except Rem.” He looked at me then. “Antonov sits at the table now. If he catches on to what Father plans, Rem can kill him with impunity.” Eddie considered his claim for a moment before adding, “As long as he can prove his reasons.”
“Sounds like a risky gamble.” Or a deadly game of chess.
“It is. Especially now that your father has the rest of us on board.”
That left Jeremy Antonov the odd man out and as good as dead if he made a move. Now knowing why he hated me, I found myself meeting his gaze where he sat at the back of the plane and felt my blood run cold at the promise in his smile.
“Don’t worry about him,” Eddie naïvely assured me. “He’s too smart to do anything without proof. Even if he knocked the entire round table off, he’d still have Thirteen to answer to.”
I didn’t bother responding as I took a huge risk in leaning my head back and closing my eyes to sleep. My father wanted to hand me what rightfully belonged to Jeremy. I’d say Antonov had plenty of reason to kill me.
The first black stain on my soul had set, and the blood on my hands could never be washed away. I hadn’t been the one to pull the trigger, but I’d done nothing to stop it, either. When my father told me he had business in Colombia, he failed to mention that business included ambushing a man he considered a traitor and killing him.
Even now, I had a hard time keeping the bile rising in my throat from spilling as I watched Siko and Eddie load the crate containing Jacobo Jiménez’s remains onto the plane. Amid my dark thoughts, I wondered how they planned to explain the dead body and cocaine to customs. Diego Jiménez, my father’s new supplier, had happily looked on as Antonov put a bullet in his older brother’s brain. I’d never been more grateful to be an only child.
“Boss’s son or not,” Jeremy said as he came to stand next to me under the hot Colombian sun. “If you faint, I won’t hesitate to leave you kissing the pavement.”
“What makes you think I’m going to faint?”
He shrugged, and the simple gesture somehow seemed uncharacteristic of a man I just witnessed kill in cold blood. “Call it a hunch.”
The way he spoke, slowly and with a great deal of concentration, didn’t escape my notice. I wondered if English was even his first language. Judging by the accent he was trying to conceal with an American one, my guess was Russian. “Twelve hours isn’t enough time to have hunches. You don’t know me.”
“It’s plenty when you’re not daddy’s little bitch boy. And no, I don’t know you, but I know what you and your father are up to.” He robbed me of having the last word when he swaggered away before I could respond.
Moments later, I felt a slap on my back as I watched Antonov board the plane and found Siko—blonde, in his thirties, and completely crazy—watching him as well. “He’s not all talk, you know. Whatever he said to you, I’d believe it if I were you.”
“Yeah, thanks.”
Jeremy hadn’t actually threatened me, but I guess a man like him didn’t need to. The icing on the cake was Antonov didn’t seem to be afraid of my father or the repercussions of being openly hostile to his heir. I didn’t know yet if that was a good or bad thing.
Someone more ruthless than I would have recognized a potential ally. How easy would it be for me to provide Jeremy the proof he needed and rid myself of my father once and for all? Knowing that it meant getting my father killed kept me silent. I may not have any affection for Franklin Rees, but I was no cold-blooded killer.
Thinking about Jacobo Jiménez, a man whose life I stood by and watched be taken, I boarded the plane, but home was the last place I wanted to be. I didn’t know yet that it wouldn’t matter where I ended up. The rot was already spreading, devouring everything I was and hoped to be, and after today, I’d never be the same.
WHEN THE DAY CAME TO make the three-hour trip to some never-heard-of town near the Poconos, I was a ball of nerves. I’d thrown up my breakfast at the thought of seeing Vaughn. It had been nearly a week since he stormed out of my father’s house. I didn’t