Page 65 of The Diamond Thief

“Why is this girl so stuck in your craw?”

“You don’t know who she is, do you?”

My breath stills. “A third-rank thief trained by you.”

He laughs. “So she’s really pulled the wool over your eyes.”

“You didn’t mention anything special about her when I called you about the swords.”

He leans forward. “I didn’t know it then. She’s pulled one over on all of us.” He sits back and takes another swig.

“Well?” My heart clubs my rib cage as I wait to find out just how hard Jade has screwed me.

“She’s an O’Donnell. PracticallytheO’Donnell. When you called about the swords, I wondered how a girl managed to outsmart one of my top thieves. We had to dig deep.”

“What do you mean,theO’Donnell?”

“His only daughter,” Antony says. “Flesh and blood. Out to undermine the Den.”

My blood chills.

The O’Donnells run the only crime ring that could rival ours. We compete for buyers, for heists, for everything.

“So she’s not Jade or Marissa,” I say. God, and she hadn’t told me. Had she planned to, right before the breach? Was that the deal she wanted to make?

“Her real name is Crystal O’Donnell,” Antony says. “Not Marissa. Certainly not Jade.”

Crystal O’Donnell. I had no idea.

“So you want to start a war over her?” I ask.

“If that’s what it takes. I will not have them sending anyone, much less a woman, to infiltrate my training program and make my top operatives look foolish.”

I had managed to do that all on my own. They were all right. The action sequence was ridiculous. Recording my movements was stupidly easy. I’d found one of her little marble cams days after she stole the swords.

She had known all along what my weaknesses were. And she’d always had a plan.

“She’s good,” I say. “About as good as I’ve seen. Maybe you should show that some respect.”

He nods at the guards sitting a couple feet from me. A sudden blur becomes a fist smacking into my nose.

I take the hit. My nostril fills with blood that drips down onto Antony’s shackle, marring the shiny silver surface.

“Hitting a bound man,” I say. “Oh, what has the mighty Antony come to?”

Antony nods again, and the fist collides with my face a second time.

Now the blood flows more freely, down my white shirt.

“Dammit, I just had this shirt cleaned,” I say.

Antony shakes his head. “You know, Jacob, this is why I always liked you. Even under the most dire circumstances, you always have that bitter sort of humor.”

It isn’t doing me much good now.

He sighs. “You were the perfect leader. Hated women trying to do a man’s job just as much as I did. And now look at you. Telling me to respect that filthy lying whore.”

I might be body-shackled, but I can still move. I lurch forward like a mummy come to life and smash my forehead into his.