Page 8 of Scarlet Embrace

“After living with Andrew and knowing what he’s done, I doubt there’s anything that can surprise me,” Rufus said as he handed me a cup of tea.

Accepting the cup, I explained to him how I had tried to expand our legitimate business. Yes, they were a front to hide what we really did, and over the past ten years, my father has come to expand our reach across the county. As for me, I wanted to take a rather different route and find a way to earn us clean money. We had enough money coming in from our other activities, but not enough from our legal route. Left to me, I would prefer we switch our main source of income to a legal route, but that wasn’t a discussion I was ready to have with anyone.

“Hmmm. What did Andrew say about it?” Rufus asked.

“He wasn’t excited about it, but he told me to give it a try,” I explained. “Now the LaRosa’s stole my cars.”

“Do you have evidence to support that?”

My father and his brother were quite different in so many ways. While my father was the type to act on a whim, Uncle Rufus was different. Logic and evidence were the two principles that guided his actions. He wasn’t a coward, but he believed it was important to get one’s facts straight before going for the jugular.

“Nothing concrete at the moment, but the men made it clear that the attackers spoke Spanish, and they mentioned Marcus’s name a few times,” I told him.

Thinking about it was making my blood boil, and soon, I was on my feet and pacing the room. Rufus pointed out to me that anyone could speak Spanish, and it might be that someone was trying to make us go to war with the LaRosa’s.

“I mean, I can speak a few Spanish myself. Think carefully about it. Why will Marcus or Diana go after your cars?”

“That’s what I don’t get,” I stopped for a moment and rubbed my forehead before turning abruptly to Rufus. “They don’t have the means to dispose of it or where to stock it up. In fact, Marcus should know that it was only a matter of time before I found the location of the cars.”

“Which means there might be more to this entire issue than it seems.”

There was another explanation, one I was a bit reluctant to admit to.

The mole.

“Uncle Rufus,” I started.

Hearing me call him Uncle made Rufus look up. His eyebrows were slightly raised, his lips pressed back, and a slight hesitation from him.

“Why do I feel like I won’t like what you’re about to say?” he said with a pained expression.

“Because it’s something I won’t bring up if I didn’t think it was entirely important,” I told him as I sat down.

“Since you’ve already decided to bring it up, lay it out,” Rufus made a gesture to signify the floor was open.

Bringing up the issue of a mole in the organization seemed a bit rash, especially since my father had made it clear that I wasn’t to go around accusing people without evidence. However, Rufus wasn’t clearly a part of the organization, which means it was safe to discuss it with him.

“Hmm. That’s a huge accusation,” Rufus said with a disapproving look. “Have you brought it up with your father?”

“Yes.”

“And?”

“He dismissed the idea.”

“Which means he thinks you’re either stupid or you don’t have enough evidence.”

We both knew that it was most likely the former since my father wouldn’t take lightly the news that a mole was within his organization. The truth was that I didn’t have enough evidence to point out to a particular individual, but I knew for a fact that someone had been sabotaging our deals. First, it started with the runners on the streets, then someone had brought guns into the city, albeit small, but clearly, someone high was making deals outside the organization, deals that could harm us.

“Fine, list out the things you know,” Rufus said as he poured himself another cup of tea.

His love for tea came from my Aunt Madeline. She had grown up in some manor in Britain before traveling down here to settle with Rufus. Both of them had fallen in love at first sight, and they had lived together happily till the day she died.

“Okay. Remember the gun incidents that happened a few months back? It turned out someone had used our shipping routes to bring the guns in,” I told him.

“Maybe the LaRosa or the Street Kings?” Rufus suggested.

“Maybe, but they made use of our shipping routes, which are exclusive to us,” I countered him.