Page 93 of Cartel King

“End it, Elodie.”

“No, Tommaso. Be glad I’m involved with him, or things wouldn’t have been so profitable.”

I hear his muffled voice as he tells Stella he’ll be back soon. He must be going to his office for the rest of this call. I already have my jammers on, so no one’s recording this call on my end. I turned them on before calling Enrique.

“You will end this, Elodie. Your loyalty is to your family, not some guy you’re fucking. He’ll probably kill you once he knows about your past.”

“He knows. I told him.”

“You broke the oath?”

“I never took it. Remember? I’m not a Made Woman.”

“You may as well have when you said your wedding vows.”

“Which are null and void now. I didn’t know who the guy I liked was when I met Enrique. He didn’t know my past, either. Circumstances forced us to confess before either of us wanted to. I didn’t tell him until after I got back. He told me before I left. I’ve been more loyal to you than you deserve. But my life is my own now. You aren’t a part of it except for being my friend’s husband. If you sent the photos to intimidate me into following orders, you wasted the paper they were printed on.”

“I didn’t order any surveillance on you, Elle. You’ve stayed out of sight, so I had no reason to. Clearly, I didn’t know about your boy toy.”

“Then who found out about me? Do you have a leak? Because someone’s watching me.”

“Could it be Pasha Kutsenko? Did he find out you carried out the hit on his wife’s uncle?”

“Maybe. But the camera pointed at my house before I met Enrique and a long time before Rio. The car with it hasn’t been on my street for a while. How would Pasha know about me before Rio or Enrique?”

“You’ve taken out their associates in Europe. Maybe they figured it out.”

“Then that means others may have too.”

Fuck me. I’ve always been so damn cautious.

“It’s possible.”

“Did you ever tell Salvatore about me? Could he be keeping an eye on me?”

“He knows I had someone better than any other syndicate, but he never knew it was you.”

“Are you certain?”

“Yeah. If he’d known, he would have asked to borrow you, or he would’ve approached you to freelance.”

Borrow.

Fuck him.

“What about one of his nephews?”

“I doubt it. I helped them a while back with a woman who was kidnapped. Turned out she was Misha Andreyev’s future sister-in-law. I don’t think it would be the Kutsenkos, either. They know I helped, and they don’t target women.”

I press my lips together. The saintly Kutsenkos aren’t so saintly. They may not allow anyone to abuse or sell women, but that doesn’t mean they don’t catch them in the crossfire. They were the first family to all get married, so with that many women in their homes, they’ve only gotten sneakier. I put nothing past them.

“That leaves the Irish. Did you get too close to the O’Malleys? Or did you fuck them over too much?” I’m running out of obvious possibilities.

“They’re a fucking mess, trying to regroup after what happened with Finn’s wife’s family and Sean’s wife. They’re in no position to come after someone like you. If they know who you are, then they know you’re a Vizzini. They’re fucking stupid, but not so stupid they don’t know we’d avenge you. And if they have photos of you with Enrique, they sure as fuck aren’t going near you enough to drop them off. They’re too weak right now to risk him annihilating them.”

“I doubt it’s Marcelo since this started before I shot his father. He’ll be too busy scrambling to hold on to his family’s empire now that Ignacio and Benicio are dead. The Kimuras are weak, just like you wanted.”

“Marcelo and I have a deal now that’s far better for both of us than anything his buffoon father negotiated.”

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