“Mostly. I eat fish sometimes if I feel like I need it.”
“It’s a health thing?”
A pause stretched out before Folk looked at me again. “Something happened to me that made me realise I wasn’t immortal. I had to re-evaluate what I put in my body, and meat got the chop.”
“Was it hard to quit?”
“It wasn’t the worst.”
I wanted to ask him what was the worst. I wanted to ask him so much more because I wanted toknow him. But my world was much bigger than us and our moment alone was over.
Ivy descended on me with a plate of food big enough for both of us. A ketchup-drenched hot dog slid into my lap and by the time I’d corralled it back where it belonged, Folk was gone.
5
FOLK
I didn’t mean to bail without saying goodbye. Even with the brushfire his mere presence ignited in my blood, being around Decoy was easy. His quiet company and shy smiles. The beautiful little girl who worshipped the ground he walked on.
Leaving him felt as impossible as it had in that Paphos bar, but Alexei wasn’t a man I ever ignored. When he signalled me from the shadows, I answered the call.
“You were right,” he told me without preamble or context.
I waited, but apparently that was it. “About what? The Sambini boats?”
Alexei nodded, eyeing the gathering in the yard from his position on the clubhouse roof. “I boarded the one we had already checked last night, and it seems there is something below deck that shouldn’t be there.”
“Women?”
“I believe so. Not many, but you said there wouldn’t be.”
“So did you.” I followed his gaze and found Decoy in the crowd. He was still in the corner with Ivy, missing his own dinner while he concentrated on hers. “Where are they loading them?”
“I am not sure. Not Porth Luck, though. Even Gianni Sambini isn’t that stupid.”
“If he’s aware. You said he was weak.”
“He is. And with Lorenzo gone—”
Because I shot him in the head.
“—I thought that suited us. But it might become more trouble than we are prepared for.”
I concurred. I wasn’t an expert on the mafia, but I knew a flimsy leader was as dangerous as a tyrannical dictator. “What does Cam think?”
“I have not told him.”
I dragged my gaze from Decoy’s broad back. “Why not?”
“He has other things to worry about. I will tell Saint if the need arises, but until then, this is ours.”
It wasn’t the first secret Alexei and I had shared. Or the first complication he’d pulled me into. But he’d yet to drag me into anything I wouldn’t have volunteered for anyway, including this. “What do you want to do about it?”
“Now, there is a question.” Alexei came away from the roof edge as bikes sounded in the distance. “Wiping it off the face of the earth is my first instinct.”
“Define that sentence. The boat? Or the people on it?”
“All of it. But we cannot do that with live cargo on board.”
