Sasha didn’t turn his head, but I could tell from the subtle way his chin tilted that he knew I was about to do something inconvenient. The fact that he didn’t stop me made me feel like we had finally made progress and built some trust.
Rafael, meanwhile, was looking at me with the same slightly perplexed expression he’d been wearing for the last twenty minutes. Like he still hadn’t fully processed how the woman his men had captured earlier had somehow become an active participant in the negotiation.
So, naturally, I plowed on. Sometimes one just had to bulldoze their way through.
“Okaaaay,” I drawled, gesturing vaguely between the two men like the preppy mediator to their very hostile group therapy session, “so from what I’ve gathered, your shipments got delayed.”
Rafael’s dark eyes snapped to me immediately.
Apparently shipment was the magic word here.
“Yes,” he agreed.
“And you assumed there was interference.”
“Yes.”
“And you,” I added, glancing up at Sasha, “increased patrols because you thought his people were pushing your boundary.”
Sasha didn’t answer, but the slight tightening of his jaw was basically the Sasha equivalent of signing a formal document. Which, to be fair, was about as close to confirmation as I was going to get without a notarized statement.
“So,” I continued, clasping my hands together thoughtfully, because if I kept my hands busy maybe they wouldn’t start shaking again, “both of you escalated.”
Silence.
“Simultaneously.”
More silence.
Cool. Cool, cool, cool. Definitely not intimidating at all.
“And neither of you stopped to check whether there was an actual inciting incident before assuming the worst?”
The silence dragged on so long, I briefly wondered if I had somehow violated some unspoken mafia conversational protocol.
This is great. So productive.
Rafael scoffed. “Therewasan incident. Three shipments were delayed and one didn’t arrive at all.”
Kyrill straightened slightly at that. “One of ours disappeared too.”
That got everyone’s attention. I’d already heard enough to know that this wasn’t a coincidence.
My gaze flickered between them. “Right. Yeah. That tracks.”
Rafael frowned slightly. “You knew?”
Tilting my head, I replied, “I had a suspicion.”
Two very stressed kidnappers with zero impulse control had helpfully told me everything I needed to know earlier, after all.
“And now you’ve just confirmed it,” I added lightly.
Beside me, Sasha shifted slightly, and I could feel the way his attention sharpened. I could practically hear the gears in his head turning.
Rafael blinked. “That’s why you increased patrols.”
“We increased patrols because your men suddenly increased activity near our docks.”