For a second, it felt like the room was spinning, and Declan couldn’t make any damn reason out of the words spilling from Gray’s mouth. “Paid Reed off,” he repeated.
“I’m sorry to tell you that, Uncle,” he said. “It’s real shit. And anyway, you showed them, right? They might have wanted some washed-up old man, but you took their guys out both times.”
“Big Paolo wanted me for this job because he thought I’d fuck it up,” Declan said, repeating the words slowly so that he could hear them for his damn self. “That must be why Reed reached out to Big Paolo in the first place, to find some washed-up joke they could trot out one last time.”
He felt sick to his stomach, like right then, Reed and Big Paolo and every other asshole he’d rubbed shoulders with over the years were sitting somewhere, laughing at him. Shame spiraled around him. He thought about the years that had ticked by once he quit working for Big Paolo. He must have looked pathetic to the guys in Vegas, drinking his days away and growing weaker, softer every minute.
Some loser who couldn’t even win a game of poker.
His eyes narrowed, an image of Seb slicing through the shame and grabbing him back to attention. “It’s good you told me, Gray,” he said, then rose to his feet. “Thank you.”
“Wait, that’s it?” Gray asked, standing himself. “You’re going?”
“If Reed is in on this, I don’t want to leave my guy alone. It’s not safe. The rest of the security could be compromised, for all we know.”
Gray chuckled. “You really do like him, don’t you?”
Declan clasped Gray’s shoulder with a hard squeeze. “See you soon, Gray. And thanks again.”
As he threw on his jacket and hurried to the truck, Declan tried not to reel through his emotions. Plenty of people had said plenty of horrible things about him over the years, but there was a real sting to hear his reputation had been ruined, that those last years of laying low and playing games in Vegas had cost him the name he had built over the years.
A man needed a purpose, and before he came to New York, Declan had somehow lost his. No wonder Big Paolo thought he would screw up the job.
He gritted his teeth as he steered back down the road and into the mountains. Whatever those assholes thought, he had come out on top. People might just see him as a useless drunk, but he’d kept Seb alive. Maybe he wasn’t good for much more, but that was fine.
So long as Seb was okay, none of the rest of seemed to matter, anyway.
