“Hey, boss,” he greeted me. “We got the rat.”
“Rat,” Isaiah mumbled in a breath by my side.
“Sammy, meet Isaiah, my new assistant,” I said. “And I hope you haven’t killed it yet. I want to know if there are more. I can’t have it scurrying off and bringing more back with it.”
Through the opening in the metal, we made our way through a darkened opening into a space lit by harsh construction lights. Half the room was dug up, the other half on a slope down into it. On the ground, a burlap sack covered a large lump. I stepped forward.
“Take it off him,” I said.
“Him,” Isaiah’s soft voice came again.
I glanced at him, raising my brows. “This is what we do here,” I said. “To rats.”
He nodded, wetting his lips and clinging to the strap of his messenger bag across his torso. “Okay.”
Sammy pulled the sack away from a man I’d seen before, someone who’d been trying to infiltrate the family, the business. “Peter Stanley.”
The man shivered. His suit was tattered, tarnished, and torn from the treatment the men on site had given him. He begged for his life too, using every clichéd phrase I’d heard before.
I repeated his name softly, taking my Glock 19 from its underarm holster. I pulled it back, loaded, and aimed it right for him. “Who do you work for? Cordello? Morrell?” I cocked my head, looking him square in the eyes. “Feds?”
“He hasn’t said a name,” Sammy told me. “I think it’s Cordello, but I could be wrong.”
“Cordello,” I said, looking down at Peter, pointing the gun right at his forehead. “You know you’re going to die here. There’s no way out.”
“What did he do?” Isaiah spoke up, and out of turn.
I turned and huffed, my focus now on my assistant who I thought had been trained well enough to stay quiet in moments like this. “Three of our men were killed because of a rat. That rat,” I said, snapping at him. “One of them was just a kid. Seventeen. I promised his mom I’d find the people responsible.”
“Him?” he asked.
“No more questions,” I told him. He lolled his head, and for a moment I felt bad for my tone. “I’ll answer them later.”
He nodded.
Peter eventually gave up who he was working for—the Cordello family. They operated close by, and if I had anything to do with it and the new direction this family,myfamily, was taking, they’d be sorry. I told Isaiah to turn away before I shot Peter. I enjoyed teasing his innocence, so as long as he knew what I’d done, that was all that mattered. And I hoped it would make him feel more obedient to me.
3. ISAIAH
He’d killed a man in front of me. The gunshot was quiet, but I heard it, the sound of Peter’s last breath. I stared ahead at the plastic sheets covering the wall and the doorway into this room. I stared so hard my eyes dried out and ached to blink.
Santo patted me on the back. “Let’s head off,” he said, his hand moving lower, almost to my ass. “We’ve got a busy day of admin left to do. Next step is the family restaurant. Palazzo.”
“Yes, sir,” I mumbled softly.
And he hit me with an even quieter, “Good boy.” I didn’t know if I could even move from the space, but I did, I had to. They were already wheeling in the large wheelbarrows of mixed cement, and I could hear the slosh of it, like vomit down a toilet, as it hit the ground—and if he was still alive after that gunshot, he was drowning in cement now. I hated that he’d had me turn around, because the images my imagination was conjuring were probably far worse than if I’d seen it.
***
I had nobody but my teddies to talk to about this stuff. Once work was done at around six in the evening and I was finally able to decompress, I sat in my apartment, surrounded by all my comfy teddies, as each one listened to everything I had to say. I dressed up in my fur-lined feetie onesie and ordered takeout—sweet and sour battered chicken balls, mixed vegetable rice, prawn crackers, and of course french fries.
The Bianchi family had a reputation, I knew that going into this. I knew what they were capable of. I knew they had a criminal reputation. Nobody called them the mafia or the mob, though, because saying shit like that would end you up in Peter’sposition—haunting a fucking apartment building because you were there in the cement. Or worse, maybe better, you’d end up in the harbor wearing cement shoes.
I was now part of the problem, the issue, the criminal enterprise, and nobody could know. My teddies could, though, and they allowed me space and time to regress, to tell them all about my nasty, naughty boss—the same man who took pictures of his dick, knowing I might look at them. And I had. It was a big dick, or the angle was taken to make it look big. I didn’t look at them long, I just took mental pictures and then giggled nervously about it all evening.
“I wonder if he’s flirting with me,” I said to the mass of teddies in the cuddle puddle on the floor. They were, of course, surrounding my beanbag chair, which meant I could really sink into them. “He’s probably not, though. And I couldn’t go there anyway. He’d end up firing me, and I need the money.Weneed the money.” I pulled some of the teddies into my arms. “I think I’m selling my soul to the devil.” I groaned heavily. “And the devil calls me a good boy.”
***
