“My boss wants to talk to you.”
“Wh-why? I’m just passing through. I, um, I stopped to answer a text. That’s all.”
“Is that right?” The man jutted his chin toward Stefan’s phone.
On the screen was the round of Candy Crush that Stefan was seconds away from losing.
Stefan turned his phone off and shoved the device into his pocket. “Doesn’t matter what I was doing. I haven’t done anything wrong.”
“Who said anything about you doing something wrong?”
“Then why does he want to talk to me?”
“You’ll have to ask him that.”
Stefan briefly thought about running, but he doubted he’d get far before the guy grabbed him again. He’d just have to lie to Gennaro. Maybe tell him he was thinking about hiring him again and was waiting to hear back from someone with info. That should work.
“Fine,” he said.
He took one step toward Gennaro’s house before the guy clamped onto his shoulder again.
“Not that way.”
“Huh?”
The guy grabbed the back of his shirt and turned him in the other direction. “Around the corner.”
Stefan was confused, but he did as the man asked.
The guy stopped him again when they reached a gate leading into the empty house’s backyard. “Through there.”
“I don’t understand.”
Slowly enunciating his words, the guy said, “Through there.”
After they entered the backyard, the man guided Stefan to the back door and into the kitchen. Present was a pair of tough-looking men. The older one looked to be in his sixties and was leaning against the center island, while the other looked around the same age as Stefan and was sitting on the counter by the stove.
“Who do we have here?” the older one asked.
The big man nudged Stefan in the back.
“I’m, uh…I’m Stefan.”
“You have a last name, Stefan?”
“Howard.”
“That’s another first name.”
“It’s my last, I swear.”
“Stefan Howard?”
“Yeah.”
“I’d think that would be confusing. Miguel, don’t you think that would be confusing?”
The one sitting on the counter nodded. “Sounds confusing to me.”
