Page 183 of Plunge into Obsession

Raphael smiled a little. “Just twice. A greeting gift, and a parting one.”

I shook my head, but I was smiling along with him.

“I didn’t kill him, and that’s all you can ask of me.”

I clutched his shoulder and squeezed it with affection.

My expression turned serious when I asked, “He never heard of Lucinda? Didn’t even recognize her picture?”

“Hesaidhe didn’t.”

I narrowed my eyes. “But you don’t believe him.”

“Not even a fucking little. There’s something going on there. I don’t know what it is, but I’m telling you, this isn’t as simple as us finding out what happened to Bianca’s friend.”

I said nothing to that, instead, I looked out the window, not really seeing the scenery as it passed me by.

Lucinda shouldn’t matter in the grand scheme of things.

She was one insignificant woman, no matter how important she was to Bianca, so why the hell was it so hard to find out what had happened to her?

We pulled up to the office at one of my buildings, and Raphael and I climbed out of the car.

It was early enough in the morning that there wasn’t anyone around. Mostly things operated at night, something I would have much preferred if Raphael wasn’t so insistent on coming home so early.

I glanced over at him from the roof of my car.

There was something personal going on with him, but he hadn’t told me what, and I didn’t push.

We walked in through the back door and straight to my office.

Raphael placed his bag on my desk as I sat down behind it, leaning back in the chair and watching as he unzipped the bag and extracted a file full of photos and surveillance reports he had gotten during the limited time he was in Mexico over the operation Ivan Antonov was heading.

He left his bag open, and a Santa Muerte doll popped out.

I raised one eyebrow when he spread the photos on the desk in front of me.

“A present,” he said in a way of explanation.

“For me? You shouldn’t have.”

He rolled his eyes. “Yeah, like it wasn’t enough that you sent me to that piece-of-shit place. You think I would bother getting you anything?”

My lips twitched. “So, who is she?”

Because there wasn’t a doubt in my mind that everything that went on with Raphael involved a woman.

“Someone, I’m gonna make mine soon enough,” he answered quietly.

I nodded.

If he wanted to share the details with me, then he would.

I looked at the photos on my desk.

They showed a small, abandoned factory that those bastards had converted into a base where they kept guns, drugs, and people before they got ready to transport it all out.

“We need to shut this thing down before the local gangs get wind of this. A couple of theHalconesof the Sinaloa Cartel already figured it out, so I have no doubt their head is aware of this, but once everyone realizes there’s been a breach in our territory, they’re going to think they can just do whatever the fuck they want.”

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