Caleb

Chapter Fifty Three

James~

James straightened his tie, checking his polished appearance in the mirror before heading into Manny's office.

"How was your meeting with Santiago?" Manny asked with his feet arrogantly propped up on the desk.

Would you just look at this disgusting motherfucker? He thinks he can't be touched.

"Fine, he showed me the new books for the restaurant chains and they are pretty air tight." James said, hiding the disgust in his voice.

He had been working alongside Santiago and the other mob bosses, setting up dirty deals and investing in their fraudulent companies in order to pass along the details of their inner workings to Alpha team.

"Well it'll be a whole lot easier to hide cooked books with your bitch sister out of the picture." Manny spat, causing the hairs on the back of James' neck to stand on end.

You're gonna pay for talking about my sister like that.

"In fact that's exactly why I wanted to see you. I know we ran into some logistical issues with our original plan, but I wanted you to know that it is currently being taken care of."

James arched a brow at Manny, visibly confused by his vague statement.

"I hired someone in the states to take care of our little...problem last night. We should have confirmation within a few hours."

Oh my God, Lainey.

"I thought we discussed this. We decided that waiting for her to return to Colombia was the best plan of action. That taking her out here would be much easier and less likely to be tied back to us. So many Cartels and other mob bosses are gunning for her to punish her for Ricardo's crimes, the set up would have been easy." James said, trying to conceal his absolute rage.

The only reason that James had come up with that bullshit plan was because he knew that Caleb would never allow Lainey to return to Colombia, not after what had happened at the safe house, which Manny had also orchestrated behind his back.

He's starting to cut me out of decisions...he needs to be taken care of now...not later. Now.

"Don't worry. I was careful." Manny said arrogantly.

James pushed out an irritated breath and clenched his fists at his sides.

"Tell me everything. This isn't just your ass on the line, Manny. If you fucked this up I go down too." James hissed, trying to get Manny to divulge as many details as possible.

"Relax. My man in the states has been using two different untraceable burner phones and I've been using the company phone system and not my personal device to set up the details. There's no way he is tied to you or me. If numbers are traced back here, they will be traced to an empty office and that I have falsified records of a disgruntled employee who lost his job when Lainey signed the company over."  Manny's sadistic grin was unnerving and cruel and James wanted nothing more than to punish him for it.

"Which office so I know to stay fucking clear of it." James growled, still gathering intel.

Manny took his feet off of the desk in an irritated motion, scribbling down the office number and phone extension before thrusting it in James' direction.

"You know James, you should have a little more faith in my abilities. I've been doing this a long time." Manny said with a laugh that made James' skin crawl.

Which is exactly why you deserve to die...badly.

"Yeah well I want to be kept in the loop Manny." James barked at Manny, trying to hide his panicked fear for Lainey's safety.