to make sure that they’re not planning for that and the location your father is in at the time of the phone call is not a trap set for us.”
Frowning, I glanced toward the bar.
There, Rin selected the most expensive bottle of whiskey without hesitation. Crystal, hand-cut, heavy enough to bruise if used as a weapon.
