A Silent Reckoning: Sinner's Empire by Nikita Slater (ereader iphone .txt) 📗

quietly shot, rather than bringing you to me? I wouldn’t have known you ever came, and I would never have known what happened to you. Do you understand what you’ve done?”

Fatima blanched and Shaun could see Jozef’s arms jerk out of the corner of her eye. She refused to look at him though. She didn’t want to read anything in his gaze. What if he’d thought about killing her mother? It would shatter her, so she refused to contemplate the thought.

“I wasn’t thinking about anything but getting to you,” Fatima spoke quietly, the weight of her decision settling around her. She looked at Jozef. “Will you really keep me here?”

Jozef stared at her, then answered with his own question, Will you leave quietly?

“Not without my daughter,” she said swiftly.

Then you both stay.

Shaun saw that he was firm in his decision and wondered if he’d already made it when he realized Fatima had come for her. Which meant he likely never contemplated killing Fatima. The tension inside Shaun eased.

“Please let us go,” Fatima begged him.

“Mom, he won’t,” Shaun said gently, reaching out to take her mother’s hand.

Shaun hadn’t realized how reconciled she was to staying with Jozef until she saw the devastation on her mother’s face. It was how she felt when he’d taken her the first time, the same as a few days ago. Only this time, she knew deep in her heart that she’d made her decision. Seeing her mother standing in the place of her captivity only strengthened her resolve. She wasn’t really a captive. The more Fatima begged, the more Shaun realized she wouldn’t get on an airplane with her mother, even if she had a choice.

How could a woman of her profession and personality give up everything to be with a man she was morally opposed to? It was a terrible, awesome realization that she would have to unpack later. She didn’t need to examine it now, because Jozef was taking her choices away. Almost as if he knew she wouldn’t be able to handle the fallout of that kind of decision on her own, so he took it from her hands.

His gaze was on her, hard with determination but also with a flicker of compassion for her internal struggle. Then his gaze strayed back to Shaun’s mother and, once she was looking at him, he said his piece.

Your daughter stays with me. There will be no question of her leaving at any time. You will reconcile yourself to this fact.

“And if I can’t?” Fatima asked brokenly.

Shaun answered, her words an echo of what Leeza had said to her all those months ago when Shaun had asked a similar question. “You don’t want to know.”

Jozef didn’t answer, instead signing, I will leave you to speak with your daughter. An apartment on the floor below will be prepared for you.

Jozef turned to leave, striding quickly toward the door as though he couldn’t wait to get out of there. If Shaun had been in a better mood, she might have laughed at his haste to leave the presence of a woman he would consider his mother-in-law. He was a gangster through and through, and though Shaun knew he loved his aunt and cousins, he had no idea how to handle soft emotions.

“Jozef,” Shaun called out. “I want to stay with my mother.”

He didn’t answer, closing and locking the door behind himself as he left. She supposed he didn’t need to answer; there was no chance he would let her stay anywhere that wasn’t with him.

“I’m exhausted.” Fatima’s voice was high and thin, as though she was on the verge of tears.

Shaun wrapped an arm around her. “Come on, let’s sit down. I’ll get you a glass of water?”

“Do you have any tea?” Fatima asked.

“I’ll find some.”

Shaun pressed a glass of cold water into her mother’s hand, insisting she drink it all while Shaun set a kettle to boil and dug through the cupboards until she found a basket filled with different teas. She took a mug out of the cupboard and chose a chamomile honey tea. The calming effects of the chamomile would help with some of the shock her mother was likely experiencing.

She set the cup down on the coffee table and sank onto the cushion next to Fatima.

“I’m so sorry about all this,” Shaun said, as Fatima picked up her mug of tea and blew on the steam.

“You have nothing to be sorry for, baby.” Fatima shook her head and gingerly took a sip of the brew, closing her eyes for a few seconds as she savoured the hot beverage. “I was the idiot who travelled halfway across the world with a cat and traipsed into mafia headquarters without a plan.”

Shaun giggled and then covered her mouth, her eyes flaring wide. “You brought Fitzy!” She surged to her feet and ran to the crate on the floor, yanking open the metal closure on the door.

A ball of angry orange fluff flew past her and streaked across the floor, headed for the dining table. He huddled underneath a chair, his eyes wide and fearful.

“He hates flying,” Fatima said from the couch, taking another sip of her tea. “Peed his crate and meowed the whole way.”

“Why didn’t you leave him with Monique?” Shaun named her cousin, who reluctantly took the cat when Fatima wasn’t available.

Fatima shrugged. “I didn’t know how long I’d be gone, and I suspected something like this might happen.”

“Mom, you could’ve gotten yourself killed.”

“I know that now,” she said defensively. “Thank goodness Jozef loves you too much to kill your poor mom.”

Shaun grinned. Fatima was right, Jozef loved her.

She slid across the floor, crawling toward her cat who was still under the table, his fur so fluffed up he looked like an orange poof with eyes. “I don’t know if the same can be said of Fitzy. I have no idea where Jozef stands on pet cats.”

“He doesn’t look like a cat person to me.” Fatima shook her head.

Shaun laughed, suddenly feeling better than she