“Where shall we put them, boss?”
Even as I strategized, I couldn’t erase that smug smirk from my memory.
I might have been overreacting, but I didn’t want them anywhere near warehouses stocked with our merchandise, not even number five.
“Take ‘em to that construction site near the ballpark.”
Luigi’s brows lifted, but he drifted off to fulfill my command.
Forty minutes later, we regrouped in Queens. Eleven Albanians shuffled in their bindings with three more dead to the world—the fucker from the bathroom, the guy who’d tried to help him, and the moron whose head I’d kicked in.
All of them had been laid out as I’d requested—hog-tied and kissing dirt. Apart from the leader, whose wrists and ankles Chad had staked into the earth.
The early morning might have been silent elsewhere, and EDMno longer bounced off the walls of my brain, but this construction site worked 24/7.
Despite the different type of cacophony, I could think again, and the more I thought, the more I felt certain this was a foiled hijacking attempt.
Because he’d let the fuckers into Russu, I’d brought Giuseppe in on this little meeting in Queens. That came with consequences. Painful ones.
I almost hoped thiswasa pre-planned ambush with Giuseppe turning traitor, because I itched to delete the fucker and his constant screwups.
The man in question tugged on his collar, seemingly aware that he had my attention.
Now that I could smell his anxiety, I turned to my target. “What were you doing in my club?”
Unease rippled through the men gathered as I spoke in Albanian. That meant myStiddadidn’t know what I was saying and the Albanians knew they couldn’t bullshit me by pretending not to speak English.
The guy blinked, but it was drowsily, the drugs catching up with him. “Dancing,o pidh. What else?”
I squatted beside him. “I think something else was going down. I think you tried to infiltrate my club with hidden intentions.”
“Hidden intentions?” He laughed like a hyena on badly cut coke. “I wanted to get fucked. That was my hidden intention.”
I stared at the glob of saliva on my Ferragamo slacks then shifted my attention to Luigi, who, with orders preset, sat behind the wheel of a concrete mixer. Clicking my fingers at him triggered the turning over of the engine.
The Albanians jerked their heads up to locate the source of the noise, including the man whose spit decorated my pants.
He frowned as the vehicle beeped now that it was reversing, and Luigi, who’d driven eighteen wheelers professionally in his late twenties, maneuvered the hulking piece of machinery toward us.
“What the fuck, man?” the guy on the ground garbled out, eyes growing wide with horror as the cement mixer continued its approach.
“Feel like getting run over by a twenty-ton truck?” I inquired in English, straightening and strolling out of Luigi’s path.
“We wanted to get laid,” he shrieked, accent thicker as fear spread, spittle flying from the corners of his mouth, inadvertently this time, while his limbs jerked at the bindings in a vain attempt to escape.
“What do you think, Chad? Believe him?”
“Not as far as I could throw him, boss. I think the fact that they were packing more ammo than I did in the sandbox says it all.”
“I swear!”
“What do you swear it on? Your first dog’s life?” I scoffed, triggering a snicker from Dante Graziola—new to myStidda, in possession of a sick-as-fuck sense of humor that lined up with mine, and a fighter worthy of a showdown with Muhammad Ali when he had the bit between his teeth. “You think this is first grade? Do I look like a kindergarten teacher?”
“You’re fucking insane!”
“Keep it coming, Luigi,” I hollered, waving my arm like he needed the guidance.
The fucker on the ground screamed again as the wheels ate up the inches between his kneecaps belonging to him and transferring ownership to the concrete.
