Cash snorts. “It’s not every fucking day a big-shot Mafia don gets indicted on seventy-five felony charges.” At that, he cringes, giving her an apologetic look. “Sorry.”
She gets a little faraway look in her eyes but shakes it off with a shrug. “No big deal. I have much bigger fish to fry than to worry about what trouble my papá’s in.”
“What about your mom?” he says, stuffing his hands in the pockets of his black dress pants. “Last I heard, she was still AWOL.”
“Uh, yeah.” Elena shifts, tension creasing her forehead. In the stroller, the baby starts sputtering, indicating she’s on the verge of waking up, so Elena uses her heel to rock her back to sleep. “No clue where Carmen is. Weird how people can just disappear, isn’t it?”
The three of us just stare at each other for a beat, some unspoken understanding passing between us—or at least, between Elena and me. Something that says people don’t just disappear.
Not unless you want them to.
Clearing her throat, Elena gives me a tight smile. “Well, it was nice seeing you two. Lenny, maybe one day we can get together over coffee, get to know each other? Since our men are such close friends, I’m sure we’ll be seeing a lot of each other.”
“Jonas and your husband are good friends?”
Her eyes narrow, and she puts one hand on her hip. “You don’t know your fiancé’s friends?”
My gaze darts around the area, picking up on the eavesdroppers. A soft gasp comes from somewhere, but when I search silently for the source, I come up empty.
“Well, obviously I know them. I just mean… you know. Since they’re both so closed off, it’s hard to consider them as more than acquaintances.”
Pursing her lips, she processes my reply, nodding after several awkward beats of silence. I’m not sure she believes me, but she nods anyway.
Maybe she just wants to get away from us.
“Right. So, dinner?”
30
Few things have a more melodious sound than that of a grown man’s tears.
Screams come in a close second, but there’s something about the tears that reach me on a molecular level. It’s basal and totally tantalizing, and my favorite thing about my job is that I get to test out all the ways I can provoke the response.
Some men, like the scrawny bloke sobbing into the floor in front of me with his naked arse in the air, break immediately.
They’re no fun.
Raising my pistol, I fit it against the back of the boy’s head, giving him one last chance to confess his greatest sin.
I already know it, of course. The fact that he had his hands on Lenny at all didn’t bode well for him in the first place, but knowing that they were there without her consent…
Pop.
Blood and flesh fragment as the bullet tears through his skull, ricocheting across the room as it sails out the other side.
Turning my attention to Samuel, a slightly overweight fellow with a square jaw, I bend down and press my thumb into the brand on the side of his neck. He screams into the silk tie hanging from his mouth, and I sigh.
“Your screaming is going to alarm my customers,” I tell him, glancing at the locked office door. “Perhaps that’s on me for once again choosing to do this here, but I don’t want to take the blame, you see? So, I’m going to shift it onto you. Let that guilt eat away at your conscience. Feel free to give me a confession in return.”
Tugging the tie from his mouth, I watch his face transform from unbridled fear to unadulterated fury.
My eyes narrow, watching as his mouth twists up. “If you spit on me, mate, I’ll be forced to cut out your tongue. Have you ever choked on your own blood? It’s not the most pleasant experience, I’ll tell you.”
He groans, his hands straining against the metal cuffs they’re bound in behind his back. “Why are you doing this?”
“Oh, bloody hell. Listen up this time, would you? I know you had nonconsensual relations with my fiancée.”
“Fuck, man, I haven’t put my dick in a girl in almost a year—”
Gritting my teeth, I swap the pistol for my branding iron, fisting the handle and whipping my arm forward. The end slices across his face, and the sound of his cheekbone splitting echoes in the air around us.
“Lenny Primrose doesn’t ring a bell, then?”
He spits out a tooth. “Oh, shit.”
I take the iron to the other side of his face, creating a symmetrical mess of broken bone and flesh. “That’s what I thought. So, tell me what possessed you to touch something that belongs to me?”
“She didn’t belong to you at the time.”
“Semantics, really.” In truth, I don’t appreciate his reminder, because all it does is reiterate that even now, she isn’t mine.
Not that I want her to be.
I just don’t want her to be anyone else’s, either.
The thought of anyone seeing her the way I’ve gotten to over the last few weeks, naked and completely in her element hunched over a painting, or humming to herself as she snacks when she thinks I’m not looking, sets my entire soul on fire.
A fire I have no idea how to tend to, except by fanning the flames and hoping they don’t spiral out of control.
Still, when I grab a fistful of Samuel’s short hair and rip his head back, I’m aware that I’m very slowly losing it, anyway. Whatever control I had where Lenny Primrose is concerned grows thinner with each day, and I don’t know how to stop it.
She should be scared of me.
I should be staying away from her.
Neither of us seems to know what’s good for us.
“L-look man, I didn’t mean anything b-by it,” he manages. “Preston said she was game and that we could have a go at her if we paid. No one knew she was drunk until we’d already started. She hadn’t even had that much to drink, and she agreed—”
“Sam, Sam, Sam.” Sighing, I wrap my arm around the back of his neck, slapping my palm down over his mouth. “Not the answer I’m looking for. I already know you’re a piece of shit, now tell me who the brain behind your operation is.”
His brows furrow, and I sigh. Bloody pillock.
“Who does Preston owe money to?”
My hand slides up slightly, and he sucks in air. “Mr. Primrose! Tom. H-he loaned Preston money for some business venture, or something, and Preston l-lost it. It was a lot, too. More than he was ever going to get for his whore.”
His words cause a stutter in the rhythm of my heartbeat, sending ice water through my veins.
Depending on the amount, it sounds like Tom was planning on using Preston for some seedy operation, and Preston likely lied to Lenny about it being from gambling. They were probably working on a laundering front, or some shitty investment that’d wind up bankrupting a company and seeing its assets go up in flames.
It’s the exact scenario I saw play out over a decade ago, only this time with new players.
This time, there’s no hospital to be destroyed. No innocent patients left to fend for themselves, or money to be collected from insurance after the fire.
This time, my father isn’t around to play patsy.
But I am.
If Tom wants to reignite old flames of war, I’m game.