Page 87

“Fuck.” I toss my jacket and tie. I roll up my sleeves and take a strip of magazines from Brick, putting the new Glock in the back of my pants. Getting the knife ready at my side.

I glance in her van as Brick says, “She’s covered in splatter. It’s not hers.” Can’t help but grin. Even though when we get out of this shit, I’m going to paint her backside red as punishment for not listening to me, I’m proud of her. That idea pushes a surge of urgency through me. It spurs me on. It unleashes the last restrained bits of me.

Brick slings a long bag from his shoulder and drops it at my feet. I kneel and unzip.

“That’s what I’m fucking talking about.” It’s an inelegant weapon whose power always suited me. He hands me a Salvo, and I affix it to the end then lock and load. I hoist the shotgun and sling a belt across my chest filled with extended mags.

Hidden by the van, we crouch down, and Brick draws a quick layout of their formation inside my mother’s house in the refined grey gravel that makes up the driveway. I can hear the water crash on the rocks and the birds chatter in trees that should be a sanctuary.

I rub out the left side to indicate I’ll get them and point to a side door where I know Brick can get in. Enzo wouldn’t know about it since he hasn’t been here in about a decade. It was new last year. It always bugged me that you had to go all the way around to get back inside.

Jesus, I need to focus. I breathe in short angry breaths through my nose and expel the same air quickly in tight, quick snorts. My body recognizes this is war. Now is when I let the beast completely loose.

Brick says in a low voice, “We’ve got this.”

“Sure as fuck do, brother.” We both spring up on the balls of our feet. He’s a little quicker than me, tall and lean. His earnest grey eyes and sweet molasses accent are deceiving. The man is brutal and shrewd. He can cut anyone up with his gun but it’s his patience that makes him a truly dangerous man.

He’s been hunting and gathering for seven years to take down fucking Phil Cady on his own after suffering personal losses, and this is as much his fight as mine.

“Don’t die. And if you have the shot, I’m not a fucking animal who needs the kill. Take the psycho out. I need him fucking capped, and I don’t fucking care who does it. I need my sister and my wife, safe. Capiche?”

“I believe you’re looking for an ‘I understand.’ So, I’ll just say, I follow.” And he’s gone. He’s like a mist traveling quickly over some open field, undulating around corners, and gliding over the terrain.

My body is thick and big and built to tear people and buildings apart. I blaze through the world unapologetically, knocking down everything around me. My hands twice the size and strength of anyone else’s here can silence a man faster than a bullet. But Brick, he’s poetry. If you see him coming, you’re already dead. Stealthy motherfucker.

I sneak around to the front knowing if I walk behind the line of Cyprus trees I can get to a lone man. He’s smoking, like a fucking cliché and not paying attention. If he were my crew, he be downgraded to humping it collecting in The Nickel desperately looking for a way to earn when there ain’t no one there who isn’t loyal to someone else.

I sling the gun behind me. I won’t need it. I’ve got three or four inches on this guy, and he’s not paying attention to the shootout that happened out front. Maybe none of them realize there are seven dead men scattered around the porch and car pad.

It’s a split-second hold, snap and a twist and the man goes down with a last breath and a crack. His body displaying the way he died plainly by the angle of his neck. I stamp out his cigarette, not wanting my house on fire. I hear yelling in crisp Italian. A native speaker. And then I hear a language that chills me to the bone, not because I barely understand it, but it’s confirmation of something we’ve long suspected but never witnessed. Jesus.

Where the hell is Mark? No one can get a hold of him, and I think I’ve got something he might need.

In a Dutch accent, I can barely make out the phrase, “The Italians don’t matter. Only keeping the girls and killing him.” I don’t know if “him” is me or Enzo. The girls.

They know. Somehow, these fuckers know the one secret I still keep. Interesting thing about that shit, it’s why we’re all still alive. Holland is one of the spots that Mark thinks Cady is hiding. France is another. But I’ve got some Dutch confirmation spewing orders and plans just around the corner from me.

I flatten against the side of the building as Dutch flows freely in soft consonants and long vowels as opposed to its sharp cousin, German. Mama made sure we spoke four different languages and could recognize more. These men aren’t Italian connected guys or street thugs promoted from dealing to protection. These men are methodical, trained, protected by the fucking king himself. They’re Cady’s men.

I’m not afraid of anything except losing Poppy, but if I listed some things that make me nervous, it’s the boogeyman and his wooden-shoed henchmen. Those men don’t think they can run the world, they already do. I swallow the nerves because no one comes at my family and lives.

A scream slices through the heat of the October air and we all jump. It was my sister. I don’t know what will happen if I kill Cady’s men, but I do know that if they’re between me and my wife, I’ll mow every last one of them down in a fucking hail of bullets and blood.

Once I pull that trigger, the firefight is on, and I want to try to even up the numbers a little. Ha. Two against… There’s a snap of a twig behind me and I swing the shotgun poised to create a hole before this person can fix on me.

There’s a short man with kind eyes that I know as well as Lou’s. What the fuck is he doing here?

His piece is pointed at me, and this moment of hesitation could cost me everything, but there’s a grimace and he places his gun on the ground and puts his hands up.

“Sal,” he whispers, then dips his head slightly.

Fuck. I struggle to get my adrenaline down. “Grocer. What the fuck ya doing here?” I gesture to him to sidle up against the wall as I lower my weapon. He’s shoulder to shoulder with me, as much as he can be. He narrows his eyes, and I can see something flickering in them. His heart is peeking out behind the monster, and I know the fucking feeling.

“They found my daughter,” he mutters.

I tilt my head. “She living?”

He nods.