It was a nice place to spend a few weeks.
I spent the next half an hour hanging up my suits and organizing my toiletries while calling to tell Luca we’d made it, checked in, and were just waiting for Remo to make contact.
Then, restless, I grabbed my keycard, left my real phone, took my burner, and made my way down the hall toward Domenico’s room.
I knocked, and it was just a few seconds before the door opened.
“Wanna explore?”
“Sure,” he agreed. “Place looks dead as fuck, but I’m sure we can find something to do.”
If nothing else, the casinos were always operating.
We were only about halfway to the door when two men stood up from chairs in the lobby waiting area. Both were tall, well-groomed, dark-haired, and dark-eyed. They buttoned their jackets, but not before I spotted the guns in their shoulder holsters.
Dom must have clocked it the same time I did because his arm went out, catching me across the midsection.
“Milo, Domenico,” one of the men said before either of us could reach for our own weapons. “Remo sent us to get you.”
The tension slipped out of our bodies as we followed the two men out the front doors.
We weren’t led to waiting cars.
We just walked in silence down the nearly empty pier, looking conspicuous as hell. But the guys didn’t seem the least bit bothered, so I forced myself to keep my shoulders relaxed so we didn’t draw any more attention to ourselves than necessary.
When we turned toward a massive, old, abandoned-looking mall, Dom and I shared a look but followed the guys in through the doors.
And, yep, sure enough, it was a mall. Except, it really wasn’t.
No one milled about.
Storefronts were all boarded up.
Escalators were frozen in place.
The floors were covered in dust and old litter.
It was the perfect place to kill someone.
We walked around the center atrium before the guys turned down a small hallway full of more empty stores.
They opened the doors of a frosted glass shop and waited for us to move inside.
Domenico and I shared another quick glance but moved inside, deciding to put our trust in our blood, even if we’d never even met this Remo guy.
“The fuck…” Dom said when we walked into a room full of candles, their flames flickering, their wax melting.
“Don’t worry,” a voice called as we stopped short. “It’s not a ritual sacrifice. Just a ghost mall.”
A shadow moved, and then a man stepped into the center of the circle illuminated by the candles.
Then there he was.
Remo Grassi.
He was dressed in black slacks and a black button-up. His sleeves were rolled to reveal forearms covered in black and gray ink.
He was, like most of the Grassi men, tall and fit with dark hair. Only he didn’t have dark eyes. No. His were an unexpected light shade of green. Square jaw, cleft chin, thick lashes.
