Page 44 of Oran
Oran
“Candice, it’s been too long.” Ducking into the shipping container, I rolled up my sleeves as Candice smirked broadly. “How’d it go?”
“Guys like this are easy. I was surprised you sent me after one of my own guys, Oran.” Struggling, tied to the chair, the guy that’d been on the wrong side of me snapped his head up, and I leaned on the side of the container to cross my ankles. “Why did you send me after one of my own guys, anyway?”
“The rules clearly state children are off-limits. You know why?” Candice shrugged, pulling off her pale green beanie to fluff out her vibrant, green hair, and I sucked my teeth in disdain. “Children are looked for immediately. Adults have to be gone for more than forty-eight hours to initiate a search.”
“Right, right.” But I knew Candice didn’t care. She rarely spent more than a few days on any soil before heading back out to sea. Like a siren, the waves were her palace, and international waters were her domain. “You’re doing this specifically because he went after your girlfriend’s sister.”
Her slick accent faded as wide, panicked eyes met mine, and I tilted my head as I rubbed my chin thoughtfully. Small fry was annoying. I could understand how this idiot didn’t recognize me the first time, but to know Malory was my personal secretary took some research. Even then, he should’ve known Carlyle’s face, but ignorance breeds idiocy.
“Well, regardless, it would need to stop anyway, but yes. Now . . . ” This guy, whose name I didn’t know and didn’t want to know, tore his eyes off me and ducked his head. His shoulders jerked from the force of his shivers, and disgust coated my tongue thickly. Even if it wasn’t me, this guy was supposed to make sure that, at thevery least, the women he targeted to bring across the Lake were over the age of eighteen. He’d be dealt with accordingly, but he’d picked the wrong minor.
The raging itch that shot down my arms like lightning to tingle my knuckles verified that.
Sweeping past me, Candice shut the door to the container, but it took less than a second for the floodlights to flicker to brighten accordingly. For a long moment, I just watched this piece of scum through narrowed eyes and wondered.What the fuck made him think this was a good idea?
Even if I asked, I probably wouldn’t get an answer. That was the thing about these guys— they knew they were done, and any information I got from him was for me, so there was no point blabbing. I pushed myself off the thick metal to walk over to him, and he stiffened as I pulled out a pair of thick, pleather gloves from my pocket.
“Ihaveto ask . . . why’d you keep coming after me when I warned you not to?” I couldn’t resist the need to know, to reach this depth of stupidity. It even outranked Diamon in pure, gross incompetence. Lifting his head, he scowled at me, and I reared back my arm to punch him in the cheek. His head flung back, the front legs of the chair lifting off the floor, and I wagged my hand furiously as the impact rattled my bones.
Spitting out blood onto my shoes, the guy panted as his cry echoed off the sides of the shipping container. His eyes flashed with rage at being struck, and he struggled against the zip ties holding his arms behind his back and to the chair.
“It doesn’t matter, I guess. It’s not only the Italians that take the crown for shocking idiocy, is it?” Taking another jab at the guy’s face, I could feel his cheekbone cracking through the glove, and a sick kind of pleasure flooded my veins. This guy . . . this guy . . . thisdumbassguy . . . “Wait a minute. Now, I find that hard to believe. Candice, what’re the odds this guy didn’t know who I was and what he was doing?”
That fucking smirk he gave me floated up in my mind from outside my office, and I turned to my favorite lackey to arch a brow quizzically. She just shrugged, utterly bored, not paying attention, and I turned back to the guy as his face paled. Realization hit me the gut, and he started to struggle even more as I opened my mouth with a soft ‘ah.’
“Youdidknow. You’re an agent for the Italians. Oh-h boy, I have to tell Carlyle.” All the blood from this guy’s face drained and spilled out of his mouth at the mention of my older brother, and I took off my glove to fish my cell phone out of my pocket. “This is gonna just make his day. He’s been wanting to find out what’s going on in that big head Diamon has. Ever since he killed Isobel, we’ve had no one to give us up to date information.”
Before I could dial Carlyle’s number, my phone screen lit up, and I adjusted my glasses on my face to squint at the caller I.D. My cheek twitched, and I gestured to Candice absently as I walked to the front corner of the container to take the call.
“May, hey, what’s up?” Even before she spoke up, I could tell she was half-asleep, and she breathed deeply in my ear. “I had an issue in one of my shipping containers. I’m at the docks right now. I’ll be back in, like, forty-five minutes.”
“Okay, that’s not why I’m calling. Can you go to the drug store and bring back some IcyHot things?” She slurred heavily, and a small smile tilted my lips as I agreed, and she groaned loudly, above the rustling of her wiggling around in my bed. “My legs hurt.”
“I’ll grab them. Do you want anything else?” I only received a grumble in reply before she went silent, and I waited a few, long seconds before hanging up. The time on my phone read three-thirteen a.m., but I made it a point to be out of here by three-thirty as I dialed Carlyle’s number.
It was six a.m. there, so he should be awake.
“What?” Whipping around, I gazed at the guy tied to the chair as Carlyle’s gruff tone seeped into my brain, and a slight grin stretched my lips.
“I have a double agent.” The simple, short message elicited a strong response, and Carlyle sucked in a sharp breath as the left side of my face prickled wildly. “That guy from the restaurant is working for the Italians.”
“Get rid of him. I don’t need anything on the Italians anymore.” The loose code for ‘I already have a plan, I don’t need it fucked up by new intel’ was clear, and I nodded as Carlyle summarily hung up on me. Whatever he was going to do to Diamon was going to beamazing, and it was a shame I wouldn’t be there to watch. After all that bitch did to us, Carlyle must’ve had an idea better than welding him into a concrete box.
But I digress.
“Are you just not going to tell your girlfriend about me?” Drawing me out of my thoughts, Candice crossed her arms with a snooty look on her face, and I frowned darkly. “Fine, whatever. I don’t care.”
“I’ll tell her eventually.” Candice shook her head disapprovingly, and I slid my phone back into my pocket to put my glove back on. “I will, Candice.”
“Yeah-h-h. You’re a fucking yolkless egg, you know that?” I barked a laugh at that insult, and she flipped her green hair over her shoulder with a huff. “Let’s get this over with. I go back to London in two hours.”
