Page 50 of Midnight Torment

My gaze rose to meet his. “Are you fucking kidding me?” I demanded. “Not only did you try to raise the price, but now you’re trying to give me a fake?” My patience snapped and I reached over the counter to grab him and slam his head onto the counter. My gun was to the side of his head in a heartbeat.

He tried to hold his hands up, but I’d had enough. “Please.”

“No more chances,” I hissed. “Matteus is a pussycat compared to me. I’m the man he phones to sort out his problems. I want that artifact and I want it now. I seriously doubt you would keep something of the value we’re talking about in an easy-to-pick safe.”

My gaze swept around the room, appraising possible hidey holes. I’d searched enough properties to know the best place to hide something was in plain sight, since everyone tended to look for hidden areas and loose wall panels.

I doubted he’d send a canopic jar if that wasn’t what Matteus was expecting. There was a section that didn’t fit in with the other items in the shop. Earthenware vases that you would expect to find in any marketplace. This was an antique store, so I doubted he was catering to clientele if you could buy them for pennies down the street.

I slammed his head against the counter again just because he’d pissed me off and made my way across the shop to the brown vases with modern graphics engrained into them. One at a time, I smashed them until I revealed everything that was hidden inside. One hosted a bag of diamonds that were probably from the mine we were discussing earlier. Another had what appeared to be an ancient African figure which had probably been stolen to order. Ivory figures sat at the bottom of another.

And my canopic jar was located in the bottom of the small one at the back. To the inexperienced eye, the one in the shoebox looked the same, but there was something about an ancient item that oozed history and a connection to the past. I lifted it and immediately felt the difference in the texture with the pads of my fingers.

The click of a hammer clued me in that Johannes had grown a spine. My own gun was tucked into the front of my trousers. My hand grabbed it before setting the artifact behind the side of the wooden counter and slowly turning around.

My gun slowly came up and targeted Johannes. “I’ve killed more men than I can remember. Can you say the same?”

“Someone else has offered a lot of money for that item to stop Matteus.”

“I don’t fucking care,” I said, my top lip curling in disgust. “I don’t like Matteus, but he was right when he said I was the hand of God for the Council. I will visit wrath and vengeance on those who oppose us.”

I took a step forward because his hand trembled while mine remained steady. If you pointed a weapon at me, you should make damn sure to shoot before I got within striking distance.

“If I was you,” I taunted. “I would pull that trigger now. No one pulls a gun on me and lives to tell the story of their adventure.”

His hand trembled again and I took another step forward.

“You should have been happy with the diamonds you were stealing. Seth will be pissed when I tell him you’re a crook and a liar.”

He stilled for a moment. “Seth? How do you know Seth?”

“We go back a long way. I’ve saved his life a few times and he’s driving around like a gangster in a car he claimed of my friend in a fee.”

“That sounds like Seth. He doesn’t deal in money.”

I rolled my eyes at him and aimed my gun directly at his head. “Goodbye, Johannes. I can find my own way to the diamond mine.”

“Stop!” He held his hands up. “Matteus is an employer, but Seth is a friend. You should have used his name when you arrived.”

But I would never have discovered the artifact.

“Goodbye, Johannes,” I repeated.

“Alea iacta est!”

I stopped, my jaw tightening. I’d heard that phrase before, read it in the journals of the Council. It had been a get-out-of-jail-free card given to people to save their lives. My finger twitched on the trigger as I debated with myself. No one would ever know that I’d blown his brains out after he said the magical words immortalised by Julius Caesar so long ago.

The die has been cast.

“That phrase only applies if I like you or you haven’t been a little shit who pointed a gun at me.” A slow smile turned my lips up. “Tell me, who would ever know that I didn’t grant you clemency?”

Fear flickered in his eyes and his expression froze.

I debated his life and death, my attention moving to the door when the little bell over it rang.

“There’s a guy out there who keeps watching me.” Megan wandered in, stopping when she saw me with a gun to Johannes’ head. “Is there a problem?”

“Lock the door,” I instructed and watched as Megan automatically obeyed me.

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