Page 21 of Vow Of Fire

Understatement of the year. He was an absolute brute. But he was a brute who could follow orders, and that was rare.

“Well, now that you have me here, can you take them off?”

“No, I can’t. And I’m asking the questions here. You’re going to be a good girl and answer them. You got that?”

She held my gaze but nodded.

I’d seen grown men quaking in their boots at this point, but the tragic Ophelia was glaring at me like I’d pulled her from the water in the painting above her bed. I suppose I had, in a way.

But she had no idea what was coming.

“I assume you’ve heard about my family?” I began, standing in front of her so she had to crane her neck to look up at me. It was an interrogation technique I’d learned in Helmand.

“Only what I googled,” she said.

I gave a snort. “And what did you learn?”

“That your family has ties to the mob. That you’re part of an organized crime syndicate.” I smirked. She couldn’t have sounded more disapproving if she’d been my middle-grade schoolteacher.

I wanted to see her lose control again, to see the blush in her cheeks and the fire in her eyes. Except that was unlikely to happen. Not now we were here.

I circled her, my booted footsteps echoing on the bare concrete. “Ten days ago, six of my men were killed in an ambush. They were at the docks, unloading a shipment of… cargo, when they were gunned down. The tragic loss of life aside, our merchandise was stolen—millions in lost revenue.”

Those vivid green eyes watched me, taking in every word.

“That’s terrible,” she said when I paused, and I got the feeling she really meant it. “But what has it got to do with me?”

“You were one of the few people who knew the time and date of our shipment.”

She gawked. “Excuse me?”

I stopped pacing. “You heard me.”

She blinked, then shook her head. “How on earth would I know the details of your shipment?”

“Because it was your shipment too.”

It took a second, but then her eyes widened. “The container? The one that was broken into?”

“Paintings, I believe.”

“Yes,” she whispered. “Mateo Reyes was the artist. The canvasses were for the exhibition we held. The one you came to.”

“I know.”

She gasped. “You were smuggling drugs in my container. It was drugs, right? It must have been, coming from Colombia.”

I nodded. “Yes, but you already knew that.”

She frowned at me. “How would I know that?”

“Because someone told you about it, then offered to pay you for the shipping details.”

“Pay me? Why would they pay me?”

When I didn’t reply, she stared up at me.

“Was that why our container was broken into? Because someone was trying to steal your… merchandise?”