She blinked at him. “When did you do that? Where was I?”
“Lotus Blossom.”
She sat up a little straighter. “Don’t you lotus blossom me, Leopard Boy,” she hissed behind her hand. “If you’re going to threaten our clients, especially bratya clients who might just decide to put out a hit on you, you’d better let me in on it immediately. Sometimes I really need to know where you hid that Ming vase, Gedeon.”
He leaned close to her. “Do you know how much time has gone by since that child was taken? I don’t give a damn if Fredrick was scared out of his mind because he thinks Lospostos is involved in this. He could have called us. He had to have known I don’t give a fuck who’s involved when it comes to a child.”
Meiling’s eyes went soft. She reached out and laid her hand over his. “Gedeon, I’m not upset with you for threatening them. You have to let me back you up. We’re partners. If I did that sort of thing and didn’t tell you, you’d get a little hot under the collar.”
“I’d strangle you with my bare hands.” He didn’t bother to deny it.
She lifted her hand away from his and took a drink of water, narrowing her eyes at him.
“I’d revive you, of course. I like having you around, mostly for my leopard. He’s grown fond of your quirky ways.” He indicated her notebook with his coffee cup. “Show me what you’ve got.”
“It would make more sense if Harold answered you.”
“You make sense, Lotus. I never have trouble following your train of thought.”
For just one moment, her face lit up, and then she took another sip of water, the long feathery lashes, as black as her hair, veiling the expression in her eyes. He never liked it when he couldn’t read her, especially in moments when she was giving herself away. He had come to realize no one ever gave her compliments. She had been as alone as he had. She didn’t know what to do with accolades, but she needed to hear them.
Meiling made him feel as if he wasn’t alone. He shared his life with someone now—for the first time since his family had been destroyed. He told her things he knew he would never tell another soul. He laughed with her over silly things, and he’d never had that with another human being. He gave that to her. She had an incredible brain. She knew it, but no one in her life had ever recognized it or given her kudos for it until he’d come along. That had to count for something. She had to need that feedback from him just as desperately as he needed it from her. The world he moved in saw him as a vicious killer. She knew he was so much more. Just as he knew she was so much more than that shadow slipping in and out of homes returning items lost—the work she’d contracted to do before she was with him.
Gedeon knew, on some level, having Meiling with him made him even more dangerous than he’d ever been. He had something in his life worth keeping. Worth fighting for. He would be ferocious in his protection of her. Everything he’d learned in those years growing up in that treacherous, ugly world, when he’d been a child fighting for his survival and soaking up every martial art as if he were a sponge, he now knew why: Meiling. She had come to be the center of his world in such a short time. He had no idea why and he didn’t care.
“I don’t think our man Georgi is the one giving the orders, Gedeon,” Meiling said softly. “I think he was brought on board to take the money. The original bookkeeper most likely didn’t die of a heart attack either. Or he did, but he was helped along the way.”
Gedeon had had that fleeting thought himself. The idea of the bookkeeper just dropping dead and creating an opening for Lospostos to send Georgi Chaban in as bookkeeper for Atwater seemed a little too coincidental. And why would Lospostos do it? He didn’t need the money or the territory. Gedeon kept his mouth shut, letting Meiling explain her reasoning.
“Someone inside Fredrick’s home is feeding him drugs. They aren’t coming in the mail. Unless he’s taking them voluntarily, he’s getting them in food or drink. I’m surprised whoever is doing this hasn’t taken out Harold. And that is the next logical step, especially if they can’t get to Fredrick. By placing guards in front of his door and having a doctor attending to him, that’s what’s happened. You’ve cut him off from the person who orchestrated this.”
“A woman,” Gedeon said. “A lover.”
“Someone connected in some way to Chaban. Yes. If I’m right, Fredrick and this woman were lovers for a long while. Months, maybe even years. He trusts her. But he refused to put a ring on her finger. Or he took another lover. He’s leopard. He might need several lovers. I don’t know the way it works with you males. You’d know better than me.”