“He doesn’t take no for an answer,” Mitya said. “If he knew who Ulisse worked with, such as the Tregres, he would approach them and offer the deal of a lifetime. Of course, that deal would never quite come to pass. He always comes out on top.”
“Right,” Timur nodded. “Ulisse is already beginning to be worthless to him. He’ll need another source for his trafficking, so who would he approach next?”
“Me,” Elijah said, “although my views on the subject are fairly well known.”
“Exactly,” Timur said. “So, then who? If he has the Tregres in his pocket and they can give him the opium source, which has to be that factory and either Charisse or Armande, maybe both, then who to keep his most lucrative business going?”
There was silence. Fyodor let out his breath audibly. “Me. He’ll approach me, but he’d need all his ducks in a row. He’d need to have Evangeline in his pocket. Either physically have her or blackmail her into making me cooperate. That’s Lazar’s style and his twisted revenge. He would want me to suffer, to think any minute he would kill me, which he would, once he found another to do business with.”
“We’re back to why Lipin tried to kill me,” Timur said. “If Lazar wants to persuade Fyodor to do business, he wouldn’t want me dead. Fyodor would be out for revenge.”
They looked at one another, and then Timur shrugged. When there was no answer, he was forced to shelve it, but he knew the question would continue to nag at him.
Fyodor sighed. “You’re going to have to question Evangeline’s family, Timur.”
Timur knew that was coming. Either way he was screwed. “All of them?”
Fyodor nodded slowly. “I don’t think we have any other choice. We have to know which ones are in this, if not all of them.”
“Ambroise is very … sensitive,” Drake settled on the word. “He’s more of a dreamy artist type than a gun-toting soldier.”
“But he was a soldier,” Fyodor said. “I asked last night at dinner and both of the Tregre boys served. One in the Army, the other the Navy. Ambroise was a Navy man.”
“But he was in an office,” Drake said.
“Are you saying there’s no possibility that Ambroise Tregre is engaged in selling opium and that he isn’t, in any way, helping his family to take over Evangeline’s business at the bakery?” Fyodor’s voice, for the first time, was confrontational. Timur had never heard him use that voice on any of their allies.
Drake shook his head. “No, I can’t say that, Fyodor, but I did want Timur to understand the kind of man he’s going to be questioning. He’s going to have to handle him differently than he might Gilbert.”
“What was that last night?” Eli asked. “Why in the world would that idiot think to challenge Timur’s leopard for his female? They’re a bonded pair.”
“I don’t think Beau or Gilbert understand what a bonded pair is, which means, they were never with their real mate,” Drake said.
That was interesting and something Timur hadn’t considered. Most leopards outside the bratya lairs sought their true mates and lived with them. They sometimes hunted the world over. Wherever leopards thrived or lived in small pockets, they often could find females. Now that more and more were being integrated into society and lived in cities or near them, it was becoming much more difficult.
It was very possible the Tregres had married women with leopards, but those women weren’t their true mates. If those men were more like their father than previously thought, men who thought women should serve them, and they had the crueler traits of their leopards, they could be very difficult to deal with. Add in cunning and shrewd, just as their father had been, and the two men would make vicious enemies.
“I’ll be careful with him,” Timur said, although what did that mean? That he wasn’t going to pull off his fingernails one at a time or use shock therapy on the kid? If Ambroise’s father could fool everyone into thinking he was not quite bright and beaten down by his father when he really was a mastermind, then the kid could be just like him.
“Evangeline doesn’t have to know,” Fyodor said.
“She’ll know, don’t fool yourself. Most likely, Ashe will know too.” Timur wasn’t looking for sympathy. This was his job. He didn’t have to like it, but that came with the territory. “Hopefully, they’ll eventually realize I do whatever it takes to protect them.”
Joshua came out from where he’d parked himself in a corner. The light fell across his face and there was something there that Timur had never noticed before. Shadows maybe. Joshua was a hard man, the kind of man one didn’t cross, but he’d always seemed a fair one. He was quiet and cool under fire.