“I want to go on record as saying I have reservations about handing over the necklace to the very people who lost it in the first place,” Carlo states.
“They own it,” Adriel reminds him.
“Finders, keepers,” Carlo says. “That’s the Jackals’ motto.”
“And ours,” Kayden says, “is to do our jobs right and get paid. That said, I’m no fool and I don’t expect you to be. Our job is to find the necklace and set up security that ensures it doesn’t disappear again; in return, I’ve negotiated a generous fee. After all, we are handing over three hundred million dollars.”
“How much?” Carlo asks. “Because in my experience, governments are cheap-ass—”
“Five million apiece,” Kayden says.
Palpable shock radiates through the room with this stunning news, and Matteo lets out a whistle. “That’s a big prize. I’m counting seven of us in this room, if Ella is included in the split.”
“I’m not in that number,” I say.
“She is in that number,” Kayden counters, his eyes meeting mine. “You hunt. You get paid.”
“I don’t—”
“You do,” he assures me, his attention landing on Carlo. “You’re getting paid. That’s the point here.”
“Hear that?” Sasha asks, holding a hand to her ear. “That’s the sound of silence while Carlo eats his tongue.”
Kayden continues. “Moving on to the players competing in this game, I count four.”
“Four?” Nathan asks. “I count Niccolo, Neuville, and Alessandro. Who else is there?”
“I’ve loosely added Raul Martinez,” Kayden explains. “After the Enzo debacle he made his interest clear, but we’ll come back to him. I want to start with Niccolo, as our local major player.”
“Who was, interestingly enough, hunting Ella,” Carlo comments.
“And who wants the necklace,” Kayden says, not taking the bait, and making it clear that he’ll talk about what he wants, when he wants. “He also wants us to work for him while Alessandro works for him as well.”
“Which we declined, correct?” Sasha asks.
“Many times,” Kayden replies, “but we’re allowing him to believe we could be swayed, because (A) he says he’s made a deal with Raul to get him to walk away from the necklace and we have a finger on that activity, (B) he’s blackmailing Alessandro and promised me the documents being used against him, (C) this gives us insight into three of the four players, and finally, (D) we believe Niccolo has cancer and we need a bird’s-eye view of how that affects his operation.”
“Wait,” Sasha says, flattening her hands on the desk. “Of all the things you just said that blew my mind, Niccolo having cancer is the only one I can process. That’s almost too bittersweet to digest. It’s karma. Pure, unadulterated karma.”
“Before you celebrate,” Nathan says, “keep in mind that people who are dying have nothing to lose. That makes them unpredictable, and Niccolo was dangerous before that word came into play.” He glances between Kayden and me. “How do we know this? Do we have medical proof?”
“I’ve been working on proof,” Matteo chimes in, “and yes, he has cancer. He’s got an aggressive form of leukemia; it was caught in the late stages. He’s recently undergone an experimental treatment, though with good results.”
I glance at Kayden. “That’s what his coded references to beating karma were in the car.”
“Agreed,” he says, and then to the entire table, “and as much as I want to kill that bastard, or even better, see him suffer a slow, horrible death, we’ve determined that the longer he’s in play, and we’re in play with him, the longer we’ll have that three-for-one navigational hit.”
“Considering our concerns about his successor,” Nathan interjects, “I need to caution here that no matter what his current prognosis is, cancer is an unpredictable beast. We could see him turn for the worse at any moment and be left with a replacement that lends havoc to the entire country.”
“Which is exactly where I was going next,” Kayden says with no hesitation, his eyes meeting mine for the briefest of moments before he scans all eyes looking at him. “We choose to be mere Hunters or far more, and I have, and always will, see us as equalizers. Regardless of where the necklace may be, but most certainly with it in play, we will take the responsibility of ensuring stability in Europe. In other words, we take out Niccolo’s second.”
Kill him, he means, and I wait for that to punch me in the chest, to turn my stomach, but it doesn’t. There is a bigger picture here indeed, and I can almost hear voices in my past telling me that fearlessly taking the action no one else will is often necessary.
“Our man is close to Niccolo’s second,” Adriel says. “And we need to keep him there, which means this needs to look like an accident.”
Kayden turns his attention to Nathan. “What do you have for us?”
“Heart attack in a vial,” he says with no hesitation. He’s my compassionate doctor, a man who cares about lives the way I see Kayden caring about lives, but he’s cold, and focused, in this reality that is a silent war.