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CHAPTER SIXTEEN

Jared called Vlad on the drive to the restaurant.

“Special Affairs and NYPD have completed their forensic examination of the Oro Divino .”

Vlad’s shoulders knotted. “You guys find anything I should know about?”

“If you mean clues about the magic that incapacitated you, no.” The Immortal hesitated. “You know I can’t reveal details about the ongoing investigation. How about you and Cortes? You come up with anything on your end?”

“Yeah. We found out I was cursed.”

Jared inhaled sharply. “What?!”

“We went to see Mrs. Son-Ha,” Vlad said bitterly. “Tarang and I are under the effect of a voodoo curse. And we have less than two days to reverse it before it becomes permanent.”

The Immortal was silent for a moment.

“This is not directly related to the investigation about the Oro Divino incident, so I guess there’s no harm in telling you,” he said in a guarded voice. “A friend of mine just turned up in town. He’s with the DEA. There are some people of interest to them in the city right now.”

Vlad straightened in the back seat of the Range Rover, conscious of Delphine’s frowning glance in the rearview mirror. “Any of them from Kingston by any chance?”

“I see you already know about them.”

“Not the details. Giovanni mentioned he wasn’t happy about Wei Chen’s new Kingston contacts during the peace talk. It caught my and Cortes’s attention.” Vlad frowned. “We know some of the bigger Caribbean gangs have been desperate to establish a trading route on the East Coast.”

“You think Wei Chen is trying to facilitate that here?” Jared said stiffly.

“She knows better than to cut a deal with them without informing our Bratva .” Vlad dropped his head against the backrest, suddenly exhausted. “It could be that they’re using her.”

“That woman is too clever to be fooled by some snot-nosed kids from Jamaica,” Jared muttered.

“You’re right.” Vlad sighed and rubbed his temple.

“By the way, you wouldn’t happen to know anything about a shoot-out in Newtown Creek earlier today, would you?” the Immortal grunted.

“No,” Vlad lied.

They’d since found out that the gang who’d attacked them that afternoon was a newly formed Peruvian syndicate that had been making noise for all the wrong reasons in the past year. Their boss was currently on his way to Yuliy’s estate to explain exactly why his son had sent his men after Vlad.

Jared sighed, not buying the lie for one second. “Just make sure you guys keep the body count to a minimum while you resolve this mess.”

* * *

The Oro Divino was eerily quiet when they arrived. The maitre d’hotel greeted them at the service entrance.

“The insurance adjusters were here this morning,” he told Vlad as they crossed the main kitchen area. “I’ve kept the third floor sealed off, as you requested.”

The stench of gunpowder still lingered in the private dining room three days after the attack. The smell registered on Delphine’s radar the moment she crossed the threshold, her nanorobots ten times more sensitive than a human nose.

Her gaze swept the space.

Bullet holes peppered the walls like deadly constellations. The overturned table in the middle of the floor bore deep scars from where projectiles had struck its reinforced surface.

Though the cleaning crew had done a decent job of clearing up most of the debris, glass still crunched underfoot as she crossed the room, noting details she’d missed in the grainy footage she’d watched at Yuliy’s mansion. She did a full circuit before retracing her steps, Vlad and Cortes watching her.

Delphine stopped and crouched to examine a spent casing half-hidden under a chair.

“They knew exactly where to breach and how to funnel the targets.” She looked around the room, tracking invisible angles only her mind could see. “And they knew where everyone would be sitting.”

Tension knotted Vlad’s shoulders.

“The table arrangement was only finalized the morning of the meeting.”

“They must have had someone on the inside feeding them information in real time,” Cortes concluded with a grim expression.

Delphine rose and headed for an ornate potted plant by the window.

“Is this where your men found the camera?”

Vlad approached. “Yes.”

Delphine studied the mounting point and angle.

“High-end equipment. Wireless. Remote activated.” She frowned. “They wanted footage of what happened to you specifically.”

“To confirm the curse worked?”

She met his gaze. “And to prove that the Black Devils ’ heir could be taken down.”

Vlad’s jaw tightened.

Delphine suppressed the urge to reach out and stroke his cheek.

“I need to see your personnel files,” she said curtly. “Everyone who’s had access to this floor in the last four to six weeks.”

“I’ll talk to Antonio.”

The maitre d’hotel was efficient, producing the necessary records within the hour.

But it was the security footage from the cameras in and around the restaurant that demanded their attention as night fell. They ended up in Vlad’s penthouse, surrounded by takeout containers and three laptops showing multiple camera feeds.

“This is pointless,” Vlad muttered around midnight, rubbing his eyes. “We’ve been through the video from the night of the attack and the ones from the days preceding it like a dozen times already.”

Cortes had left. He had an early appointment the next day and had promised to catch up with them late morning.

“Sometimes what matters is what happened before,” Delphine murmured, her eyes never leaving the screens. “The setup. The preparation. That’s where perpetrators often leave a clue.”

She was acutely aware of the incubus on the couch beside her, close enough that she could feel his warmth. The attraction that had sparked to life between them that first night still simmered under her skin.

Delphine reminded herself once again that there was a good reason people never mixed business with pleasure.

Vlad’s head started nodding around two a.m.

“Get some sleep,” she told him. “I’ve got this.”

“You should get some rest too.” He blinked and scrubbed a hand down his face.

“I’m a super soldier.” She allowed a faint smile to curve her lips. “I can go days without sleep.”

Vlad was already drifting off. Tarang curled protectively at the incubus’s feet as his breathing evened out. The tiger kept her company as she worked through the night, his gleaming eyes on the monitors she was watching.

Delphine got up to stretch and make herself a coffee at around four a.m., only to find Tarang had followed her into the kitchen.

She looked down. “Aren’t you supposed to be watching over your master?”

The tiger issued a friendly rumble and leaned heavily against her leg.

She gave him a steak as a reward and returned to the monitors, switching between feeds and tracking patterns like she had done for the last seven hours.

The answer has to be in here somewhere.

It was five a.m. when she found it.

Three weeks ago, one of the bartenders finished his shift and headed into the service corridor leading to the back of the Oro Divino rather leaving out front, like the rest of the staff. An unmarked SUV with tinted windows pulled up at the loading dock entrance in the rear alley a moment later. The bartender opened the bay door and let two men wearing coats with hoods inside the restaurant.

They made for the back stairs, one of the strangers moving with a pronounced limp.

The security cameras on the third floor caught them as they came through a service door. Delphine froze the shot and expanded it. Her eyes narrowed.

The footage from the internal security cameras had a better resolution than the one in the alley. It had captured part of the profile of one of the men.

The guy appeared to be of Caribbean descent.

Delphine pulled up the bartender’s file.

His name was Andre Estevez. He was a recent hire and his references looked good on the surface.

A search of the databases of several government agencies showed his real name was Delroy Knight and that he was wanted in connection with several drug trafficking offenses in the US, Mexico, and a string of islands in the Caribbean. His last sighting had been at an airport in Jamaica.

Delphine downloaded the file and frowned at the security camera image. It showed the bartender getting into an unmarked vehicle outside the arrivals lounge. She fed the picture into her mercenary corps database.

Twenty minutes later, she found his destination based on a triangulation from the shots other cameras had caught of the vehicle.

Delphine brought up the address on a satellite map and zoomed in.

It was a luxurious estate with an outdoor pool, a tennis court, a marina, and a helicopter pad. An illegal search of the local utility companies’ records showed the property belonged to one Santana Isaacs.

“Got you,” she whispered.

Vlad shifted in his sleep beside her, his face peaceful for once. Delphine found herself watching him longer than she should, memorizing the way his lashes fanned against his cheeks and the slight parting of his lips.

She hesitated before reaching out and stroking a gentle finger across his jawline, like she had wanted to do at the restaurant.

Vlad sighed softly and turned into her touch, his breath warming her skin.

Desire and an emotion she refused to identify knotted her belly.

Delphine swallowed hard and got up to make another drink, Tarang’s knowing gaze following her.