“He’d need that.”
“How, though?” the guy asks me quizzically. “We’re not making shit. Wallace was pushing all the drugs, and no one wanted to work with him. Matteo…he isn’t professional, man. We’re doing petty theft. That’s…some high school bullshit.”
That gives me pause.
Matteo would have to be working with someone who could fund men to march against us. I couldn’t imagine he’d be thrilled with the idea.
“You wouldn’t happen to know who, would you?”
“No,” the guy says. “But it’s new. I know that. We’re recruiting left and right.”
The Void is recruiting left and right.
Stepping away, I leave a trail of gasoline behind me as Ozzy follows at my side. “Cut it off,” I command. “Every new guy who signs up either dies or disappears.”
“Done,” he mutters as I fish a lighter out of my pocket.
“I can get more information!” the guy says. “I can report back!”
My phone begins to buzz in my jeans, and I retrieve that, too, revealing my father’s name on the screen.
Igniting the lighter, I mindlessly drop it onto the trail of gas and hear the fire roar to life before the sniper dude’s blood-curdling screams hit my eardrums, causing the hair on my arms to rise.
It’s not because he’s in pain.
But that I hear Bay’s cries in it.
The ones she would spout if we don’t end this shit. The light sobs I heard when she barricaded herself in her bedroom when she received confirmation Wallace was dead.
It makes me physically sick to think of all of us gone and leaving her behind to fend for herself. I’m down Reeve, Torin is recovering, Ozzy is starting to obsess, and I’ve got everything else on my plate.
“Yeah?” I answer on the last ring as Ozzy and I make our way out into the parking lot of one of our warehouses. The screams of anguish still pinging off the walls.
“Are you alright?”
“Alive,” I reply. “And taking care of some business.”
“Your mother is worried sick over this shit, Cairo,” my father grinds out. “I can’t say I’m a fan of all that’s going on either.”
“It’s handled.”
“With all due respect, son, it’snot.”
My eyes narrow as the night air begins to swell around Ozzy and me. “What are you saying? That the South Shore girl isn’t worth it?”
“I’m not saying that at all. But you are the King of Wharf Bay. And you haven’t even been anointed for that position yet.”
“I’ve been busy.”
“I get that. Shit hit the fan. You’re doing the best you can. However, there’s still business to handlehere. And last time I checked, she hadn’t fully agreed to work with us.”
“She has.”
“Then why isn’t she on The Landing’s seat yet?”
“She just lost Wallace.”
My father isn’t Emilio Wildes. He’s careful with his words. He, more than likely, rehearsed what he was going to say before he even called. It doesn’t take a neuroscientist to know I’m under pressure, stress, and with too much on my hands.
