Vengeful Eyes: A Cane Novel 3

by Hart, Charlotte E

  I don’t watch his dice or pick numbers. I’m not playing odds. That isn’t what this is now. I swipe them from the table instead and pocket them, eyes fixed on his. “Either that, or you get over your goddamn paranoia and enjoy the ride I’m bringing.” He glances at Gianni on the floor, a wry smirk on his face. “You’re a twisted fuck, Vico, or you used to be when provoked. That’s why I came to you. I want them gone, and now you do, too.”

  Those last words have me standing and tilting my head, because if he means he instigated something…

  “See? Fucking paranoid.”

  He stands with me, his scowl of irritation dropping. “Fuck you. The reason shit went south for you is because you’ve been concentrating on the wrong things. You stopped getting your hands dirty.”

  My own fingers crush his dice in my hand, fucking disturbed at the accuracy of his words. “If I could see it, Yakuza certainly could. You’ve weakened, Vico.” He looks around the room at all the others. “As have this bunch of slobs. Get your shit together and start acting like the man I thought you were. There’s a war coming, and this shit—” he looks me over real hard, a snarl on his lip “—isn’t worth my goddamn time. You either trust me, or you get out of my way and I’ll do your fucking job for you.”

  He leaves without another word, eyes glaring at every member of my team as he goes, with Nathan following.

  Everything damn well explodes inside me. I can feel it tearing up my guts and driving blood through my veins, forcing it harder and faster. My fingers grab onto the back of the chair, nails chewing into the wood until I throw it into the room and yell out my frustration. It crashes against the back wall, fragments splintering into the air as I glower at each and every one of them. “Fuck you!” I bellow. Not at him, at the situation. At them, too. All of them.

  My feet pace around them. Nico. Ferdinand. Old Gorgio. I don’t give a fuck anymore, and that cunt who just left is right. My business. Mine. If I hadn’t gone fucking soft, been less than I was before suits and politicians, none of this would have happened. I stare each one down, part wanting to pull the guts out of them so I can feast on their inadequacies.

  “Cunt,” I spit at one of them, eyes focused on him alone. “You did this to Tony.” He didn’t. Not truly, but that’s how it damn well feels.

  Truth of it is, I did. I did this to Tony.

  He backs off a step, so I get close up again, barely stopping myself from killing him, and watch the fear white his face out. “Better get your game heads on,” I grumble out, still staring at this one alone. “By the time I get back I want information. A fuck load of it.”

  I do. I want it all. I want each one of these dicks so far up Yakuza ass that they feel me in their dreams.

  A long breath comes out of me as I walk backwards towards my gun and the fucking door. I’m done here for now. Threats have been issued and one life taken for Tony’s death. I’ve got plans to make now. Revenge and order need putting in place, and that involves the only men who dared to stand here and face me off.

  Cane.

  The door slams behind me, and the first thing I see is Quinn leaning on the car I saw earlier, his eyes slanted back at me and a wry fucking smile on his face. He nods at me, flicking his head at the door someone opens for him. Dick.

  “You finished with my dice?”

  What? I scowl and head for him, about ready to knock his head off his shoulders for pissing me off. His hand comes out, fingers waggling. “I like my dice. Pocket.” Fuck him. I growl and slide into his car, looking straight out the window rather than dealing with geek boy who’s smirking. Fuck him, too.

  “You got control of that shit now?” he says to me, chuckling as Quinn sits next to me and the car pulls off.

  “Careful, Nathan. I’m in no mood for games,” I reply, gazing as we drive past my family home.

  I stare at it, remembering everything—the filth of criminality, the grime, the guns, the hatred that poured out of my father for anything that dared breathe in the wrong direction. “Just get us back to my apartment.” I’ll calm down there. Think again rather than act.

  Maybe.

  * * *

  Three hours have passed since we’ve been back. We’ve done nothing but plot and plan, using each-other’s contacts and pipelines to stow and chase information down. They’ve got a lot already, like they’ve been on this for a year or so. Quinn certainly has, and Nathan slipping the info about his woman’s brother being part of Yakuza is becoming useful.

  I watch Hope as they discuss how they can leverage that, listening to Nathan’s tension rising a few notches as she looks out of the window and frowns. She’s too far away to hear anything succinctly, but she’ll be getting snippets. Storing them—maybe for me, maybe for someone else.

  “But he fucked her over,” Quinn says. “Why would Gabby give a damn? She’s Cane now. Her priority is here.”

  “And you’d use me as quickly in the middle of this? She’s my wife, Quinn. I'm not sending her into the middle of—”

  “Fucking right I would,” he says, rising and crossing to the drinks cabinet.

  “It’s not that simple, Quinn, and you know it.”

  It is to me.

  Once on board, it should be full tilt into that and nothing else. If you’re a part of our world, you give everything to protect the side you’re on. Fuck what feelings get in the way.

  Hope glances back at us, her eyes coming to rest on mine after a few seconds. She’s still pretty, even with the makeup covering the bruises I put there. She blinks softly, come-fuck-me eyes getting in my damn head again. I snarl, unsure what I’m supposed to do with her anymore.

  Trust.

  I turn to stare at Quinn as he fills three glasses, frowning at the thought of trusting anyone. He’s here, though, as is the other one—in my space and talking through a fight. Seems like these three people are the only ones I do trust for some reason. My eyes find hers again as I push my chair back and walk towards her. She braces her posture, no doubt ready to take whatever I might give her.

  “You look pretty,” I mutter, wandering past her to the other end of the room. The smile she gives me lights up the goddamn room, her arms finally losing their clutched grip around her stomach.

  “Thank you,” she replies. She doesn’t move, though. She knows me too well for that. She’ll wait and evaluate what might happen next before she intrudes into my mind.

  “We'll go out tonight. Dinner.” She nods and smiles again, her hand tucking her hair behind her ear with the same move. “Wear something nice.” The hell am I doing? I should be with the Canes all night, searching their eyes and finishing what’s starting here. I look at them, watch them knocking their own damn skulls together about whatever Andreas can or cannot do for me.

  “Okay, Benjamin,” she says.

  I walk back to the boys, shaking my head and trying not to react to the quiver that rides my body every time she uses my name. I don’t know why that started. It came one night after I’d held her down and taken her ass for the first time, then came again as her hair fanned across my chest later on that same night, her fingers and lips running over my ink.

  It was three months into our arrangement—Christmas time. I stare at the spot where it happened, remembering the tree she put up as I swipe my drink from the table. I never had a tree here before that. Never cared for one with fucking decorations and presents underneath. She was the only present I wanted to unwrap at the time, stripping her of every other man she’d been near as I did.

  “Vico?”

  What? I flick my head to the sound of Nathan’s voice interrupting my thoughts. “Yeah?”

  “How many in total?”

  “How many what?”

  “Jesus, where the fuck are you?” Quinn snaps, ire in his tone. “Guns. Men.”

  “Fuck you, Quinn.”

  He sneers and downs his drink, a smile coming. “Yeah, we can do that, but after this. How much weight and muscle do you actually have?”

  How mu
ch? I’ve got all of it.

  All of the east coast.

  “The men at Gorgio’s are the leads. They’ve each got around twenty under them.” Both their eyes widen. Yeah, screw them and their attitude. I take another sip of drink, still distracted by the thought of Christmas trees. Who fucking knows why? I swing back to look for her but see her back disappearing into the lounge.

  “All armed and useful?” Quinn asks. I look at him. What the hell does he think? I’ve got a bunch of accountants running around? It makes me look at Nathan, still not sure how handy he is with that gun under his suit.

  “Problem?” he asks, tone full of that Cane attitude again. I chuckle and look back for Hope again, bored with him trying so hard.

  “Sit,” Quinn snaps. “You’re thinking with your dick. Stop. I need you here.”

  “This Andreas,” I muse. Nathan looks sharply at me. “How can we use him? Send your woman in to lure him out? What if we hurt her?” The brother turns apocalyptic and stands, cheeks fuming about something I don’t give one fuck for.

  “Good fucking luck with that,” Quinn says.

  Interesting. I look between the pair of them. “So, your women aren’t on board?”

  “Look, we don’t need that. All we need at the moment is to get this fentanyl running clean and then we can—”

  I glare at Quinn, eyes like fucking daggers. “I haven’t brought you boys here about drugs. I want that threat dead as much as you do. Revenge. I don’t give a fuck about the drugs now.”

  “But. . .” Nathan starts.

  “No. I’ll run them with or without you. What I need from you boys is our in. What is it?”

  He throws his hands up and backs off his laptop. “There isn’t one,” he says.

  I smirk. There’s always an in. I look at where Hope was, wondering how I could use her to my advantage. “The only thing we’ve got is all guns blazing, or we run your fentanyl through the Columbians, but set it up to fail knowing that the Yakuza will come. We could triple the normal amounts, have some of ours go through, too, and then be ready when they come. I’ve run the numbers already.” He turns his laptop to me, all my accounts open and on fucking show.

  “That’s you not getting up in my ass?”

  “Give me some leeway. This is for both our benefit.” I might have to fucking kill him after this shit is done. “Look, we can run yours out through the ports on the nineteenth of this month, out of Philly. We’ll have ours come through on the same run, increasing the yield threefold, and then it can go out safely to show it’s being sent the right way.” I shake my head. Screw that.

  “I need it on home turf.”

  Quinn smiles, fingers turning those damn dice I’ve given him back.

  “Why? You can fly your guys anywhere,” Nathan asks. “Why would you take the risk? Out of the country is safer all round and—”

  “Because this is my fucking city,” I snap. Fuck him and running. Goddamn safety. “If I’m fighting, I’m fighting here.”

  “All right. Say we do that, though. That’s Feds all over our asses.”

  “You scared, Cane?” I taunt.

  “What?”

  “You boys not got them pocketed yet?” Quinn looks confused for once in his fucking life. Finally. “Maybe those pockets aren’t deep enough, huh? Balance sheets not so good then.” He blanches at me, annoyance written all over him. “We’re going in big or we’re not going at all. I thought more of you than this.”

  “Ballsy.”

  “Yeah. Well, Tony’s dead and I’m pissed. You turn the supply round. Have it coming from Chicago into New York. You’ll have to send it for cutting in Philly with my team there.”

  “Cross hatches? The warehouse you run out there?” Nathan asks.

  “Yeah. We can use the port here as always. Shipping containers go out on fortnightly runs anyway, so short of your load tripling the weight, it should run smoothly.” Both brothers frown at me, Quinn still spinning his fucking dice.

  “Do they ever leave your fingers?” He shakes his head at me, thinking through my plan. “I don’t give a fuck what it is. Just make it big enough to lure those cunts out.”

  “The Feds, though? And you want to use your own usual run out?”

  “You leave that shit to me.” I’ve been doing this long enough to have my hand in every pocket on that dock. “We send it, make it look like it’s running through, and then we let the Yakuza know it’s happening, quietly. They’ll think they can take it, and we’ll be fucking waiting. All of us.” I look at Nathan, who is still frowning. “Apart from you. You get your shit together and stay at my offices.” Too much fidgeting. “You can use the server to run surveillance on the docks at the same time. Not like you’re not in my fucking ass already.”

  “On the docks? You wanna kill them all on the fucking docks?” Quinn asks, surprise in his tone. I glance at him, wondering what his problem is.

  “Yeah.”

  “So the goddamn world can see?”

  “No one sees anything in my fucking city. Not unless they’re allowed to.”

  He leans back and smiles, hands crossed over his chest.

  “A fucking bloodbath on the docks and you think you can hide it?”

  How little he fucking knows of what my name really is here. “I can make anything disappear. It’s called power, Cane.”

  He smirks, a tilt on his brow that shows some fucking deference for the first goddamn time. “About time. Good to have you back.”

  Dick.

  Twelve

  The burner phone Andreas passed me has lain silent since I stashed it in my side drawer. After hearing a few pieces of information this evening, though, I know I can pass something on, gain some credibility to help bring the Cane empire down. The thought turns my stomach despite it being my goal for all this time. Now it’s real. Now it’s here, and there are consequences wider than I had ever considered.

  Benjamin has been distracted all day—first at lunch and then when he came back with the brothers. He spent half his time staring at me from the open door. All I had to do was act normal and try not to appear to be eavesdropping. It was harder than I thought—isn’t everything when you finally have something to aim for?

  Quinn’s eyes were never too far away from mine. I couldn’t read him—something I’ve always been able to do, especially the men I had to entertain during the time before Benjamin. Another point to add to the reasons to hate the man.

  Nathan is completely different, the opposite side of the coin from Quinn. He seems more logical, more planned and much more cautious. With that in mind, they both fit their wives. Emily is the sweet, reserved and very innocent Brit, while Gabby is feisty and full of fire. I entertain a vision of the three of us all getting along. After all, we’re family. But as soon as it’s complete in my mind, my defences tear it down. I can’t think like that; I’d be betraying my mother.

  “Why is your face like that? What man is going to be interested in paying when you look like that?”

  “They hit me. It’s not something I chose to do, Mother.”

  “Then you’re clearly not giving them what they want. Do you think I reached a man like Cane by choosing what I did and didn’t do? No. I damn well took it, and so should you.”

  “I need to get ready for school.”

  “Aren’t you done with that yet?”

  “I graduate next summer.”

  “Well, you can work as well as study if you’re so precious about it. Now, get me another bottle.”

  I have to choke back the tears as the memory hits. That night will stay with me forever. It was the first time I was hit—smacked across the face, just because he wanted to. I was sixteen years old and my mother didn’t care what was happening to me as long as I could pay for her booze. All because of Cane.

  The memory doesn’t deter me, and I shake away the cloud, focusing on the information I’ve gained over and over in my mind, so I know I’ll remember it. The scraps I heard add up to enough to form a plan
of sorts—a ruse to ensure the Yakuza will be taken out.

  Now I have the information, a hollow ache forms in the pit of my stomach. Benjamin still trusts me enough to discuss business in my presence. After last night, I wasn’t sure if he still felt that way. By passing this information on, I’ll betray him and become everything he despises in the world. On the other hand, I’ll finally be a step closer to ruining the Cane world. After all, when I first put this plan together, I was an eighteen-year-old whore who had just lost her mother and was struggling to pay rent. All I could see was hate and pain, and I wanted the source of that pain to feel what I felt.

  How I would achieve my goal? That was a little hazy at the time. It took years of hard work—opening my legs to whichever businessman wanted to pay me to get his cock hard—to find a route. My battle was with myself. I had to improve, look better, act better in order to earn the right to walk into the clubs and casinos the likes of Cane and Benjamin frequented, without being tossed out on my ass and having to resort to working street corners again.

  And I did it.

  My finger rubs the ring on my finger as if it will bring some comfort or solace. It doesn’t. My mother wouldn’t recognise the woman who stalked through the lobby of that casino three years ago, or the one I am today. I was every bit the high-class girl the men in the room paid to have on their arms. Everyone’s desire.

  Including Benjamin’s.

  That’s as far as my plan took me at the time—into the arms of either Cane or one of his associates. All I needed was to get close enough. And now I am.

  * * *

  Two dates in under a month.

  Benjamin has taken me out for dinner on plenty of occasions, but he’s always stipulated who else was joining us, who I should speak with, what I needed to achieve. Tonight, there’s been nothing. It made me consider the jeans that were folded and hidden away in one of the drawers, but knowing Benjamin, he wouldn’t have liked the restricted access to my skin.