I tried to keep my voice level and cool. “The Blacks are not your collateral over me. That was the deal when I took the job as your little hacker.”
His reaction was explosive. Both his hands slammed flat on the surface of his desk with a loudthud,loud enough to make me flinch back. I hated that I still had that reaction, even after three years of working for the asshole. “They will be whatever the fuck I want!” he roared. “If I want them to be fucking fertilizer, you will have fuck-all to say about it! The only reason I haven’t killedyouyet is because I need your scrawny ass to track my goddamnmoney down! Not to mention the amount of money I've spent on you!”
This felt like a trap. Even more so when Andrea’s eyes shifted over my head to the door of his study, where I turned to find the hulking form of his bodyguard, arms crossed menacingly over a wide chest. The guard’s eyes were hidden behind a dark pair of sunglasses—who even wears those inside aside from assholes?—but the steep ledge of his dark brows pulled low gave the impression he wasn’t above hauling my lifeless body from the room. I turned back slowly to face Andrea, still perched on the corner of his desk.
Not taking ‘no’ for an answer, Andrea pushed himself up and walked around to a set of sleek wood cabinets along the wall and yanked the top one open. A flick of his wrist launched something too fast to see until it landed in my lap. It was a burner phone. “Only use this to contact me.” He seemed to be back to his cool, collected self. “I’d better get weekly updates on your progress, or someone else will come looking for you. And trust me when I say how you get shipped back won’t matter at that point.”
There were very few moments in my life that I regretted. Being a desperate idiot who grasped at the chance to work for Andrea Caruso was one of them. Realizing too late that it wasn’t an offer at all was another. Just because I hadn’t heard anything about the Italian mobster in the dark web forums didn’t mean he wasn’t a problematic person. Something I learned much too late, once his leash wrapped around my throat too tightly to escape.
There was nothing else I could say beyond, “Yes, sir.” Not if I valued my life.
“We will be landing in Las Vegas shortly. Please return your seats to their upright positions, raise your tables, and buckle your seatbelts.”
The flight attendant’s pleasant voice was completely opposite to my horrible mood. I raised the window cover to take in the sprawling city nestled in the desert as it slowly grew to meet the plane’s wheels. The only bright spot I’d been able to find in all of this was being able to book business class for this damn trip. Sighing, I pushed my glasses up off my nose and screwed my eyes shut in a desperate attempt to rid myself of this persistent stress headache.
Throughout the rest of the landing and disembarkment, I couldn’t break through the dread I felt since stepping into the airport proper, paranoia already forcing me to look over my shoulder. Surely the mafioso that Andrea had me hunting down was well aware they were being pursued. Andrea knew he was tossing me to the wolves with this trip. He had sent an encrypted email—with my help, of course— to the Red Riot announcing I was in their territory to lend my services to one of his underbosses, Frank DeNiro, as an alibi. I wanted to know why one of Andrea’s men was based in Vegas to start with, but thought it wise to shut my mouth and not ask questions that might end with a hole in my head that didn’t belong there.
A man in a simple black suit with sunglasses perched on his head held a laminated sign with my last name printed on it, followed by “DeNiro Industries” printed in parentheses below it. He was standing at the exit near the luggage carousel for my flight. “Mr. Grant Black?” he asked gruffly. From how stoic the man’s face was, any expression might force it to crumble and fall off his head.
I extended my hand to shake his. “That’s me. Thanks for picking me up.”
“No need for thanks, just following orders.”
Wow, what a charming character.
My driver wordlessly reached for the handle of my large suitcase and stalked off toward a blacked-out SUV. My eyes narrowed to glare at the back of his bald head. While he tossed my bag into the back, I slipped into the middle row on the passenger side. The rolling hardshell luggage holding all my precious equipment stayed safely with me, and I folded the seat down beside me to pull the carrier in and slide it into the back. “Do you have the address of my hotel already?”
“Don’t need it,” he replied, just as short as the rest of his responses. “You’re going to Mr. DeNiro’s house first.”
“Do I get a say in this? I’d like to freshen up before meeting him.”
Mr. Expressive shot a no-nonsense look at me through the rearview mirror and slid his glasses down. “No.”
He checked the mirrors with a scowl and smoothly merged into the chaotic stream of traffic leaving the airport. This late on a Tuesday afternoon, most of the roads crept along at an abysmal pace that promised an extensive length of uncomfortable proximity with this driver. Sighing heavily through my nose, I propped an elbow on the edge of the window and leaned my jaw against my fist. I was expecting a ride in silence, but the driver’s sudden, colorful cursing had me jumping and leaning to look through the windshield.
“What?”
The sudden roaring of engines made me jump, twisting around to look through the back window just in time to catch three speed bikes overtaking the slower traffic leading out of the airport. The driver's glance had shifted through the rearview mirror and the scowl he wore darkened even more. Whoever the riders were seemed to be people he was actively trying to avoid, throwing on his blinker in a fruitless effort to cut across two lanes to the closest exit. Squeezing through the first gap to theright got him some angry honks, which he flipped his middle finger to. His mobility was much more restricted than the red bikes currently splitting the lanes, barreling right toward our SUV.
“Fucking riot,” he muttered under his breath. “Can’t even pick someone up without having them on our asses!”
My heart began to slam in my chest. “Who are you talking about? The riders?” Belatedly, I realized he wasn’t talking abouta riot. He was talking aboutthe Red Riot.The red bikes made sense now.
Frank DeNiro was a known member of Andrea’s mafia. While I wasn’t familiar with the truce between Andrea and the Red Riot that allowed Frank to live here, I had hoped it would extend to my visit. Something told me this wasn’t a welcoming committee, coming to deliver a warm greeting. My driver shifted and reached between the seat and middle console just as one of the bikers pulled alongside us. Their helmet was the same vivid red as the motorcycle they sat on. A set of black Xs decorated the right side, with a jagged upturned arch beneath them that resembled some kind of macabre smile. It was hard to tell, but I assumed by the skintight jacket stretched across a muscled chest and black leather pants that the rider was a man. Another rider squeezed by him on the lane and cut in front of our SUV. Distracted by the bike on the left, I hadn’t noticed another one pull up to our right side until the rumbling growl of it made me jump in my seat again.
Thisrider was definitely a woman. Her all-black riding gear left absolutely no curves to the imagination… And there were plenty of curves to admire. I didn’t have nearly as much time as I’d like to gawk at her from the safety of the tinted window, as she quickly shot through some tight gaps in the creeping traffic and took the closest exit first. It looked like there were only three Red Riot members we had to deal with. The one ahead of uspumped his breaks and threw the right blinker on, a clear sign we were supposed to follow the woman.
“Does Frank have issues with the Riot?” I asked, trying to keep my voice even, with the ongoing thought of possibly catching a bullet with my head. The last rider escorting us was definitely armed, judging by the bulge on his right side beneath the tight riding jacket. “I thought Andrea had some kind of agreement with them.”
The driver, whom I still didn’t have a name for, snarled. “He does. But Lore likes to remind him he can barely take a shit without someone knowing about it.”
“Charming.”
“Just keep your mouth shut and let me do the talking.”
For some reason, that was less than comforting. From his limited but unpleasant reactions, I couldn’t rely on him not pissing someone off and ending up dead by association. Every minute we spent working our way through the thick traffic felt like an hour, and by the time we broke loose onto the feeder road, I was about ready to crawl out of my own skin with impatience.
The man who’d stayed with us until the feeder road sped ahead, leading us a couple of blocks down to turn right at the first light. The bikes slowed down and pulled into what looked like an abandoned strip mall. Most of the storefronts were vacant with old-looking “for lease” signs hanging in their dirty storefronts. I didn’t get the feeling that they were trying to keep this discreet, considering how public we were, but that didn’t stop me from feeling hyperaware with caution.
