Page 137 of The Kingpin's Call Girl

Bender just laughs and shakes his head as he checks his phone.

I exchange glances with Mary. In another life, we might think it was funny that he was explaining his whole plan like a Bond villain or something. But maybe that’s an actual problem for criminals—the only people you would tell about your plan are the ones you’re planning on killing.

Bender’s right that Luka wouldn’t bring his men to raid a testing facility.

A lab is not Fort Knox.

Miserably, I think of my fight with Luka. He was being bossy, but he was just trying to help.

If only I could figure out a way to warn him. My gaze falls on Bender’s phone. If we could get it away from him...

“If hedoesmanage to get in and stop the test—pretty big if—it won’t matter because I split the hair sample so it’s being run concurrently at another lab. Once the test results are out there, he’sa dead man. His own people will kill him. The men of the clans hate a fraud.”

“How are you so sure that he’s not a real Zogaj?”

“My mother told me, and she heard it from my father.”

“Oh, so it must be true,” I snip.

“I doubted it myself at first. Mom was off her rocker, especially at the end there, so I didn’t think she meant it literally. Nobody cared because Luka was out of the picture. Quite possibly dead. But when he came back and I heard the rumor and looked at the photos, I realized my mom was telling the truth. You only have to look at the pictures. Alteo and I look like the old man, whereas Luka doesn’t.”

“Sounds like a lot of wishful thinking to me.”

“More like a wish come true.” Bender scrolls on his phone. “I had a good thing going. I kept our clan safe from law enforcement, and Alteo set me up with more money than I’d ever be able to spend. But then Luka had to come in and ruin all of that.” He glances up at Mary. “You know he gouged out his own brother’s eyeballs? I’d call that a red flag.”

“Depends on the brother,” Mary says.

Bender doesn’t think that’s funny. “I decided it was time to take over. My first idea was to get Luka arrested, connecting him to clan crimes that I knew about, but this is much better, don’t you think? The mysterious Luka Zogaj killed while trying to conceal evidence that he’s a false king.”

I stand there wishing desperately that I knew Luka’s number. That we could get Bender’s phone and send him a ‘here’s my location’ text. But then I remember the restaurant. He owns it, right? Mary could look up that number and leave a short message there.

“Luka totally looks like his father,” I say.

“Are you kidding?” Bender scrolls furiously.

Mary leans against the bars nearby, playing it cool. We’ve always been really intuitive with each other, and she’s decided to follow my lead.

“Also, what father banishes his kid to some jungle correctional school?” Bender continues. “The father of a bastard, that’s who.”

“Yeah, yeah, yeah,” I say.

“Here.” He holds up his phone with an image of Bender and Alteo. I recognize Alteo from one of the newspaper articles. The phone is too far away to grab, unfortunately.

“I can’t see,” I say.

“Do I look stupid to you?” He waves his phone around. “This what you want?”

Sigh.

“My fake brother has finally met his match,” Bender crows.

“So that’s your triple trap?” I ask. “You kill him when he goes to the lab, or else his men kill him?”

“Keep up, that’s only two parts of it. If my shooters don’t get him and if he somehow survives his own people killing him, I’m guessing he takes his millions and heads overseas. Or will he? That’s where you come in. A few fingers in the mail might encourage him to change his plans. Albanians can’t resist the siren call of a severed finger.”

I feel sick.

“A good cop covers his bases,” he adds.