I blew out a painful breath as I rubbed a spot below my chest. “No idea. But I wasn’t waiting around for his ass, not with dead bodies.” My ulcer was giving me problems as of late. At least I thought I had an ulcer. I’d never been medically diagnosed.
The ringing of my cell echoed through the run-down building as Vince whipped his gaze at me.
No Caller ID flashed on screen. Gustavo and Rosario’s calls always came through with no name or number.
“Yeah,” I answered after hitting the speaker button.
“What the fuck is going on?” Gustavo shouted, his gruff voice echoing in the empty space.
“Are you at the container yard?” I asked.
“No, I’m pulling a bullet out of my shoulder. We got ambushed at a light. I just found my phone. I tried to contact Manuel and Joe, who were in the truck, but no answer.”
“That’s because they’re dead.”
“Fuuuuuck!”
Vince and I glanced at one another, feeling the same way.
“By the time Vince and I got there, your men were dead. No truck in sight.”
“Motherfucker.” The sound of glass breaking came through the line. “What the fuck is going on?”
“Million-dollar question. But Rosario is going to rain hell down.”
“I don’t want to make that call,” Gustavo said. “She is going to yank my balls off.”
Rosario Mendoza, head of the Colombian Cartel and a bitch of a lady, ruthless and deadly, was one person not to fuck with.
I rubbed a knot on the back of my neck. “Who has Rosario pissed off lately? Because I can promise you no one in my organization is responsible.”
He growled. “The fucking world. I’ll do some digging on my end. You do the same. We’ll be in touch.” The line went dead.
Vince cleared his throat. “I have another thought. We were using Jeremy Pitt’s warehouse. Do you think he could be behind this?”
The Russian mob boss wouldn’t steal from the cartel or me. “Pitt would never kill for guns. That’s not his style, and he has access to them through me. Besides, he has enough of an arsenal for his security firm, but I will talk to him. Let’s get out of here.”
I needed a drink, a good fuck, and an hour in the gym, in that particular order.
By the time Vince and I reached my nightclub, Rosario’s harsh and screeching voice was blaring over Bluetooth in my SUV.
“Find those guns, Duke. I want you and Gustavo picking apart the city.”
“I will do my best,” I said as calmly as I could. “But which one of your enemies has a mole inside your organization? Arturo Rodriguez? He’s been trying to gain market share.”
“Who says your people aren’t behind this?” she asked.
She had the drug and gun trades sewn up to about ninety percent in the New England area. McCauley handled her drug business while I managed the illegal firearms side. But Arturo was making more inroads in Boston, using low-level gangs to filter his drugs through the pipeline. He might be trying to do the same with guns.
“Rosario, I respect you, but I would never fuck you. And the only people privy to the meeting tonight were Vince and me. I would stake my life on that. So I suggest you find your mole.”
“If Arturo is involved,” she said, “this is war.”
Vince and I shared a grim look. That was all we needed, bloodshed on the streets of Boston. The thought of ending up in a body bag or rotting in a cell seemed more like a very real possibility than ever before.
3
DUKE
