He kisses the side of my head, then releases me.
C’s expression is unchanged, like he didn’t just witness a heartfelt exchange. “So anytime you talk to law enforcement, you’ll ask for a lawyer, right? And you’re good with Talbot?”
“Yes.”
“All right. And you’ve heard our concerns about him. So if he takes a bad tone with you, I want to hear about it.”
“I work for a tech company with a zero tolerance policy on these kinds of issues, C, so I’ve had to do courses. If Talbot tries to diminish me, I’ll call him on it.”
“Go ahead. But I also want to hear. Classes are one thing. Real life is something else. Besides, not everyone speaks up the way you say you will, and we need to know for their sake too.”
“Did ‘Vil already talk to Talbot? If not, I’ll do it,” Trick says. I’m glad I won’t be there for that. Trick’s grim expression makes him look dangerous.
“No. No one’s talking to him yet. The Coins cops want to talk to Rachel about the fire. Talbot’s going with her. I want you to put a device on her. You know how Anvil is these days. If a branch caught Rachel’s sweater as she walked by, he’d be ready to knock down the tree. You wire her and then you and I will listen to the way Talbot talks to her and we’ll see.”
“Good.”
“Last thing. Pauly Mangia sent an email, trying to set up a meet for us with the Leones.”
“Mangia mentioned me?”
“No. Us, C Crue.”
“More Palermo funerals coming up, and Mangia missed his invitation again. Shame.”
“I hate Pauly Mangia,” Zoe says, setting down her phone.
“Mmm hmm,” C says, his hand sliding down to stroke her side, his knuckle brushing the side of her breast. “I’m gonna call Leone direct. With Enzo either missing or dead and Tony in the hospital fighting cancer, there will be dogs sniffing around, looking for scraps. The Leones aren’t the only ones who’ve reached out.”
Trick clenches his jaw. “We left all the big cities alone by design. Yet here in Smallville, which we’ve finally settled, we’re now gonna have the supervillain of the week visit? We took this town. No one helped us with a single fucking thing. You asked, and their answer was no or silence. Do you remember what I said back then? No one who turns us down at the beginning should get a piece of us later.”
“I didn’t ask the Leones back then. And you know why we should at least meet with them.”
I remember the gossip about a mob boss’s son being murdered in Coynston. He’d been Rachel Palermo’s fiancé, Alberto Leone. Trick mentioned the name Leone when he was out of his head the night he got shot. Did C Crue kill Alberto Leone? And do they now need to be nice to the Leones to avoid an act of retribution?
“We don’t owe the Leones shit. That was settled last year. And back in the day when we left Frank, they knew the situation. Everyone in Boston and New York did.”
I’d had no idea that when it was first formed, C Crue reached out to other established syndicates for help in their fight against Frank Palermo. They’d been so bold and so tough, so reportedly deadly themselves, that they hadn’t seemed to need anyone’s help. It was just one more wrong assumption I’d made.
“Trick,” C says in a mild tone.
Trick folds his arms across his chest.
C laughs and looks up at the ceiling. “You’ve got an uncle-sized chip on your shoulder. I need you to brush that off for a few minutes.”
“I’m listening.”
“The Leones do not care about Coynston. Even we don’t use Coins as a hub for most things. Coins is just C Crue home base because we live here. You know that. You said that yourself.”
“If no one cares about it, why are they lighting up your phone?”
“Because C Crue has a golden boy who doubled the Callahans’ revenue in two months after one trip to Boston.”
“You know why we helped the Callahans. When I couldn’t get to Jersey fast enough that time, you called and they went. They were the only ones in that first year to take a call from us, and they never asked for a payback.”
“You’ve masterminded seventeen new schemes in the last fifteen months. This much profit… we can’t keep up. We have to expand. You know it.”
“We can expand on our own. Because I didn’t look so golden to anyone when I left. People helped Frank hunt us by feeding him information. Ask me for the names, C.”
