Victor - Her Ruthless Husband (Ruthless Triad 3)

But then he ruthlessly suppresses that useless emotion.

Jasmine is a means to an end. A pawn in his game with Kuang’s son. He can’t let himself forget that.

The phone he left on the nightstand vibrates, interrupting his thoughts. He frowns when he sees that the call is from Phantom.

That’s unusual. Phantom never calls by himself. Han and the third Silent Triad Dragon either text or speak on three-way FaceTime calls with Victor.

The last time he got a solo call from either Victor or Phantom, it had been because they wanted him to decamp from Hawaii. That had been over four months ago, so that might be why Phantom was calling again.

But Han can’t return to Rhode Island yet. He’s still working his plan.

He picks up the phone to tell Phantom exactly that.

But before he can get a word in, Phantom says, “Han, man, you have to come home. We’ve got the first phase of the Delaware deal coming up next week, and I can't handle this shit with Victor.”

Han frowns but quickly adapts. “What's going on with Victor?”

“He let her go,” Phantom answers, his tone grim.

Han immediately understands who “her” is. Her had been the same person for the last fifteen years. Victor's only weakness.

This is why Han has trouble believing his brother would actually let her go.

“You mean he agreed to leave her alone for a little while?” Han says, sure that Phantom isn’t explaining things clearly.

“No, I mean he let her go,” Phantom insists. “He pulled the guys watching the Ferraros. She's in the wind, but he says he's not going to try to find her. He signed some document her lawyer sent over, promising he wouldn’t go anywhere near her. He was basically like, ‘me and her are done.’”

Alarm bells go off in Han’s head at this latest twist in Victor’s strange romance saga. But then it occurs to him, “This is a good thing, right? We've been telling him to let her go for years.”

“Yeah, that's what I thought, too, for, like, a day or three,” Phantom answers. “But dude went to his room, and he hasn't come out. He’s not handling any kind of business. When I asked him about the Delaware Deal, he basically said, ‘fuck it, I don’t give a shit.’”

“Victor said this,” Han repeats, finding this even harder to believe than his brother finally letting Dawn go. From the start of The Silent Triad, Victor has worked harder than either Han or Phantom. Han sometimes suspected that he had liked only letting loose with Dawn once a year because that left 364 days to work nonstop.

He was like a machine, always negotiating, always calculating, always future banking, as both he and his father called sowing seeds for future triad harvests.

But if what Phantom is saying is correct, the machine has broken down.

“I'm telling you, that's exactly what he said,” Phantom insists. “For the last week, he's been in his room, barely eating. No showers. He’s just drinking bottles of Japanese whiskey straight to the head and playing this one weird song over and over again on repeat. Have you ever heard of this track, ‘Happy Ending’?”

“Not outside of a massage parlor,” Han answers.

“Me either. I had to Shazam that shit. It’s by some dude from the French version of The Voice. I don't even know how he knows it. But if I hear it one more time, I’m going to go over to fucking Europe and punch that skinny bitch straight in his face.”

Phantom abruptly stops talking. And Han can hear the opening strains of a song in the background. It sounds dramatic, and this must be the one Phantom was complaining about because he says, “Okay, I’m flying to France. And if you’re serious about that chosen brother shit you got going on with Victor, you need to get your ass back here to do some kind of intervention or something. Plus, you and I both know I’m not the guy to handle that Delaware Deal next month.”

No, Phantom isn’t. Han started setting up this triangulated deal years ago, using a Wilmington-based Latin street gang for the intake and a national MC for the distribution. It’s worth millions of dollars. Han had planned to come back to see it through, but not until next month, figuring Victor would handle all the prep details. However, if he’s as bad off as Phantom’s saying…

“What’s up? You look pissed.”

Jasmine’s voice brings his head up from the phone call. She’s reentered the room wrapped in nothing but a towel. And despite the situation, Han stirs again as he so often does when she’s in the same vicinity.

On the other side of the line, Phantom says, “Is that a girl’s voice? Did you get a real early start out there? Because I know you never let them spend the night.”