I obey as she’s watching me, but as soon as she leaves the room with Ruslan, I set the drink down. “Is Raven really okay?”
Valentina stalks to the window as Bradley sits down next to me, picks up the tea, and places it back in my hands.
“Drink,” he says softly.
I can’t resist such a gentle command and bring the cup to my lips.
“Raven will be okay. She explained that she was working in her own world and had dismissed her guards to the perimeter because their presence was distracting her. With Valentina there, no one saw an issue.”
Valentine’s entire form is poker straight, like a spring flooded with tension and seconds away from snapping.
“But Valentina stepped out to grab dinner and Raven was attacked by Harris.”
“Was it definitely him?” I ask after a sip.
Bradley nods. “We also found the bodies of two of our guards.”
“He killed them?” I lower my cup. “Oh, Bradley, I’m sorry.”
“Best we can work out is he burst in fast and heavy. They were taken by surprise and killed. One…” His voice cracks slightly. “One was shot in the neck and left to bleed out while he went inside and found Raven. He found the car, attacked Raven, and then seemingly left when he didn’t find any diamonds.”
“I never should have left her,” Valentina mutters bitterly. “I should have insisted she come with me. Dragged her.Fuckinghell.” Her head falls forward and her hair cascades like a wave around her shoulder. “I would have killed the cunt the second he set foot inside.”
“Don’t blame yourself,” Bradley says over the top of my head. “This isn’t your fault. We both know if Raven hadn’t been taken by surprise, she would have been okay.”
“But she wasn’t.” Valentina whips around. “You saw her. Any longer lying there bleeding out and we’d—” She cuts herself off. “I have to blame someone.”
“Blame me,” I murmur, meeting her heated gaze as much as it terrifies me to do so. “I’m the one who forgot about the GPS.”
For a single hot second, Valetina looks like she wants to gouge my eyes out but in the end, she sighs deeply and sinks down ontothe opposite couch while running her hands up and down her thighs. “No. Raven knew about the GPS. She was fiddling with it, trying to reverse the signal to see if she could find the link, and we guess those blips are what he followed. It’s not your fault, Zira. I’m mad at myself.”
Bradley’s hand suddenly closes over my thigh and squeezes lightly. “Not your fault, Zira.”
I look at him, and my heart squeezes painfully in my chest. There’s sadness lingering in his gaze, and even his soft smile doesn’t turn up at the corners. “Raven’s really going to be okay?”
“I promise,” he says, then his jaw tics slightly as he clenches down. “I’m ending this. I’m not allowing that fucker to exist in my city any longer.”
“We need to get him where we want him,” Valentina agrees. “If he’s growing this impatient and greedy, then we should use Zira. She can lure him out.”
“I can?”
“You’re who he wants. Bradley said earlier that Harris wanted you to crawl back to him? He wants the diamonds and he wants to humiliate you by making you hand over the very thing that your brother died for. So I say we do exactly that.”
“Give him the diamonds?” I ask.
“Not exactly,” Bradley interjects. “But we’ll make him think he’s getting them. Given his obsession, we can’t risk luring him with fakes, so we’ll have to use the real thing.”
My brow shoots up and I lower the cup. “I thought you were giving them back to the Irish?”
“A portion has gone back,” Valentina explains. “But we house the majority in one of our vaults. They’re scheduled to be handed back within a couple of days, which gives us time to use them to lure this fucking cockroach out and cut off his head.”
“What do you need me to do?”
“Contact him,” Bradley says. “Better yet, call him. Hearing your voice might be better. Explain that Raven was a friend if you have to, lie with what you need to, but as long as he agrees to meet you, that's all we need.”
I mull it over and set the cup back on the table, then I turn to face Bradley. “Okay. I can do that, but on one condition.”
His brows twitch together. “Which is?”
