Page 60 of Wild Card (Advantage Play 1)

“If you let me go, I will.”

Reluctantly, he does as I ask then continues his pacing from earlier. Dialing Marty, I’m greeted with his voicemail which only confirms my suspicion.

“Marty isn’t answering.”

“Which means….” Sei’s voice trails off, letting me fill in the blank.

“It means he’s dead.”

“What do we know?” Burlone grits out.

“We know Marty’s missing, likely dead, the girls are absent, and that your plan to screw over Kingston fell through.”

Sei interjects, “We also know his girlfriend was at the tournament tonight and beat your ass in a game of cards.”

“And that we can’t touch her,” I add.

With a snarl, a pissed off Burlone collapses into his chair behind his oak desk, rattling the floor with his weight. Slowly, the seconds on the clock audibly tick throughout the room as we all search for a solution to get us out of this mess. Or namely, Burlone out of this mess because he doesn’t give two shits about Sei or me.

“I have an idea,” Sei’s gruff voice breaks the silence that was slowly driving me mad.

“And what’s that?” Burlone rumbles.

“I think we can all assume this has Kingston written all over it.”

Both of us nod.

“And I think we can also assume there are too many eyes on the girl for her to disappear.”

Again, we nod. We’ve already established this.

“But I know how badly you want to make Kingston hurt, right?”

This time, I turn to Burlone to see his lips pulling into a thin line as he tries to compose himself. “Get to the point, Sei.”

“His sister.”

Squeezing my eyes shut, I know that with those two simple words, an innocent girl’s fate has been sealed. And if I’m being completely honest, I’m surprised Sei was sharp enough to think of it himself.

With a snap of Burlone’s fingers, he smiles. “Get it done.”

“The only problem is, we don’t know who she is or where she likes to go. So, how exactly would you like me to proceed?” Sei has a point.

Burlone offers, “I’ll forward the image Dominic sent.”

The air in the room grows thick with possibilities; each of them swirling into a chaotic blur.

Rolling his shoulders, Sei comments, “Okay.”

“And Sei?”

“Yeah?”

“I don’t want anyone else to know who we have. We need to play our cards right.” Tapping his nubby fingers against his chin, Burlone adds, “While you’re at it, grab a few more apples.”

“Done.” Sei pushes himself up from his seat, and I follow him toward the door when Burlone stops me. “Dex.”

Turning on my heel, I raise my brows. “Yeah?”