“Shaped like a woman,” he said. “Started getting antsy at one point, like she had to piss.”
“Did she?” Gio asked.
“My cameras caught her running across the street a few minutes later. There’s an all-night market. It made my men suspicious, her loitering around. The camera caught her fifteen minutes before that coming out of All-Night Sushi down the street.”
“No wonder she had to go,” Gio said. “She got the fucking trots from eating hot sushi.”
Jin grinned. “She didn’t appear in any footage for the rest of the night.”
“I hope someone checked on her from the market.” Gio wasn’t being funny, which sometimes made him endearing, which was a far cry from Bugsy.
“Did your men catch her again?” I asked.
“Swipe,” Jin said, nodding to the phone.
I did, and there she was again. Her face seemed covered, but the build was feminine. I pinched my fingers against the screen, trying to get a better look at her eyes.
“What makes you think this woman was suspicious?” Umberto asked while I kept trying to find anything that would give me a hint of who this woman was.
“No one loiters outside of my club unless they’re looking for entrance or trouble. Once, maybe not knowing any better or lost—yeah. But she came back again, and the next day, one of my men was hit and stabbed.”
I looked up and met his eyes. He nodded.
“Facial scan hasn’t found anything on her,” he said.
My eyes were hard on the picture because I was missing fucking something. Jin seemed convinced it was a woman. The fire at my apartment complex, where Linda Davies lived, would prove my theory true. Whoever this was had an issue with my wife. I hated to fucking think any of these girls who worked with Leonora had a hand in this.
That didn’t sit right in my gut either.
One thing I knew for sure—whoever the fuck this woman was, she wasn’t acting alone.
The picture bounced back from the zoom, and I pinched the screen again.
Realization hit me like a ton of fucking bricks.
“Whitney Young,” I said, like, GOTCHA!
“Doesn’t ring any bells,” Gio said.
“Freddy Money,” I said.
After Whitney Young got my wife arrested and threatened to own her, I fuckingownedher. No one would hire her but me. She’d been ostracized from Vegas. And Freddy Money? I’d just paid him a visit when it first happened, and he’d lifted his hands, like they’d already been washed of her. He knew I’d take his fucking head off.
And I was.
My gut told me he had something to do with this. He’d been supporting her lifestyle, and it seemed like he was supporting this suicide mission too.
“Something I should know?” Jin asked.
Umberto filled him in on the situation with Money and Young while I stood to call Leonora. I wanted to check on her and speak to her brother. Money didn’t call the shots, but he had money to burn. And sometimes money did the talking when people were desperate. I knew Money could find desperate people to do his dirty work. People who were new to the area and looking to make a quick buck.
An explosion that rocked the floorboards beneath my feet sent girls in a panic through the club. It sounded like a herd of fleeing animals were attempting to all rush out at once.
Gio and Jin each took a side of the window, peeking out of the blinds at different times, while Umberto went to help Sam keep the girls from flying out the door.
Some car bombs were meant to just blow up the car itself, but some were meant to take out buildings by proximity. If the latter was the case, the girls needed to get out. If it was just to get our attention, it was best if they stayed inside. They might be waiting to pick us off if we rushed outside.
The men outside were shouting, and in the next few seconds, it seemed like five more explosions went off. The cars in the parking lot were exploding into fireballs. Flames rose up from the parking lot, smoke rising in huge puffs, and embers were floating in the air. The land surrounding the club was dry, and it wasn’t going to take long for it to catch.
