Page 24 of The Price of Power
I shook my head. Even though I knew it was wise to keep some distance between us, I found myself caught like a deer in the headlights, too mesmerized and frightened by his approach to move.
“I was looking for your brother,” he continued. “I didn’t see the point of waiting a few hours to ask him the only question I cared about. Do you have my money? And do you know what I was going to do if he said he didn’t?”
I wanted to say no, to feign ignorance, but I couldn’t. Besides, there was no point.
Still, my tongue was heavy as I forced myself to say the words.
“You would have done the same thing you did to your uncle and snapped his neck.”
Gabriel stopped mid-step, still a few feet away. “That’s right.”
After a beat, he cocked his head to the side, a hint of a smile playing at the corners of his lips, but I wasn’t about to ask what he found so amusing. There was only one question I cared about at the moment.
“And are you now planning on doing the same thing to me?”
“Can you give me a reason why I shouldn’t?”
Damn straight, I could.
“Of course. First, killing me wouldn’t do anything to help you recoup your financial loss. If anything, it would only make your situation more difficult.”
For some reason, Gabriel’s smile grew wider, and I started to feel like a mouse being played with by a house cat. “Is that right?”
“Yes,” I said with a nod. “My family’s business has been teetering on the edge of bankruptcy for years now. Without my help, it would go under almost immediately, and then you wouldn’t be able to squeeze out a penny.”
He didn’t seem overly impressed by that line of reasoning. “And second?”
“I mean…you probably don’t want to go to prison.”
“Not particularly.” He cocked his hip against the side of the table and picked up my file before beginning to leisurely flip through the pages. “But I somehow doubt you’d be the first murder case the cops could make stick.”
The first out of how many? Never mind. I really didn’t want to know.
“I wouldn’t be so sure about that,” I said. “You’re forgetting about Oscar.”
His gaze lifted up from the pages while his head stayed put. “Oscar?”
“The waiter from last night,” I reminded him. “The one you made promise to go to the police if anything happened to me.”
“Right,” he remembered with a nod. “Well, then, I guess I’d just have to break his neck too.”
“But what if he told someone else about it? A co-worker or someone in his family?”
“They’d die too.”
“That’s a lot of broken necks,” I said.
“That’s right.” Gabriel shut the file with an annoyed snap before slapping it down hard on the table. I couldn’t help jumping at the sharp thwack that resounded through the room. “I don’t think you fully grasp that I’m not the good guy.”
As his stare settled back on me, I clasped my hands to keep them from shaking. “No, trust me. That part is perfectly clear.”
“I don’t think it is,” he said, the flinty hardness in his eyes and the smile teasing his lips at complete odds. “Because if you truly understood who I was and what I was capable of, you’d be on your knees begging for your life right now.”
The trouble was I did understand.
After all, the man had just casually threatened to murder three or four people just to get back at my asshole brother.
“Why bother?” I said. “Somehow, I doubt that’s ever worked on you before. Has it?”