“I would rather this, as well, if I were you.” Romeo’s eyes slowly ran down the brazen boy’s throat to where his heart pounded three times as fast as it should, then his eyes slowly rose. When he met the brazen boy’s eyes, he smiled. “I will allow this.”
The one in the middle made the sign of the cross, closed his eyes, and started to pray silently.
This was when the boy, Remy Mestengo, caught his breath and decided to sing as a canary would at a view of freedom.
“Look.” He raised his hands. “I never touched your girl. In fact, I wasn’t even sure if she was into guys. That was how detached she was. I tried to hold her hand once, and she made up some lame fucking lie about her fingers being insured or some shit and she couldn’t take the chance of the insurance company seeing that she was doing something dangerous with them.Hahahaha.” He laughed, mimicking a woman. “She’s lost in her head a lot. Not really present. A dreamer. That’s why Ifigured she was good at the writing thing. But she wasn’t even writing at the time. Her fingers were innodanger.”
He took a deep breath, as if he might go on, but when I lifted up and removed a stack of letters from my back, setting them on his desk, his entire demeanor changed. He closed his eyes, took a deep breath, and shook his head.
“Okay,” he said. “I’m obsessed with her. She’s the first chick to deny me—anything.”
“Liar,” Brando said.
My men stood up taller at this. In our world, this would be considered enough slander to war over. However, this boy could not understand honor even if it was a hot-blooded woman in his hands. He only shrugged at my brother’s high insult. But it was Remy Mestengo who had been writing the threatening letters to my wife the entire time. He had sent my frightened heart straight to my arms.
Lucky for him.
He had earned a bag of blood for that.
“I had no clue she would bail, man. I thought she would come tomefor help. Tell me how scared she was and shit. I was going to tell her I’d take care of it, and when the letters stopped—voilà. I’d be the hero.”
“Your boss,” Mac said, changing the subject.
The boy blinked at Mac, and when he seemed to bring him into focus, his head came back as if Mac had gotten into his and saidboo. Mac had been standing in the closet and had appeared out of the darkness. He was known to do this.
“You got any more men in there?” the boy asked me. “This is a lot of heat for one guy.”
I stuck my foot underneath the chair, sitting up just in time to catch it before it crashed to the floor. He was stuck midair, staring into my eyes.
“All right,” he whispered. “My boss’s name is Dennis Fyodorov. He runs one of the docking companies along the river. I’m sure you know New Orleans is a port town and we have our fair share of longshoremen. Always have. That’s why I connected with Ar?—”
I allowed the chair to slip some, refusing him the right to say my wife’s name. Even his mouth was not clean enough to speak her beautiful name. He did not seem like a smart man, but he was smart enough to feel the threat coming for him.
“That’s why I connected withyour lady. Her old man had been snooping around. Got wind of the new drugs that were being imported from somewhere overseas. My boss got wind of this. Someone higher up had read Stefano Simonetti’s first book.” Stefano Simonetti was my father-in-law’s pseudonym. “My boss is of the opinion that most of Simonetti’s books are based on true crimes. Your lady’s old man goes and dies, but suddenly, there’s a book out. A book that my boss’s people are telling him hits too close to home, understand what I’m saying here?”
“Your boss sends you to get closer to her.” This from Mac.
“Wasn’t a hard job.” He shrugged. “Not the getting close to her part, but the job itself. I just had to convince her I was interested in her. Get her comfortable. That part of the jobwashard. She’s locked up tight, except for when the letters started to arrive. She must have cracked some. She told me she wrote the book from an idea her dad gave her. Andbang!I knew. That admission with her skittish behavior added up to the truth. Her old man either told her the truth or a version of it.”
“You tell your boss this?”
The boy’s eyes almost rolled, trying to find Mac.
“Yeah,” he said. “I did. But I also told him she bailed. Gone like the fucking wind. I didn’t think she knew anything beyond what was in the book— killer book, by the way. I couldn’t put itdown. She has a way with words. But the boss lost interest in her after that. She’d gone to the police before she left, I found out, but they ignored her. Well, her information. She’s a hard woman to ignore?—”
My foot released the chair, and he crashed, his head cracking against the wooden floor. He was becoming too lax with his word choice.
“Ah, shit!” He grabbed for his skull, pulling back a smear of blood. “My head is busted!”
“Your boss forgot about her.” Mac.
“Yeah.” He hissed, touching it again. “Until she showed up with hernewhusband. The boss figured she was long gone, and the book lost steam after a while. She hasn’t put out another. I can’t speak for my boss, but I can say this—knowingwhoshe’s married to, it changed his perspective a bit. I guess you men are known as a force, dealing with the criminal world yourselves. He’s not too worried about her ratting anymore. His operation here is a small one. I doubt he’ll get much help from his uppers if you men decide to crush his warehouse.”
He lifted his hands. His palm was stained with blood. I almost ticked my mouth. He needed every drop.
“And whatever I have here in drugs, you can all have. That’s how the system works. I buy the drugs from the boss. I sell the drugs for a higher markup. Just in case you were interested in that aspect of all this.”
“We appreciate this,king,” Guido said, almost sneering at him.
