I pulled my gun out.
“Ah ah ah,” Eduardo said as, to the side, the waitress hit the floor with a yip. “We outnumber you. We control how this will go. We just want to talk, Mason.”
Connor literally growled behind me. I wanted to echo him, least of all because I knew that Eduardo could say more to me than he could just about anyone else in the Black Reapers.
“I don’t know what the fuck you want me to say, Eduardo,” I said. “I want to fucking kill you. You want to kill me. Your friends want to kill me. My friend here wants to kill you.”
“Killing is something you are rather good at, isn’t it?”
I could feel the heat rising. I’d suppressed the memories so well, but back before there were Black Reapers, before there were Bernard Boys, before there were even Bandits…
“Take a seat in that booth over there,” Eduardo said, nodding. “You listen to us, no one gets hurt.”
“And I’m supposed to take your fucking word for it?”
Eduardo snickered.
“What other option do you have?”
None. We had no other option.
I turned to Connor and motioned for him to move to the booth. The two of us grabbed our beers—not for drinking, but as a weapon we could keep our hands on without suspicion—and walked sideways to the booth, careful not to take our eyes off Eduardo and the Bandits.
I sat on the inside of the booth, letting Connor sit on the edge. It was far more likely I would crack at some point, but it was damn well telling about our situation that Connor, of all fucking people, was the one I trusted to keep the peace.
“Now then,” Eduardo said as he took a seat in the booth across from me. His two men remained standing. Connor, taking note of this, also got out of his seat. The Bandits didn’t even watch him, let alone try and stop them. “What have the last couple of years brought us?”
“A hell of a lot closer to making peace in this town.”
Eduardo laughed. I’d forgotten that he had such an obnoxious laugh—it fired like a machine gun, paused to draw breath, and then went back again. So fucking annoying, just the kind of thing that you wanted to choke the shit out of to shut the fuck up.
“You call all of the murder and shootouts peace?” Eduardo said. “How is this any different from when you and I were kids?”
I bit my lip and said nothing. I wasn’t smart enough to get into a verbal wrestling match with Eduardo. And unfortunately, he knew more about me than anyone—even Hannah.
“Flash back a year and a half ago. I give my boys the chance to have some fun in the town, but we have a good thing going with the cop. We won’t do anything worse than robbery, and he’ll turn the other way. No one gets hurt, the poor get a little richer, and everyone understands how the game is played.”
“I’d beg to fucking differ.”
“I bet you would about a lot of things, but reality doesn’t work like that.”
My nostrils flared as I took a deep breath in.
“Sure, some of you boys would occasionally step up and try and fight, but it never got fatal, did it? Until you guys decided to ramp up the game.”
“Us?”
“Yes, you,” he said. “You and that fucking little midget man in downtown Albuquerque decided you needed to get more violent about protecting the peace. And then you killed Derek.”
“Because he was about to rape Tara Rogers, in case you forgot.”
I really wished Eduardo had come by himself. Though we were roughly the same height, I had a lot more muscle than him, and even he had avoided fistfights with me as much as he could.
“By then, the can had popped. There was no putting anything back in its place. All of this is to say, Mason, that you think you win, and the town gets more peaceful?”
He smirked.
“Maybe for everyone else who has found their old lady, they’ll live happily ever after. Sure, Tats over here and his gas station lady can keep pumping gas, if you know what I mean. But what about you, Mason? You’re the only one of the boys without love. I wonder why that is?”
