“Then what is my lane?”
“I like you. Straight to business.”
I’m tempted to make a show of checking my watch, but Enzo isn’t the kind of guy you want to piss off.
“A guy in the family, Giovanni Esposito, got popped a few years back. Dumped fake cash transactions on the last day of every month. It was obvious and sloppy.”
“And?”
“We need a little finesse. Cash transactions sprinkled throughout the books. Make it look…what’s the word the kids use now? Organic? Authentic? My nieces say that shit all the time.” He makes air quotes with just his lit cigarette.
That is a ridiculously easy problem to solve. There has to be a catch.
“So, you want randomized entries spread across the month, updated automatically into your books, mixing in cash transactions with your credit cards in a way that wouldn’t flag any audit. Weighted to match your traffic patterns, and accounting for the automatic systems.”
Enzo’s grin widens. “You see what I’m laying down.”
“And the payment?”
“An ongoing retainer. You’ll be taken care of.”
Fuck. I really did not want to be on the mob’s payroll. But I need two things out of this conversation. Beckett missing out on games and being fined is not a financial concern. The gym is doing well. My consulting is doing well. We have money. We have so much money. Beckett could retire tomorrow, and we’d live perfectly fine for the rest of our lives.
Unless we’re being blackmailed.
The new envelope crinkles in my pocket. It came in the mail this morning. And that is a fucking problem I have to solve.
I’m smart, but I don’t know if I’m smart enough to keep Beckett’s career out of this. Telling that first lie was the dumbest thing I’d ever done.
“You’re going to keep your shit together?” I propped Pierce up against the wall.
“I’m fine.” His words were slurred.
He’d been drunk for days. Randal Voss and a few of his buddies had been camped out in front of my place since it happened. All I knew was Reed was dead, Pierce was convinced he did it, and the “grieving” father had everyone whipped up in town thinking we did it. When they started taking potshots at the garden gnome in the yard, I waited till they fell asleep in their cars, and we bailed, driving like a bat out of hell to Detroit.
“You sure about this?” I asked.
“He’d want to know and…” Pierce sniffed and wiped his nose on his sleeve. “We’ll just stay a few days and figure something out. He said we could crash anytime.”
My teeth chattered. It was way too cold for a hoodie. Reed had started it, the joking about us moving to Detroit in our group chat with Beckett. Beckett was so on board. He was making plans, recommending neighborhoods.
Pierce tugged on his jacket and ran both hands through his hair. After one steady breath, he knocked on Beckett’s door. It took a while for him to answer.
“Oh my god,” was all he said before pulling Pierce through the doorway and kissing him. It was that hungry kind of kiss. He grabbed me by the neck of my hoodie, and when his lips hit mine, it took everything in me not to scream and break apart.
He let me go and ducked his head out the door. “Where’s Reed?”
Pierce had put his back against the wall in a last-ditch effort not to fall apart. He lost that battle and gravity won, pulling him all the way to the floor.
“He’s dead. I…” was all Pierce could get out.
“What?” Beckett sank to his knees next to Pierce.
Pierce looked at me, square in the eye, for the first time since I found him covered in Reed’s blood. Begging me to make it right.
“Car crash,” I spat out. “T-boned by a semi.”
“Oh god,”Beckett pulled Pierce to him.
