Mama’s back door is ancient, warped steel. Something you’d see in a fortress, not an Italian place in Nashville. I knock twice. It cracks open instantly.
“What do you want?” the guy asks. A scar splits his lip in two, like a cleft, and he’s got a diamond in his ear big enough to blind me.
“Enzo in?” I ask, hands jammed deep in my jeans.
The guy looks me over, shrugs, and swings the door wide. I squeeze by him and almost swoon over how good the kitchen smells. Onions, basil, garlic, and something sweet and rich, like fennel sausage. Mama’s has the best Italian food in the city, hands down.
The kitchen’s empty except for a dishwasher, who eyes me and then goes back to stacking plates. I cut through to the main dining room. It’s dark, but the neon glow from the sign out front leaks in, giving me enough light to work with that I can navigate the booths and round tables.
I’ve been here a dozen times in the last month fixing their computers. It’s a joke how they run rackets out of here, but Enzo won’t move the servers. Not my problem if the Feds show up and find all his little secrets on one server rack with impeccable wire management. I’ve taken to wearing gloves just so my fingerprints aren’t on any of the drives or cables.
I duck past tables to the hall by the bathrooms, then the storage room that isn’t actually a storage room. I open it, step inside, andpull the panel in the back. It gives way to a narrow stairwell, and I follow the sound of shuffling cards and the clack of chips.
Down here, Enzo runs four high-stakes poker tables. Tonight, every seat’s filled. Enzo is at the head, hunched over a pile of chips, two fingers pinching a cigarette, ash dangling dangerously. When he spots me, he crooks his finger.
“Liam, my boy. You said poker wasn’t your game.” He kicks out a chair for me, never looking away from his hand.
“Not here to play.” I stay standing.
Enzo looks at me, the chair, then back at me. He bares his teeth and sticks his smoke between them as he puts down his cards and leans back to a side table for a short, fat glass and bottle of whiskey. He pours three fingers, and sets it hard right in front of the chair.
“Sit.”
I do, like the good boy I am. I down the whiskey in one go.
“We closed the books for the quarter. Laundromat looks clean. Car wash might need a little more work.” Enzo picks up his cards, sighs and flicks them onto the table. “Oh, did like you said and bought Frankie a new computer, so he can download all the porn he wants and not fuck up his school one with those viruses.”
“Yeah. It will keep him away from the omegas for a bit while he gets a handle on this new alpha shit.” That comes from Matteo, one of Enzo’s capos.
Enzo flicks his ash into a giant crystal ashtray and tosses a chip into the pot for the next hand.
“If you’re not here for the game, how can I be of service?” Enzo says that with no attitude or snark. He genuinely wants to be helpful, because he knows his help is very valuable.
“You remember how we discussed alternative compensation for this job?”
Enzo’s eyes narrow. “Yeah.”
“I want to collect.”
He gestures for me to keep talking.
“I found the guy. The one I was looking for.”
“And?” Enzo raises an eyebrow, and a wicked little grin spreads across his face.
I grab the whiskey bottle, splash some in the glass, and down that too.
“I was halfway to Walmart to buy a shotgun.” I pour a third drink, but I find my manners and sip at this one, squinting at the burn. “But the Scorpions are close to the playoffs. My pack can’t take that kind of publicity right now.”
“Damn right,” Matteo says as he shuffles the cards. “I got ten large on them taking the Cup, so you better not fuck it up.”
“What did this upstanding citizen do to demand such action from your side?”
I pour another whiskey. I’m feeling the buzz, now, it’s numbing out my tongue. I’m not about to give Enzo ammunition he can turn against me later. I want to get rid of a blackmailer, not acquire another—one that has endless resources. I’ve seen the books on just two of his businesses, the legit and not so legit. I need Enzo to not be a frenemy.
“There’s a girl…”
“There’s always a girl,” Matteo snorts. Enzo shuts him up with a hand gesture.
