Chapter 10
Chapter
Ten
GIO
“What the fuck, Gio?” Matteo growls as he prowls into my house unannounced, looking pissed.
“What?” I ask, feigning innocence. I have a feeling I know where this is going.
“What?” Matteo echoes, his brows rising as his voice gets louder. “What? Don’t fucking what me when you know damn well what!”
“I don’t want to piss you off even more by pointing out the obvious, but your dramatic what could be in relation to a lot of things.” I shrug. “You know I’m a busy man.”
Matteo’s face turns a vibrant shade of red as he glowers at me. “I swear to god if you weren’t my brother, and it wouldn’t disappoint Ma, I would shoot you myself.”
“What did I do?” I exclaim, my mouth parting in mocking shock.
“Don’t patronize me,” Matteo hisses. “I gave you a direct order to stay the fuck away from Bronwyn. So please tell me why you thought it was okay to ignore me, kill someone, let her see the body and then you have the balls to go into her place after?”
“I was taking out the trash,” I respond as I pour myself a glass of whiskey and open up a purple umbrella much like the color of the toy I got my first taste of Bronwyn from and stick it in my drink. “And I’m pretty sure the direct order was not to fuck her. Which I haven’t.” Yet.
Matteo plucks the umbrella out of my drink and attempts to throw it across the room. We both watch it go a foot from us before it spirals to the floor. I try to keep the smirk off my face but fail miserably.
“You think this is funny?”
“No.” Maybe a little bit.
“Do you understand the problem you caused is now a million times worse because not only has she seen you with a cut-off hand but also a dead fucking body?” Matteo asks, his tone reaching a dangerous level that would make a normal man piss his pants.
“Where do I go from here? If she were a man, I would have to have her taken out. I’m not in the business of hurting women, Gio.
I don’t like being put in this position. ”
“She’s not going to talk,” I tell him, amusement gone. If he lays a hand on her head, he’s going to find out how crazy I really can be.
“And how do you know that?”
“Because she promised.”
“Oh, she promised?” Matteo mocks. “Did she promise to suck your dick too?”
“Not yet.” I smirk, earning me a smack on the head. My drink sloshes over the edge of the glass. “Hey!”
“This is the last straw, Gio. Now I’m having to clean your mess up, like usual. You’re lucky no one else saw you in the alley. What the fuck happened?”
“That guy was hanging around. I didn’t like it, so I took care of him.”
“Hanging around the pizzeria?” Matteo asks, looking no less angry about the situation.
I shake my head. “Bronwyn’s.”
Matteo studies me. “You’re serious?”
“Yup. When I confronted him about it, he got defensive and tried to pull a gun on me. I got there first and finished what he tried to start.”
Matteo’s shoulders lower slightly as some of the anger leaves his body. “You’re okay?”
“I’m good. She didn’t see me kill him either. She came up on me as I was dragging his body over to the dumpster.”
“That’s better,” Matteo releases an exasperated sigh. “Still not great, but it’s better. That still doesn’t explain why you felt the need to enter her apartment. You should have called me, and I would have handled it.”
“How do you know I went into her place?” I haven’t had the chance to tell anyone shit, and if he checked the cameras, he would have seen how the entire thing unfolded, and I wouldn’t be here having to explain my damn self like I’m on trial.
“Enzo was in the office when he saw you on camera. He let it slip that you let yourself into her place,” Matteo says, giving me a look that says don’t even try to lie to me about it.
What a fucking snitch.
And after everything I’ve covered for him so Matteo wouldn’t get pissed.
“While you made yourself cozy in her place, did you ask her if she knew the guy?” Matteo asks as he takes a seat on my couch after pouring himself a drink.
My jaw clenches at his tone, but I know when to pick my battles with him. “She said she didn’t know him, but he had followed her around earlier in the day. It spooked her.”
Matteo’s brows rise. “How does she know he was following her? Ravenna Heights is a busy city. He could have just been a customer at her work.”
I shake my head. “She stopped by The Drip before work for a coffee, and he sat down at her table uninvited. Knew her name and everything.”
“What the fuck? And she’s sure she’s never met him?”
“She swears she’s never seen him in her life.” I shrug. “I don’t know much more than that.”
“And you found him waiting in the alley?”
“Yeah,” I half-lie. I caught him in the alley when I was checking the cameras at her place, but he doesn’t need to know that. “He was waiting under the stairs like a fucking creep.”
Matteo’s expression darkens. “He would have surprised the hell out of her and done who knows what with her. How did he know where she lived?”
“That’s what I’m stumped on. She said he’s never come to her work, but that doesn’t mean he has and she just didn’t see him. I’m leaning more toward this has something to do with her dad.”
“That’s who she loaned money to and why she is short on rent because of, right?” Matteo asks as he sips his drink.
“Yeah. Guys like him always downplay what’s really going on. They get the bare minimum to scrape by with.”
Matteo is silent as he thinks everything over. “I’m not liking where this is heading. And I’m definitely not liking someone hanging around our territory like that, whether it’s for us or not. You get a name from him before you decided to blow his brains out?”
“Brian Hatchett.”
“Hmm…” Matteo hums. “Doesn’t ring a bell.”
“What doesn’t ring a bell?” Aldo asks as he strolls into the room.
“Jesus Christ, does no one knock anymore?” I ask as Alessio trails in behind him.
“Since when have we ever knocked to come to your place?” Alessio asks as he helps himself to my alcohol.
“Uh, since this isn’t your fucking house?” I really need to remember to change the locks on my door.
“Who are we talking about?” Aldo asks again as he settles into the chair, looking between me and Matteo.
“The guy Gio decided to off behind the pizzeria,” Matteo answers for me.
“Come again?” Alessio asks, turning away from my bar cart with his brows raised.
“Why did this turn into a family meeting?” I ask, growing more and more annoyed by the second that everyone is in my house when I could be watching Bronwyn.
“Wren told us Matteo was here.” Alessio shrugs. “So Aldo and I decided to see why we weren’t invited.”
“You weren’t invited because there wasn’t anything to be invited to,” I say through clenched teeth.
“I beg to differ,” Alessio says, amusement lacing his tone.
Matteo sighs. “This is the last thing I want to be dealing with, but since you just had to insert yourself.” His annoyance is aimed right at me. “Find out what you can about the dad and this Brian guy. I want to make sure it has to do with him and not us.”
“Even if it didn’t have to do with us before, I bet it does now considering Brian’s brains are all over the alley,” Aldo adds as calmly as ever.
Matteo and I turn around to Aldo. He shrugs at our unasked question. “Enzo has a big mouth.”
Fucking Enzo.
“He had it coming.” I glower. “Now all of you get the fuck out of my house.”
Once I’m in my car, I decide to start my search by calling the only hacker I know, Wiz.
Sometimes I forget he belongs to the Dirty Devils MC because the guy is a borderline genius and nerdy as hell.
Not that there’s anything wrong with that, he just doesn’t look like someone who would be in a motorcycle club.
I would expect him to be working in a place like Bronwyn works or heading some huge-ass tech company.
He comes in handy, though. If you need something found, he’s your guy. I don’t know how he does it, but he does.
“Yeah?” Wiz answers, sounding distracted. I can hear his fingers slapping away at the keys in the background. The man is always working.
“I need you to look something up for me.”
“Person or place?” he asks.
“Does it matter?”
“Yes, because that’s going to decide how big you’re gonna owe me.”
I roll my eyes. He knows I always pay very generously. “Person.”
“You have my attention,” he says, sounding more interested as the click of his keys stops in the background.
“I need you to look into a guy named Brian Hatchett. Give me whatever you can find on him.” I figure I’ll start there before having him go full force on Bronwyn’s dad. I want to do my own digging on him before I get more people involved in her personal life.
“Got it,” Wiz says as I hear a pen hit a desk. “Give me about a day and I’ll get back to you.”
“Appreciate it,” I say, ending the call and getting out of my car.
The bright lights illuminating the building make my eyes hurt as I approach. I’ve never understood why casinos are so damn flashy. They don’t need to look attractive to draw people in. An addict is going to find their way to them if it looks like a shithole.
I can hear the dinging and chiming of the slot machines going off as soon as the automatic doors open and I step inside. The smell of stale cigarette smoke and sweat greets me upon arrival, making me grimace. That’s one smell that is guaranteed to make my stomach turn.