Page 31 of Sweet Deception

Chapter Twelve

I can’t remember the last time anyone fascinated or frustrated me more than this woman does. I don’t know what to do with her.

I rub my free hand over my chin and straighten up. Dust from the warehouse floor covers my boots and Veronika’s sneakers. Napalm sits curled in her lap, pushing his cheek against her hand.

They both seem so damncalm.

Having a gun pointed at her face didn’t encourage her to talk.

Street racing practice got her heart beating, but it didn’t get her mouth moving.

Is she really this unflappable? Is that why someone hired her to spy on us? They chose well, whoever they are.

If she’s not disturbed by death or danger, that really only leaves torture, but…I don’t know if I have the stomach to cut up that beautiful body of hers.

No, getting her to talk must be simpler than that.

Would I really be a top enforcer if maiming was the only method of persuasion I had? Any dumb idiot with a knife can slice meat.

Interrogation requires finesse, which I admit I lack, but not so much that one tight-lipped woman is too much for me.

My ego refuses to believe otherwise.

I move the hand holding the gun, and her gaze follows the barrel.

Every time I demand to know what she wanted with my phone, she stonewalls or deflects. Every time I ask who hired her, she subjects me to that maddeningly composed look, like a bird placidly but deliberately sitting on a trip wire.

“Not afraid of firearms, are we?” I tuck my gun back into the holster against my chest. “That’s a theory worth testing.”

My mind races.

Her inaccessibility should fill me with the urge to shake her until answers fall out. Instead, I find myself impressed.

Her ability to retain such a poised countenance when confronted by my most unnerving behavior is ridiculously irritating, but also…inescapably intriguing.

What is this woman made of?

I’ve taken her apart before. I may have been wrong about who she was, but that doesn’t change the fact that I broke her pretty mask.

Doing it again shouldn’t be an issue.

With Troy Sullivan now in the picture, I know I’ll have no choice but to call Shane and have the family deal with this potential security breach. Troy’s a dipshit, but if he’s got people as smart, ballsy, and airtight as this woman in his corner, we’ve got bigger problems. Still, the memory of his men taking position around Veronika’s building continues to nag at me.

It just doesn’t quite fit.

If she’s working with Troy and the Red Hill boys, why were they moving in?

That lurker I saw in the road, the one I thought might be her accomplice or the one she reported to… If they really wereworking together, she should have acknowledged him, offered some kind of recognition. But she walked right by as if he didn’t even exist.

Not so much as a passing glance.

More to the point, the only information I’ve extracted from her in the past two hours is that she thought Troy and those men were with me.

What a strange lie to tell if they really are working together. Pretending she doesn’t know anything is one strategy, but admitting that she thought those men were mine? That reads to me as complete and honest lack of knowledge.

But what’s the truth?

Cursing under my breath, I pull out my phone.