He certainly wasn’t prepared for when Rickard grabbed him, spun him and wrapped a hand around his jaw. A quick jerk back on the man’s head and a swipe of the blade was all it took.

Next on his checklist was that Guarapo’s indiscreet betrayal had killed Joe Hunter when the honor should have been his. Rickard might have come here to murder his employer, but it didn’t mean that he wouldn’t have seen the job through. A deal was a deal, the way he viewed things: only Jimena Grajales broke contracts.

Alvaro Silva was another point of anger. Had he ordered Rickard murdered or was that solely Guarapo’s plan? Maybe he’d been harboring a plan for revenge since they first met and Rickard had tickled his balls with the tip of his knife. That was something to think on later. There was something far more pressing on his mind.

Alisha.

The way Jimena made it sound, his wife hadn’t betrayed him at all. She hadn’t led men to his apartment. Not killers sent by Jimena. But the fact remained, Alisha had conspired against him with the men he’d killed in Miami. Any way that he looked at it, the bitch needed punishing. Maybe it was as simple as that Alisha had been having an affair with the man he’d surprised in the elevator and the man had come back with some friends to do away with the competition. In retrospect Rickard recalled thinking that they weren’t very good when he’d killed them, not professionals. Proof of his theory of Alisha’s infidelity was the way in which she’d run off, seeking solace and protection in the arms of another man. Rickard had never learned the name of the cocaine dealer in Liberty City, but he didn’t doubt that he’d been screwing Alisha when Rickard was out of town.

Bitch!

The thing that angered him most was that Alisha hadn’t died. He believed Jimena’s words. There was no reason for her to lie. She knew she was going to die, so why mention that his wife had survived? Unless it was to anger him, to throw him off while she positioned the gun she had hidden in her bed. Perhaps she thought he’d be so stunned that he wouldn’t notice what she was doing and would not react in time. But he didn’t think so. Jimena wasn’t afraid to die: in fact it looked like she had fully embraced the idea. She’d only intended taking him with her. She’d told him that Alisha was still alive to score some points on him before she died. One up for the girls!

Yeah, we’ll see about that.

And after he finished with Alisha he had a date with that other cow, Imogen Ballard. He’d promised her that things weren’t finished.