8. Cruz
CHAPTER 8
“We need to figure out who’s lying.” I drummed a pen against my knee while slowly spinning in the computer chair. None of us wanted to call it a night yet. Knowing Em was with Dias gave us all insomnia.
“How do you suggest doing that?” Javi asked from the second seat at the console in the surveillance room.
Marco had one earbud in, listening to our conversation and a feed from the warehouse cleanup at the same time.“We need to find fucking Brazzi. It’s been two days.”
“How do none of our teams have visuals?” Javi asked while scrolling through his phone. “It seems impossible with all the trackers and cameras we have on him and his men.”
“He’s either hiding or dead.” Marco’s frustration matched my own.
“Well, it’ll take a shrink to figure out if Dias is the one lying. I don’t think we’re qualified to explain how his mind works. Maybe believing he took care of Brazzi is how he’s coping.” Derek’s sarcasm wasn’t helping.
“You think he’s lying to himself?” Javi eyed him as I stopped spinning.
Derek shrugged. “I don’t want to think about him more than I have to, but it’s possible.”
“Let’s assume he’s not in denial and believes his men when they say that Brazzi is no longer a threat. What does that mean?” Javi looked around the group.
Every so often, he acted like a teacher, and we were his students attempting to pass a pop quiz. It used to drive me nuts, especially since he’s only a couple of years older, but testing questions was usually how he worked through ideas in his head.He asked aloud, listening while we theorized, then came up with possibilities on his own.
“In our world, it would mean Brazzi’s dead,” I said.
“But there haven’t been any reports,” Marco said without looking away from the computer screen.
“No chatter,” Derek agreed.
“Okay, so he’s alive but neutralized.” Javi was staring at the blank wall across from him.
“And missing.” That was the most concerning part. Even with other teams trailing him while we were in Cuba, he disappeared.
We concluded Brazzi wanted to avoid retaliation for the Cuba attack, but Dias was so convinced his enemy wouldn’t cause any more trouble.
How was he so sure?
What had Dias done to him or his business to make him comfortable promising Em she was safe now?
We hadn’t found proof of anything. No sign of physical damage to any of Brazzi’s business or property. No deaths.Was Dias capable of hacking? Had he managed to drain bank accounts or sell off his assets?
Javi tensed and pulled his phone from his pocket. “Em texted. Check out Martin, his dad’s second. Opposes Alessio.”
He replied while I did a mental run-through of the information we had on Martin Aguila. Nothing in his preliminary background check stood out. He wasn’t blood-related to the family but grew up in Cuba with Alessio’s parents. They trusted him, and he was loyal.
If he had an issue with Alessio, it wasn’t common knowledge.
“Marco?” Javi spun to face him.
“Forwarding out his file,” Marco muttered.
Moments later, my phone beeped with a new email. I opened the attached document and scanned through the added information.
“She said Alessio thinks he might be responsible for the warehouse,” Javi read aloud.
Derek scowled. “He considers him that much of a threat? He’s never brought him up before.”
“Maybe something else happened recently that made Dias suspicious,” I offered. “We had eyes on nearly all facets of his world, but maybe we missed something, watching the wrong thing. Or the betrayal was all internal and not something we would catch without more access to the inner workings of the business.”
“Sabotage?” Javi drummed his thumb on the side of his phone. “That fits.”
“Especially if he’s trying to make Dias appear weak or incapable to his men,” I agreed.
“He could be playing a long game. Chipping away at their confidence in him,” Marco added. “We might have actually helped him along.”
Derek chuckled. “Oops.”
“But if he wants to make Dias seem like an unfit leader, that would mean he wants to take over. Be the boss like he believes he should be.” I paused, letting my many rampant thoughts form into one. “Why would Dias believe he’d blow up a warehouse? That hurts the business. That’s a huge profit loss. Damage that will cost them to fix, plus replacing weapons and other products won’t be cheap. Especially if they have buyers waiting.”
It didn’t make any sense to me, but then again, I wasn’t a scorned man looking to take out the kid who’d stolen my position.
“It doesn’t have to make sense. It’s not his mess to clean up,” Javi reminded me. “At least, not yet.”
“It just feels like a reach.”
But Dias hadn’t made the most rational decisions lately. That might be all he needed to feed the conspiracy in his head.
“Hold on.” Marco held up a finger before answering his cell phone and putting it on speaker. “What did you find?”
“Martin’s clean,” a man I recognized from the delta team replied. He’d run a list of people we considered low priority. Hitting on important info was probably a big win for him. “We’ve been following him for weeks. He’s a grumpy son of a bitch but loyal to Dias and the business.”
I smirked. So it was all in Dias’s head. Did he stay up at night running through names of possible betrayers?
“That’s good to know, but we don’t want Dias finding that out.” Marco faced Javi. “In fact, if you guys can figure out a way to perpetuate the doubt, that would be great.”
“On it.”
“Do you have any information we can use on him now?” Javi asked loud enough to be heard.
“He’s got a meeting tomorrow with some people from out of town. We don’t know anything about them except their plane lands at nine thirty and their reservations are at eleven.”
Javi cocked a brow. “Send the location. We’ll send him and Em there.”
Marco hung up, and a moment later a text came through. “First Light? That’s not one of his.”
“No, he must want to take them somewhere neutral.” I grinned. Messing with Dias was quickly becoming my favorite part of this mission. Anything to get him questioning not only his men and their loyalty but also his own judgment.
Maybe we could have Em move things around his house just to push him over the edge that much sooner. Ruin the one place he was supposed to be able to relax. Take away his peace little by little.
“I need to talk to Em.” Javi was already texting.
“Have her switch things around in his kitchen. Like, move the cups to a different cabinet,” I suggested.
He narrowed his eyes. “Why?”
“For fun.”
Derek chuckled. “He’ll blame his innocent house staff.”
“Or…” I held up a finger. “She can gaslight him and tell him that’s where they’d always been. Make him start to question his sanity.”
Javi rolled his eyes and went back to typing, hopefully passing along my message.
“Have them show up around eleven fifty or eleven thirty so the group is already seated and in the middle of things,” Marco suggested, and Javi nodded along.
Sure, Javi agreed with his ideas.
“She’s not stoked about sleeping over so soon, but she’s doing it,” Javi passed along.
“She knew what she was doing when she left with him,” Derek chimed in. “She gave me the look to back off. She must have known he was going to give her information.”
“There’s a reason she’s leading their relationship aspect of the mission,” Marco agreed. “She knows what she’s doing.”
“So let’s help her as much as we can.” Javi turned to me. “Hack into the restaurant’s system and get them on the books. If you can, give them a clear line of sight to Martin’s table.”
“On it.” I spun back to face my laptop and got to work. The restaurant had an online reservation system with a pathetically easy-to-access admin page. Within a few minutes, I rearranged the bookings to accommodate our needs. “Done.”
It was in Em’s hands now.