Chapter 10 Clay
CHAPTER TEN
clay
I left my family in the penthouse— Fawn well-fucked in my bed, my sons sleeping peacefully in the third room, Bolton at the door, and several Cosa Nostra soldiers at key points around the corridors and elevators.
Most mornings, I wake with time to warm her up, licking her leisurely between her thighs until I’m painfully erect and need to be inside her. Not this morning. My sweet girl’s impromptu visit didn’t magically erase my plans, but alas, she keeps me on my toes.
My phone had pinged with the text I’d been expecting from Bronson, but my erection didn’t get the message, achingly hard, pulsing against her arse.
So I took her.
Flipped her onto her stomach. Lubricated my cock and fucked that sweet, soft puckering arse, chasing my own release. I told her—warned her—the first time I sank inside her tight, young pussy that she would be mine. That she would offer me her holes—all of her pretty holes.
And she does.
Such a sweet girl for me.
Which is fortunate, because my patience is already wearing thin as I face the bound figure in the commercial laundry beneath The Main. The city sleeps above us, the skyline still dark, the streets quiet.
I throw my fist into his face, his bone giving way beneath my knuckles.
Left eye.
And again.
Left eye.
He groans from his throat. There is duct tape over his brow and around his jaw, holding his ruined face in place. We have been at this for hours.
I flex my tattooed fingers as I stare down at the whimpering mess strapped to the metal chair. His blood paints and speckles the rough cement floor around his shoes.
William Davis; the accountant at The Main. Father of three. And, as Bronson has just discovered, a fucking traitor. We need to clean the streets before the Family arrives. No fucking time for pleasantries, second chances, or mercy.
"Let me understand this correctly," I say, my voice smooth even to my own ears. Relaxed.
Thank you, little deer.
I go on, "You have been using my hotel, my Family's business, to launder money for The Stockyard Bikers and store their drugs?"
It adds up.
Yesterday, there were bikers in the city. My Cosa Nostra guards counted ten within a block of the hotel. Bolton first thought they were following my little deer and sons, but that would be too obvious. More likely, they were headed here. To gather intel from William.
Interesting…
Williams’s left eye is swollen shut, while his right is weeping and red, darting frantically between my brother Bronson and me.
His mouth opens, blood flowing out with two words. “I’m sorry…”
He is not a brave man.
Bronson leans down to get a better look at William’s fractured face. “Oh, bummer. Now Willy can’t see your beautiful face, big brother. What a pity.”
I don’t talk.
I just stare at him.
Smoothing my hand down my tie, I repeat my question with patience only mustered by the dopamine and serotonin still coursing through my veins.
I always thought I operated best under duress, but not in this instance.
“Walk me through this again, my boy. You’ve been running my hotel’s books for how long now?
Twelve years? Yet you thought I wouldn’t notice when the digits shifted.
Thought we wouldn’t ask questions about the maintenance issues that do not, in fact, exist. Storing stock? We found it. All of it.”
He tries to respond.
Too fucking frozen with fear.
I look at my brother as he paces back and forth like a tiger bored with its own cage, each step punctuated by the crisp snap of latex gloves being stretched and snapped against his own wrist. He doesn’t need gloves; he loves a show—Bronson.
Always has. I don’t know where the theatrics come from, not our father, perhaps our mother.
Would he hate that comparison? Perhaps. She was a terrible mother.
I am more like her…
As cold as she was.
“You’re going to tell me why, William. You’re going to tell me because if you do not, Bronson will get creative. And nobody wants that. Not even me.”
William finally croaks out a reason. “They… they threatened—”
So, that’s a yes.
“Threatened your children? Your wife? You? And I have not?” I look at Bronson. “Did we forget to threaten him?”
“You’re a beautiful man,” Bronson laughs.
“Heart of gold. But we built this empire on the premise that nobody gets a free spin on our machines without paying the toll. You understand, Willy?” Bronson gestures around us at the endless rows of washers, the sacks of starched linens.
He gestures to my face. I deadpan. “We pay in beauty.” He points his finger into William’s chest. “You pay in loyalty.”
William blinks his left eye, what’s left of it, like he wants to cry but can’t remember how. I’ve seen that look many times. “Please, I… I don’t want to die…”
I step backwards.
I click my tongue.
What to do?
He’s been working at this hotel for over a decade, never let us down before. That I know of.
That. I. Know. Of.
Well, if that isn’t telling.
Bronson gazes at the ceiling as if searching for Godly inspiration. “Money just wandered away,” he sings. “On the books, not in the pockets. You just woke up one morning, and the bikers had moved in, pitching tents in your cranium, Willy? Hiding drugs in your chest?”
Madonna mia.
I press my thumb into the raw meat of William’s jaw, feeling the tremor of flesh within, all the way down in the soles of my shoes.
Fucking petrified.
Poor fucker.
“Did you know that my Family is visiting from Sicily?” I ask.
It is redundant. He knows because I told him three months ago in fewer words.
I trusted him then. I don’t take kindly to broken trust. “That they will be staying here, in this facility.” I clasp my hands together.
“Asleep. Vulnerable. Expecting safety. Important men and women, Se? I cannot have people in this hotel that I do not trust, and I cannot have illegal drugs stored in the walls. What a mess that would be if an informant were to go to the feds. What would that look like? I’ll give you a moment to mull that over…
It would look like the drugs belong to my Family. A setup. Is that what you’re planning?”
Saliva slides from his lower lip as he talks, drawing on all his strength and the final bubbles of adrenaline. “They don’t know. I swear it, Mr Butcher. The bikers… T-they don’t know. I just wanted the extra money for storing the drugs. Fed some through the books. I’m so fucking sorry.”
“Yes, I’m sure you are. It’s okay. Come clean. Be honest with me, my boy,” I coo. “I’ll make it all better.”
“My little girl is sick,” he goes on. “I needed the money for her chemo. I didn’t want to involve anyone else.” He wails and weeps, tears and saliva hanging from his open mouth, body swaying in place. “I swear it. You have to believe me. You’re like family to me, Mr Butcher.”
How sweet.
“I would never want the bosses to get hurt,” he adds. “The Bikers, their president, Martin, he doesn’t know the Dons are staying at the hotel. I swear it. I swear on my life. That would be… I’d never betray you like that, Clay.”
As Bronson squats at his side, untying him from the chair, I cup his sweaty face, kissing his left cheek.
Then his right.
“I believe you,” I say.
He sobs and smiles.
I step backwards again and watch.
Bronson grabs him, dragging him over to the huge industrial washing machine we have at the end of the row; the one for king-sized duvets and bulk hauls of laundry.
He screams. “No!”
It has a colossal metal barrel filled with bleach and soapy water, vibrating and spinning rapidly. The sheets and blankets inside are tossed and turned about.
I slowly follow them.
My shoes rap on cement.
“God! No!”
At the end of the lane, I hit the red button on the wall, cutting the machine off mid-cycle, releasing the locks.
When Bronson opens it, water and towels pour out. The powerful scent of detergent and bleach overwhelms the air, making it increasingly hard to breathe.
“Please, Clay!”
I straighten. “I will pay for your daughter’s chemotherapy, William. As you said, we are like family. The truth is, if you had spoken to me about your situation, I would have given you the money then and there.”
William’s guttural cries echo around the room as Bronson forces him into the round mouth of the machine, slapping bloody fingerprints around the chrome drum.
The sound a man makes when he is about to die is something I never forget.
I've heard it many times now, and each scream carries its own distinct and haunting pitch.
His body folds wrong as he's crammed in. Joints popping, arms bent the wrong way because of the sheer fight of the inevitable.
“And I am a family man after all,” I say, remembering that the bikers recently called me soft, called me— “Domesticated,” I add.
We close the door with him stuffed inside and power the machine up again. The pipes overhead hiss with pressure as water fills the drum, but only halfway.
Then the drum rocks once.
Twice.
Gathers momentum.
And starts a spin cycle.
I face the machine, hearing the double thudding of a body, of bones breaking and a skull cracking open.
Bronson stands beside me, watching as if we are enjoying fireworks together. “What do you want to do with the drugs? They will want them back. Can I fuck with them a little? Crack a few skulls? I’m kinda bored.”
“No.” Though Bronson seems to enjoy the bloodshed of our empire, I do not thrill in this particular conclusion. I do not revel in killing a sick girl’s father. “I need peace on the streets for the next four months. I don’t want to start a war before the wedding.”
“So, what do we do, beautiful brother?”
“Store the drugs for them,” I muse, as we observe tendrils of blood creeping into thick soapy water. “Nice and safe. Protected, Se? In my hotel.”
Bronson blinks at me. “Say what?”
“We leave the drugs in the walls,” I confirm, watching the machine’s belly churn into a whirlpool of thick pink, sheets and a dead body, like the slushy machine at little Kelly’s birthday party.
Domesticated, truly.
A family man.
“Dons in the rooms,” I add adamantly. “Bikers on the streets with a vested interest in keeping the feds and police away from my hotel.”
“You don’t think they’ll frame the Family?”
“I don’t think they know they’re coming. I believe William, Bron. I don’t think he wanted the hotel ransacked by the feds. Shut down for months or indefinitely. He’d be out of a job. Doesn’t add up. This works. Let’s use the Stockyard Bikers as an extra layer of protection.”
Drugs in the walls.
Dons in the rooms.
Bikers on the streets.
A pretty wedding.
I turn to Bronson—this distasteful business is now my problem. “Contact Martin. Tell him his drugs are under new management. That the Don of the Cosa Nostra has a proposition for him.”
“Aye, aye, Captain.”