Page 104 of Forbidden Eyes
“Yes. Another word of wisdom. The heart will often lead you in a different direction than your head. But it’s your heart that will take you to happiness. You're such a clever girl, but if you try to over think this, it’s not going to help you find your place in the world. Not now.” Her hand wraps around mine and squeezes it before she stands. “You are welcome here for as long as you like, Fia. You are family.”
“What about Carter?” I ask,watching her walk to the door.
“What about him? He is our family, too. What’s going on between you two doesn’t change how we feel about either of you." She opens the door and smiles, her hand resting on the edge of it. "Just remember he's not like you, Fia. He's a different kind of man than you'll have met before. He's had to be because Quinn taught him everything he knows. And believe it or not, your uncle was not a nice man once upon a time. In fact, he was an arsehole of the highest order. Still is occasionally.” I giggle lightly,watching as she keeps smiling. "Doesn't mean I love him any less, just that I choose to accept his faults. All of them."
With that, the door closes, and I'm left alone to think some more, no real direction in mind.
Thirty-One
For three days I’ve done nothing but work. Here at six, finishing at nine in the evening each day, all the time trying to do everything Quinn normally does as well as all my own shit. Nate’s helping. Even Logan is managing to up his game and stay on top of the things I’d normally contend with, but I hadn't realised how much Quinn still controlled until I accessed his documents and began working through them. I thought I knew everything; thought I could see the exact future the Cane brothers had mapped out in front of them. I didn’t.
Certainly not from Quinn’s point of view.
Which is completely opposed to Nathan Cane’s ideals.
Drugs are still rife in the business, as are the cartels, and Fia and her developments are tagged into his system, as and when she produces something good enough to contend with real world narcotics. It's a loose tag, but it's there written in code, like he's had it in his mind for as long as he's known about the possibility that what she’s working on will change the game.
“So, the New York deal will have to be put on hold for now. What the hell Quinn was doing over there on Vico’s turf, I don’t know, but we sure as fuck aren’t getting involved in it now,” Nate says, pacing by the window in my office. He pinches the bridge of his nose and puts down the folder he was leafing through. “I’m too old for this crap. I’ve got a mind to shoot him in the other leg when he gets here. Dick. Not that it matters now.”
I smile and lean back, about ready to move this Saturday afternoon to relaxing rather than working. My ribs still hurt like a bitch, I’m tired as fuck, and like it or not, diabetes is kicking my ass into remembering I’ve got it. “He’s coming in?” I ask, closing my laptop and standing.
“Yeah. We need to discuss things. Logan, too. Where is he?”
“In your servers. Said he was trying to interpret code for the forecasting now we can see Quinn’s own ideas of growth.”
“When the hell did he grow up?”
I laugh and crick my neck around, nodding at the sentiment. He has grown up in the last week or so. He’s proved himself at home with a gun in his palm, and now seems to be using all that Cane intelligence to prove himself here, too.
“Have you sorted things out with Fia yet?”
The smile drops from my face instantly.
No.
Not that I know what the fuck I’m supposed to be sorting out. I made it pretty clear I’m interested in her, more than fucking interested in her, and yet I’ve barely seen her over the last week, and when I have, she’s been nothing but polite and chaste. I even tried to corner her into talking to me, hunted her down and tried to force a conversation without just forcing getting inside her instead. But she closed that down with a Vico glare that was enough to end a fucking war.
“No,” I eventually reply. It’s all I’ve got. What the hell else is there when the woman who drives you crazy won’t even speak, let alone fuck?
“She’s just like her mother. Stubborn. You’ll need to learn how to handle that shit. Show her some emotion. You think you can find some?”
Unlikely. Still, the fact that my scar tightens every time her name is mentioned, almost like it’s restricting blood flow to my heart, should make me try harder than I am. Give more than I am. Never had to try before her, though. Not even sure how the hell I do that.
“You're as stubborn as a goddam mule, too. It's tough when it means something, Carter. Hard work.”
Logan suddenly appears in the doorway, T-shirt and jeans in place, and crosses to my desk to dump a raft of paperwork.
“Did you know he’s been buying up South American land?” he says, tossing the comment like a fucking grenade.
“What?” Nate spits.
“Yeah. Look,” he replies, waving his hand at the desk. “He’d buried it in metadata, created a new arm of the company, but it's all there. A lot of it. Seems to be mainly based around Columbia, Venezuela, some of Brazil.”
“What the fuck have we got to do with South America?” Nate asks, picking up the documents.
My mind flits back to those files I've been poring through since Quinn’s been recuperating, drugs firmly in the front of my thoughts again. Not that he knows I've been in his personal files, but what does he expect when all the decisions land on me rather than him. And then I remember Anchov Chelico's words.
“And you know how much damage my family will do to Cane in South America if you do that."