“Don’t worry about it.” I put my hand on her arm. “I don’t mind.”
That’s not entirely true. But she doesn’t need to know that.
“I don’t know how I feel about this,” she says slowly. Then she sighs. “I suppose I always hoped you’d have something different. Something real.”
“You don’t have to feel anything about it. It’s handled.” I hold her gaze, keeping my expression steady. Reassuring. “Right now, your only job is getting healthy. Nothing else matters.”
For a second, I think she might push back. But she was a mafia wife once. She knows how this works—sometimes arrangements get made and aren’t up for debate.
We spend the rest of the session working through her crossword puzzle. She’s better at the clever wordplay clues. I’m better at the straightforward ones. Between the two of us, we finish the whole thing by the time the nurse comes to unhook her IV.
When it’s over, exhaustion weighs down her shoulders. I drive her home in silence, the hospital smell clinging to my clothes like a curse. I help her get settled in bed and she’s asleep before her head hits the pillow.
I take one last look at her face, relaxed in sleep, before I slip out the door.
The sun is too bright when I step onto the porch. I stand there for a minute, letting the heat bake into my shoulders, burning away the cold that seems to have settled into my bones.
I take a breath. Then another.
All that fear, all that helplessness, all that sick, twisting grief I’ve been carrying for the past two hours. I box it up. Shove it down. Lock it away somewhere deep where it can’t touch me.
Time to handle some business.
The motel is on the other side of the city. A shithole that the Andretti Hospitality company owns but doesn’t advertise. No fancy lobby. Just a strip of doors opening onto a cracked parking lot, the kind of place where drug dealers rent rooms to avoid search warrants and prostitutes bring their johns by the hour.
I park my truck and walk to room 103.
Cash has been working for us about two years. He’s adequate, as far as street dealers go. Shows up every day. Moves product. Doesn’t cause trouble.
At least, he didn’t used to.
Lorenzo’s brother, Paolo, is the one who brought him in. And Paolo didn’t want to believe the guy was skimming. But we’ve been watching Cash for weeks now. The numbers don’t lie.
Stupid. Sloppy. And about to get painful.
I pound on the door. Footsteps shuffle inside. The chain rattles, and then the door opens a crack.
Cash’s face appears in the gap. Pale. Sweating. He knows why I’m here.
“What do you want?” His voice pitches high.
“Let me in.”
“I didn’t do anything,” he whines.
The door starts to close. My patience, already thread-thin after this morning, snaps completely. I kick hard, wood splintering as the chain rips free. Cash tumbles backward, landing hard on grimy carpet.
The room is a disaster. Pizza boxes everywhere. Beer cans scattered across the dresser. A pile of coke on the desk.
I shut the door behind me.
“I didn’t do anything, man,” Cash whimpers from the floor.
My eyes drop to his shoes. New Jordans. Couple hundred bucks, easy. Then to the chain glinting against his greasy t-shirt.
This asshole isn’t even smart enough not to flaunt his newfound wealth.
“Get up,” I order. “You stole from the Andrettis. Face your punishment like a man.”
