His body folds wrong as he's crammed in. Joints popping, arms bent the wrong way because of the sheer fight of the inevitable.
“And I am a family man after all,” I say, remembering thatthe bikers recently called me soft, called me— “Domesticated,” I add.
We close the door with him stuffed inside and power the machine up again. The pipes overhead hiss with pressure as water fills the drum, but only halfway.
Then the drum rocks once.
Twice.
Gathers momentum.
And starts a spin cycle.
I face the machine, hearing the double thudding of a body, of bones breaking and a skull cracking open.
Bronson stands beside me, watching as if we are enjoying fireworks together. “What do you want to do with the drugs? They will want them back. Can I fuck with them a little? Crack a few skulls? I’m kinda bored.”
“No.” Though Bronson seems to enjoy the bloodshed of our empire, I do not thrill in this particular conclusion. I do not revel in killing a sick girl’s father. “I need peace on the streets for the next four months. I don’t want to start a war before the wedding.”
“So, what do we do, beautiful brother?”
“Store the drugs for them,” I muse, as we observe tendrils of blood creeping into thick soapy water. “Nice and safe. Protected, Se? In my hotel.”
Bronson blinks at me. “Say what?”
“We leave the drugs in the walls,” I confirm, watching the machine’s belly churn into a whirlpool of thick pink, sheets and a dead body, like the slushy machine at little Kelly’s birthday party.
Domesticated, truly.
A family man.
“Dons in the rooms,” I add adamantly. “Bikers on thestreets with a vested interest in keeping the feds and police away from my hotel.”
“You don’t think they’ll frame the Family?”
“I don’t think they know they’re coming. I believe William, Bron. I don’t think he wanted the hotel ransacked by the feds. Shut down for months or indefinitely. He’d be out of a job. Doesn’t add up. This works. Let’s use the Stockyard Bikers as an extra layer of protection.”
Drugs in the walls.
Dons in the rooms.
Bikers on the streets.
A pretty wedding.
I turn to Bronson—this distasteful business is now my problem. “Contact Martin. Tell him his drugs are under new management. That the Don of theCosa Nostrahas a proposition for him.”
“Aye, aye, Captain.”
CHAPTER ELEVEN
fawn
I wokein the middle of the night to change my tampon because it felt tight and weird, but it was completely white—blood free.Yay!
So this morning, when I stretch out my arms in the massive hotel bed, I feel more sensible, more level-headed. Happy hormones have returned.
I roll to my side and see him— I push to my elbows immediately to take in the sight like one might the Northern Lights, with awe and appreciation.
