Angel watched me. “What changed then?”
I respected him too much to lie, so I came clean. We both treaded water as I recounted what had transpired between me and his great uncle the day I got suspended for breaking a kid’s arm. Angel listened, his face a mask as I admitted I’d been paid to befriend him.
When I was finished, he asked, “So Uncle Carlo pays you to hang out with me?”
“Yes. But I’d be your friend even if he didn’t.” Angel had grown on me. He wasn’t like the other rich kids at the school. Sure, he was a geeky whiz-kid born with a silver spoon in his mouth, but he was also a genuinely nice guy. He brought me food and helped me with my homework. His family was the most powerful in the city, but Angel was never cruel nor condescending. “You’ve become like a brother to me. If my job ended today, I’d still want us to be tight.”
He nodded. “And your family needs the money, so it all works out.”
“Yeah.”
“You had to do what you did to survive. I get it.” I’d expected him to be angry or hurt, but he looked almost relieved. He stretched backwards, floating on top of the water. “Besides, it could be worse.”
I gaped at him, wondering what could possibly be worse than finding out your best friend was being paid to hang out with you.
He cracked a smile. “One of the other families could be paying you.”
Angel had never had a friend before. Not a real one, anyway. Everyone in his life wanted something from him, so he’d assumed I did too. My family could suddenly pay our bills, so he was worried I was a traitor, probably selling information about him. That was the first time I got a full look at how fucked up his life really was. My family was dirt poor, but at least I had friends. None of them were like Angel, though.
And I would have never gotten to know Angel had Carlo not offered me the job.
“I appreciate everything you and the family have done for me,” I told Carlo honestly.
“Good.” He nodded his approval. “I’m gonna shoot straight with you, Bones, like I always have. I’m disappointed that you haven’t gotten your hands on Joey Durante yet. Despite my disappointment, I still believe in you. I still think you could be the greatest of all my enforcers. Seems like you’ve been going through some sort of slump, but I think I’ve got just the thing to get you back on track. I found out where Xaoc is holed up. I’m calling Renzo in, and I want the two of you to take a team of soldiers and bring that asshole to me. Then we’re gonna shake him down and find out if he’s connected to Joey.”
“Yessir,” I replied.
Carlo slid me a piece of paper while glancing at his phone. “Here’s the address; Renzo’s pulling up in the driveway now.”
Dismissed, I started to leave, but Carlo called out my name and stopped me. When I spun around, he stood right in front of me, his eyes were hard and his brows were slanted in anger. He wound up and sucker punched me in the gut. Doubling over, I coughed, surprised at the power behind the old man’s punch.
He shook his hand out and returned to his desk, giving me one more dark look. “Don’t disappoint me again,” he said before dismissing me with a wave of his hand.
Renzo was waiting in the driveway for me with a team already assembled. Xaoc had been staying at a resort in Jean, and Renzo’s SUV made the normally forty-minute trip in about twenty-five. One of Renzo’s men hacked into the resort’s security system and turned off the cameras as we raided Xaoc’s room, taking out his two guards before finding him passed out on the bed with a couple of underage-looking girls. We left the girls behind, but confiscated about ten kilos of heroine, a couple ounces of meth, and several automatic weapons.
Xaoc turned out to be one crazy motherfucker who had no game plan, as far as I could tell. We broke five of his fingers, smashed his hand with a mallet, took out his kneecaps, and removed all of his toenails, but kept insisting that he knew nothing about Joey Durante. In the end, Carlo tied a rope around Xaoc’s neck, giving me one side of it and Renzo the other side so we could treat Xaoc to the Italian Rope Trick before dumping his body alongside the highway south of Vegas.
Carlo’s hits were normally a lot cleaner than that, but he was bound and determined to make an example out of Xaoc. The next asshole who tried to move into our territory would think twice about it.
CHAPTER SEVENTEEN
Ariana
THE DAY AFTER Christmas, the restaurant was slow, giving me entirely too much time to dwell on my relationship with Bones. If I could even call it a relationship. We’d done nothing to define it. Hell, we hadn’t even said whether or not we were exclusive. It was just great companionship and even greater sex.
That probably didn’t mean much to normal people, but it was the healthiest relationship I’d ever experienced with a man.
Despite wanting some sort of label to define ‘us,’ I’d managed not to push him, keeping everything casual and friendly with no strings and no expectations. I’d handled his work disappearances like a goddamn boss, never letting my worries or frustration seep over into our time together. Never texting or calling him to see what he was up to, never admitting that the nights without him felt lonely.
Bones said he couldn’t promise me anything, so I took what he could give and didn’t ask for more. But man, I wanted more. I wanted everything.
Bones was home a lot during Christmas, which made the holiday much easier to bear. We even spent Christmas morning at his mom’s house, eating a homemade breakfast and opening presents like a real family. And when Marcella referred to me as Bones’s girlfriend, he didn’t correct her.
I tried not to read too much into that, but the idea of being Bones’s girlfriend made my heart soar.
My life was definitely looking up. Even work was going well. Pervy Pete had been on his best behavior since rehiring me, and my first paid night at the Acropolis had been downright magical, earning me enough tips to pay my phone bill, stock my refrigerator, and buy a bottle of decent wine to celebrate with Bones. I felt like I was living in a dream, and the realist side of me kept whispering that all dreams had to eventually end.
But if this was a dream, I refused to wake up.
