“Hold on.” I heard things clanking in the background. “What?”
Raff laughed at her tone. I opened my drawer, stuck my hand in, then a second later, pulled it out, giving him the bird.
“Lunch,” I said. “You and me. Sullivan’s.”
“Can’t,” she said. “I’m busy. And besides, you just got towork. On a Sunday.”
“We eat together,” I said, reminding her.
“Not every meal. Dinner.”
“I changed my mind.”
“Too late. Gotta go.”
“Keely,” I said, catching her a second before she hung up. “What are you doing, darlin’?”
“Wouldn’t you love to know.” Then she hung up on me.
Raff snorted. “Jessica Rabbit is a fucking spitfire. I like the fox’s moxie.”
“Jessica Rabbit,” I said, looking up at him.
“Your girl. She has red hair and a body that could kill, so…”
The paperweight that used to sit on my old man’s desk sat on mine. Too quick for him to dodge, I threw it at Raff’s head. His head went back with the impact and it fell to the floor with a clang. It hit him in the spot right above his eyes.
“Next time my wife’s body comes to your mind, remember that to fucking knock it out.” What the fuck was wrong with this guy? Better yet, what the fuck was wrong with me? I’d just hit my cousin with a metal weight because he’d been thinking about mine.
“You’re a fucking asshole, Cash,” he said, rubbing the spot. It was already swelling. “Back to business. Our community is growing by the second.”
Fucking grand. The hit had knocked some sense into him. He was back on track. When he said “our community,” he meant the men who’d decided to join us.
“John Gerald’s son in?” I said. “Martin?”
“Clean now.” Raff nodded. “And working for you.”
“Grady’s going to start hitting us even harder since we’re growing.”
“You’re setting off that temper.”
“Make sure everyone’s on guard.”
“You,” he said. “Be sure none of that alley shit happens again. Lee cuts your head off, that’s the end for all of us. For good.”
Cormick Grady was known as the Butcher. Lee had that same gruesome streak, but he saved the massacre for personal offenses.
“But at least the Scarpones are not getting involved with our feud,” Raff continued. “That saves us some trouble.”
“For now,” I said. “They’re too busy trying to find out who’s fucking with them.”
“Works for us.” He shrugged.
Silence filled the room, but our thoughts were loud. We both knew that we needed to make a big move. I was the marauder, stealing was my specialty, but I had to play this right. Hitting small shipments wounded and led to bigger wounds over time. But I wanted to cripple them in one go—and fast. Grady was tired of working small loads. He was ready to go bigger, since he’d set this up over the years with the Scarpones.
His first big shipment, his life’s work, I’d already claimed as mine. Unless the ghost, who I sensed was Macchiavello, got to it first.
A knock came at the door, and Raff and I both turned to look. Susan came in a second later, holding a plain envelope.
