“He doesn’t have the manpower and I don’t want him in the mix. He might side with Gavino.”
Quinn frowns. “If he’s that untrustworthy, why do business with him?”
“Everyone is that untrustworthy,” Vitali replies as he goes to sit on the couch. His tone is flippant, but I glimpse the cold steel in his eyes. Vitali isn’t over our uncle’s betrayal.
I don’t know why it doesn’t bother me as much. Our uncle secretly organized my initial capture and sale. But it’s not something I really think about. It seems kind of irrelevant. But it bothers the hell out of Vitali, even with our uncle now dead.
Instead of sitting on the couch with Vitali, Quinn remains halfway between the minibar and the door. “So can we go home?” he asks.
Vitali’s lips quirk. I can see that he wants to tease Quinn for his impatience and paranoia, but his eyes flick first to me. I don’t know what Vitali sees because I feel like I’m pretty neutral, but he says, “Yeah. We can go home.”
Vitali downs his whiskey and so does Quinn. Vitali pushes up from the couch and returns to theminibar. As Quinn washes the glasses and Vitali dries them, I realize that my neutral is actually very weird. In captivity, it wasn’t weird. Between activities, I would be still. But here, it’s strange that I haven’t moved or spoken. It’s unnatural. Un-human.
I suddenly want nothing more than to get away from here.
But to go where? Vaguely, to Lucas, but I don’t feel right at the house either.
There’s nowhere, really, to go.
For a second, I have a huge, overwhelming sense that I simply shouldn’t be here at all. It guts me, hollows me out, but I don’t have time to really think about the feeling before Vitali is nodding to me and it’s time to leave.
We walk out of the office and into the chaos of the nightclub, heading down from the mezzanine to the main level with its dance floor. The sensory assault is so complete, with the techno beat and slashing lights and the sprawling crowd of people, that my brain switches gears. I stop thinking about myself within this space and just track the space itself.
There are too many people for me to monitor everyone, so I simply observe the general movements, alert for any jarring elements. The habit comes easy. It was always like this heading to the fighting ring, cutting through the churning sea of spectators.
The similarity crosses wires in my brain. I lose where I am in time. I’m sort of aware of it happening, but it’s so easy to believe. It’s familiar, even comfortable, almost a relief. There are no questionshere, no doubts. There’s no sense of being out of place. I know what I am in this context.
So I’m not surprised when the sea of spectators parts for me. It always does. They want to watch me fight, they want to watch me kill, but they don’t want to touch me—and they shouldn’t.
My handlers guide me to the door. My mind glitches slightly at that because we shouldn’t be leaving before the fight. But I walk out with them anyway.
I halt at the sight of the parking lot. The door thumps shut behind me, cutting off the noise, cutting off the past.
“Roman?”
I blink. Vitali is a few paces ahead, looking back. Quinn has stopped too and is scanning the dark lot.
Vitali and Quinn. Not my handlers. My hand goes to my throat, but there’s only skin, no collar.
“You good?” Vitali asks.
I nod, and we walk to the car. We’ve just gotten in when Vitali’s phone buzzes.
“Yeah, Joe,” Vitali answers from the front passenger seat, then, “Shit.” Quinn freezes with his hand at the ignition. “We’re on our way.” Vitali ends the call and reports, “Joe’s crew got made watching Arete. The DiMaggios are pursuing.”
“Fuck,” Quinn mutters as he starts the engine. Vitali shares Joe’s fast-moving phone location to the car’s navigation system.
As Quinn drives, he and Vitali argue. As head of the family, Vitali should stay out of these things, but he never does. Quinn shouldn’t waste his breath.
We end up in a part of town where no one is likely to call the cops. It’s old brick buildings and dark alleys, and we find Joe’s truck abandoned with a flat tire. The shredded rubber says it was run on the rim for a while. Bullet holes pockmark the truck’s rear quarter panel, but there are no bodies and no DiMaggios. Joe’s truck is blocking the alley entrance, so the DiMaggios must have circled around somewhere else.
“No,” Quinn says as we slow to a stop. “Fuck no.”
Vitali argues, “We have four men in there somewhere, and I’m not letting the fucking DiMaggios take them out. I need Joe. I need all my men, now more than ever.”
“Vitali—”
“Quinn,” my brother cuts in sharply.
