“You want something for your throat?”
He gave a smile that was a pale imitation of his usual wicked grin. Still, at least it was a smile. “Is that a roundabout way of suggesting a blow job?”
“Jesus, no! Calm your hormones, Trouble.”
He coughed again. “Who was that guy, the one who was strangling me?”
Here we had reached a point I knew would come, but I’d been hoping to avoid at least until tomorrow. “Dizzy, people called him. He was one of Sandro Castellani’s bodyguards. And—I think you need to know this, Trouble—he’s the one who killed Harper Connelly.” Dizzy had been crowing about it while we fought, crowing about killing “the redhead”, telling me his plans to make Miller suffer while I watched, before he ended me, too.
Dizzy was a man who talked too fucking much. Another reason he never would have made a good hitman.
“Hekilled Harper?” Miller asked, with a shudder. “Then I’m glad he’s dead,” he added, a low, savage note to his voice.
“Me, too,” I said. I suspected Sandro would be glad of it, as well—glad that all three of those snitches who’d been crawling up his tail were no longer part of this world.
I felt a little bad for how I’d treated Julian, now. Miller had explained to me about the tattoo on the ankle—how Julian had known about that, I wasn’t sure, but Julian had a way of sniffing out secrets.He’dknown the dead woman wasn’t Anaïs Beaumont.
Maybe hehadbeen trying to help.
Maybe.
As for the Boss, why had he decided to go after Miller? As an example for the other Families, to show them that disrespecting Don Ciro Castellani would have far-reaching consequences?
Or was the lesson intended solely for me?
It didn’t really matter. I was done.
Tomorrow, I’d make one final visit to Redwood Manor.
* * *
But this time when I turned up without an invitation, there was a palpable difference in my reception. The house guards were respectful, kept their eyes low, and didn’t frisk me so hard as usual. Normally it felt like I was going over a waterfall, getting pummeled by rocks the whole way down. This time it was more like a gentle shower.
“Nothing I like more than a big man with soft hands,” I told the head guard, the one who always bitched at me. He bit his tongue so hard I’m surprised it didn’t fall out.
And when I got inside, I was greeted by the man himself: Don Ciro Castellani had come to welcome me into his home, kissing me three times in full view of the house guards, and his two sons, who were standing nearby, watching with blank faces.
“Come with me, Johnny,” he said, once I’d finally spit out my hellos after the shock wore off.
This was not the reaction I’d been expecting.
But things became clearer. “I’m so glad to have you back where you belong—one of my top men.” He said it much louder than he needed to, given I was walking right there next to him, but he wasn’t just saying it for my benefit.
He was making clear to all the gawkers that I was back in the fold.
Still, I wasn’t going to play his games in private, and when the door to his study closed, I laid it out plain. “I know you sent Dizzy, Peaches and Bugs to kill Miller Beaumont last night. You won’t have heard back from them. That’s because I killed them instead.”
He regarded me with the same calm air for a moment, and then he chuckled. “You never were one for the politics of it, were you, Johnny?”
“No, sir. So I should also let you know, I won’t be so forgiving if it happens again.”
The smile dropped off his face. “Well, now. That sounds like a threat.”
“It should, because it is. If anything happens to Miller, I’ll settle the score with you myself.”
Ciro Castellani’s dark eyes flashed, but he merely raised a hand and crooked his finger at someone behind me.
I turned, ready and willing to kill then and there, but Sandro, who was standing silently in the doorway, didn’t even glance at me. “Thisis the man you want as my backup, Papa? If he feels comfortable enough to threatenyourlife, why should I trust him with mine?”
