“It took him less than five minutes to fillet my palm.” She flexed her hand and curled her fingers into a fist a few times, watching the carved-in brand appear and disappear without even a flicker of rage or hurt or fear appearing on her face. “Really, you have to admire his craftsmanship. He inflicted just enough damage to serve as a reminder of what happens to anyone who steals from Rolf Macintosh but managed not to maim me. I think he figured he was doing me a favor. He was, after all, the one who gave me my first sketch pad.”
His head said she was lying, but his gut said something else. There was just enough…nothingness in her calm voice and unlined face to give her—and the truth—away.
“And your father accepted this?” he asked, working hard to keep his tone neutral so as to not betray the sudden flash of fury tensing his muscles.
“Accepted?” She laughed, a joyless, brittle sound that bounced off the dining room’s high ceiling. “No. ‘Encouraged’ is the word I’d use.”
“Your mother? Another adult? No one stopped this?” Her story moved around the pieces he’d jammed together to solve the puzzle of Ruby Macintosh—spoiled mobster’s daughter, jewel thief, and manipulative liar—leaving him with curved peg to fit into straight hole.
“Is that how it worked when you were growing up?” she asked, a knife-sharp edge to her question. “You had a mummy and dadums who loved you and looked out for you? Not all of us were so lucky.”
An image of his mother with a belt tightened around her upper arm until her tired veins pressed against her pale skin flashed in his mind before he could drive it back into the darkest recesses of his subconscious where it belonged.
Focus, Bendtsen. Don’t let her drag you down that path.
He folded his napkin in half and then half again before placing it over his empty plate. “You managed to get away from him. Why not make a clean break?”
“Do you really think I got away?” She rubbed her thumb over the initials etched into her palm as if it was still healing. “That would be a good trick.”
“You’re saying you didn’t?”
“No, he simply indulged my wish to leave until he decides that he won’t anymore.”
Now that fit in with the information in her file. Rolf Macintosh was like a spider with a very large web. He’d let the little flies roam out to the edg
es, but he’d never let them go.
“What does he hold over your head?”
“The only two people I love.” She let out a long, shaky breath, her chin trembling and her shoulders slumping forward for a fraction of a second before she snapped back up and replaced the moment of vulnerability with a blasé expression so bland it bordered on hostile. “My brother, well, you know all about Jasper and his determination to work his way up to become my father’s right hand man. As for my mother, she’s…not herself. She’s totally dependent on him for everything, so when he asks for information, an introduction, a favor, I have no choice but to say yes, or they will pay the consequences.”
If he didn’t have a long list of people who’d been robbed or died under mysterious circumstances after meeting with her, he’d be sympathetic—or as close as someone like him could get to that. “And murder, is that something you’re forced to do?”
“Oh yes, that’s right.” She toyed with the mix of long silver and gold chains that lay draped across her cleavage, her gray eyes mocking him when his gaze made it back up to her face. “I’m a bejeweled black widow.”
“Did you kill them?” It was a stupid question to ask, never let a target know even the slightest bit of doubt existed, but the words were out before his brain had a chance to filter them.
She shrugged her shoulders and then took a drink of wine, watching him over the edge of her glass as if she couldn’t believe he’d asked the question so many simply wondered about silently or whispered about behind her back. Whether that was a good or bad thing—and why he even cared enough to wonder—he couldn’t pin down.
“In a way, I’m as responsible as whichever of my stepfather’s lackeys actually did the deed,” she said as she sat her glass down. “I know the rules. I have my freedom, but it’s limited. You’ll have to watch yourself if you’re going to make it off Fare Island. Rolf picked out my future husband years ago, and it’s not…” Reaching over to the folder, she flipped it open and ran one pink-tipped fingernail across the name written there. “Luc Svendsen.”
“The others, the ones who died or were robbed, were your lovers?” The idea bothered him more than he wanted to admit, even to himself.
“Some of them. Then I realized what my father was doing, and…dating lost its appeal.” Ruby closed the folder and pivoted in her seat so she faced him and tilted her head to one side before raising an eyebrow in question. “What makes you think the same fate won’t befall you once you step foot on my Fare Island?”
He could tell her, explain about Luc, the man he used to be—the one he brought out when the need arose, the one who’d turned into exactly the kind of man all the social workers in the juvenile system had predicted he’d become if he didn’t straighten his life out. Instead, he pushed his chair back and stood up. The less she knew about how much truth was in that folder, the better—for the operation’s chance of success and his own sanity.
“Read the file, and you’ll find out exactly why Rolf Macintosh will welcome me with open arms.” Without waiting for her inevitable questions, he turned and strode to the door. However, he couldn’t shake the one question that had been gnawing at him as he tried to piece together the new puzzle of Ruby Macintosh, so he turned back toward the table where she sat, her hand resting on the unopened folder. “Your brother is an adult, he’s made his choice about participating in your father’s business. Presumably your mother has made her choice to stay with him as well. If you want to go, why not just disappear and leave them all behind?”
She started in her chair and blinked in surprise. For a second, he didn’t think she was going to answer him, but then she shook her head slowly and something that looked a lot like pity crossed her face.
“I take it back,” she said, her voice soft and a little sad. “I don’t think mommy or daddy did love you. If they had, you wouldn’t have had to ask that question.”
Venom. Frustration. Snark. All of that he expected and could take. The brutally honest mirror she held up instead threw him off stride. A flash of defensive anger sizzled up his spine, and in a split second, he was once again the scrawny kid in worn hand-me-downs who hated the world. The rush of fury felt good, like the best kind of powerful high that was almost worth the nasty, bone-snapping hangover when he came down. But he wasn’t that kid anymore—he never would be again—so he squeezed the emotion into submission.
“We leave first thing in the morning, you have until then to memorize everything in the folder,” he said, the words clipped and precise. “And remember what I said in my study. You try to sabotage this operation, and I’ll make any threat your father has made to you look like a love letter.”
Elskov had saved him from becoming Luc Svendsen. Now, Lucas Bendtsen would save it right back.