Without missing a beat, he stood up and placed the note in the shredder, watching as the same words he’d had inscribed on his body dissolved.
In for life?
* * *
“No! No. Don’t do anything else. Tell her to shut her mouth and not say another word to the police until I get down there,” Dan screamed into the landline.
Lawyer Daniel, Dan to his close friends, had never had his own practice before he started working for Dorian Blake. Now, he had one of the largest offices in the county, with all the latest trims and furnishings. He had the big black leather chair and the glass-top desk. He had the glass windows, the trophy cabinet, the personal assistant. The fucking drawer stocked full of free cocaine.
On the outside it looked like a sweet ride with a lot of perks, but Dan’s heart wasn’t as superficial as he’d led his enemies to believe. All the fancy trims, all the incentives, each and every one had cost him all the things he’d ever cared about.
Once a fully fledged gangster, Dan now spent his days perched behind a desk using his second-rate law degree to make sure the right people went down for the crimes Blake wanted them to go down for.
His landline rang again, and his assistant answered eagerly.
“Sir, you have a call on line four,” she said.
Dan fell into a rage. “I’ve fucking told you don’t answer anything that comes through on line four!” Dan had always been poorly tempered. There was only one person he’d ever known who was more reckless than he was.
The call waiting on line four came flashing onto his phone. Before answering, he hit the encrypt button and pressed the large handset to his ear.
“Hello.”
“Dan, I was told to call you, I’m in jail.” A random Blake Family criminal was on the line.
“Alright, what digit did they give you?” Dan asked.
“Fourteen.”
Dan held the phone to his ear with his shoulder and flipped open a large binder on his desktop. His lanky fingers searched through the list of codes until they settled on the one in question. Fourteen was to bribe the police for release. Lucky day for this random idiot.
“And what did you do?”
“I shouldn’t say...”
“The line is encrypted, go ahead.”
“It’s what?”
Sighing and rolling his eyes to the sky, Dan held the phone to his chest while he took a deep breath. He’d once been told that his superior intelligence was a curse as it would only make everyone else look undeniably stupid.
“For fuck’s sake, it’s secure. It can’t be tapped. Out with it.”
“Oh, okay. I rammed my car into the police station. But I fucked up, I think I really hurt someone.”
“Case number?”
“I don’t know.”
“Fuck, fine. I’ll sort it out.” Dan slammed the phone down in the cradle. Then smashed it down again several times for good measure. No reason, really. Just giving an outlet for his rage.
His assistant pushed open his door with her hip and avoided eye contact as she traced the length of the room to place coffee and a danish on his desk. Right next to the new mail.
Not even bothering to wait for his assistant to be gone, Dan sat at his desk and straightened a line of coke before sniffing it into his nose, and throwing his head back to relish it as the tight brown curls bounced on his head. He stretched his legs out on the desk and picked up his mail. He could hardly read it through his bloodshot eyes.
One by one, he threw away piece by piece of mail until he came to an envelope he didn’t recognize.
Interesting.
