Page 104 of Diary from an Inked Throne

“None of that. They have my sister.”

I nodded. “Ah. Blackmail. Why didn’t you come to me?”

“They said they’d kill her if I did.”

I laughed at that. “And you believed them?”

His expression in the monitor screen was riddled with panic. “Of course I did! They fucking took her from her college dorm room, Luca! Sent me photos and video of her tied up in some cage and screaming for me to help her. What the fuck was I supposed to do?”

I waved a hand at him. “Okay. Calm down. Was it my uncle? Who, by the way, is dead, so if it was him, let’s just forget this whole thing right now.”

Luca stared at me in the reflection. “How the hell are you so calm about this? I’m holding a syringe full of something that will kill you, and you’re having a chat like it’s a Sunday brunch?”

“Not my first rodeo, kid. And you aren’t going to kill me.”

“You don’t know that.”

“You would have already done it by now if you were going to.”

I reached back a hand for the syringe.

French dropped it into my palm without offering any resistance.

I twisted so we were facing each other. “Did you fake this whole thing just to get me here? You probably should have bought a gun, you know? Way quicker and less painful than this whole charade you got going on.”

“He gave me one, but I lied and told him I knew how to use it when I didn’t.”

“So you thought faking a skating injury and stabbing me with a syringe full of what, saline? Was the way to go?”

French bit his lip. “It’s morphine. I swiped it from the ambulance.”

I raised an eyebrow. “I’m vaguely impressed. I didn’t even notice.”

“I used to shoplift. No one ever caught me.”

I scoffed. “You, golden boy, used to shoplift?”

He shook his head. “I’m no one’s golden boy.”

The kid looked so fucking pathetic I could barely stand it. “Sit down, for fuck’s sake. So if not my uncle, who? Matish or MacGregor?”

If I had to go farther down the list of people who had it out for me, I’d be here all fucking day.

“He didn’t give me his name. But I know it wasn’t your uncle ’cause he had a Scottish accent.”

“MacGregor,” I supplied for him. I cocked my head to one side. “And he’s got your sister?”

“Says he’ll sell her to the highest bidder if I don’t kill you.”

“This all happened today?”

“No. Last week. I was just told to be ready for when he told me to do it. I got the call a few hours ago, just before practice.”

“What the hell would you have done if I hadn’t gotten into the ambulance with you?”

He sighed. “I knew you would. You care about people.”

For fuck’s sake. I needed to work on my street cred ’cause apparently it was getting around that I actually did have a heart. I’d have every Tom, Dick, and Harry hunting me down, ready to take advantage of me if that got out. “I’m never being nice to anyone again,” I mumbled. “Why didn’t MacGregor just kill me himself?”